IMacros for Firefox Failure Corde 0x80500001 (Error code: -1001)

Solution

The root issue is the encoding of the files. I've had this problem before with iMarcos, but it's never been quite this specific. Usually saving the datasource (the CSV file) as UTF-8 works. But some update to Firefox or iMacros has made it really inflexible. Both the datasource (.csv) AND the macro file (.iim) file must be saved as "UTF-8 with BOM". I Used Sublime Text to do this, but any full-featured word editor should work.

For the record, various versions of things I use.
Firefox : 29.0.1
iMacros : 8.8.2
Windows : 8.1 x64

Problem/Full Story

I often have to fill out web forms over and over again to perform certain tasks. A lot of these web forms are poorly designed at best, and don't support batch-type inputs. So having a program like iMacros is essential for me not wanting to kill myself while filling out a DHCP registration form 200 times.

I've used iMacros for a number of years and never had too many problems; In Firefox at least, in Chrome the sandboxing makes it an exercise in keyboard snapping frustration to read/write to files -- but that's another story. However I needed to do a bunch of the previously mentioned DHCP registrations today (this is a system managed by another department, and the web interface is the only way to do it besides submitting a work request, which can take days), and found that the Macro/CSV I had previously used to do this were not working. I received the following error message:

Error: Component returned failure code: 0x80500001 [nsIConverterInputStream.init], line 4 (Error code: -1001)

I'd actually run into this error before, or at least one similar to it. iMacros (or possibly firefox), can be rather picky about the encoding it uses. Previously saving the .csv I use for inputs as UTF-8 had solved the problem. Today that didn't work though.

After fiddling around with it for a bit, I found something strange. I Created a new macro (.iim) file to see if the other one was corrupt or something, but writing/saving it through Sublime Text (not the built in iMacros editor) as UTF-8, then opening it in the iMacros editor just showed a blank file. Strange, after trying a handful of different encodings for the macro file I found one that it would recognize "UTF-8 with BOM". After saving the file with this encoding through sublime, it would show up correctly in iMacros. However, I was still getting the same error when I tried to run it. Tried saving the csv file with the same "UTF-8 with BOM" encoding, and then it ran.

Citrix Receiver for Mac "Cannot start the desktop ... OSStatus -1712"

Solution

In my case there were non-responsive processes on the mac client that were causing the problem. To resolve, I closed out of receiver and closed any active desktop connection. I then brought up the activity monitor (command+space to bring up the search, enter "activity monitor"). There were several Citrix processes, one non-responsive process with the name of the personal desktop that wouldn't load and a few helper processes. I force-quit all Citrix processes, then restarted the receiver client. Connected to desktop successfully at that point.

It may not have been necessary to force-quit all Citrix processes, but it doesn't seem to have had any consequences, they started back up when I reloaded receiver.

Problem / Full Story

Had a user this morning that couldn't connect to their windows desktop over XenDesktop (7.1). User is one of our few Mac (running Mavericks) users, and uses XenDesktop to get to windows applications he needs. When he tried to log in this morning, he got the following error when he tried to connect to his windows 7 machine.

Cannot start the desktop "Personal Desktop"

 Contact your help desk with this information: The application "Personal Desktop" could not be launched because a miscellaneous error occurred. (OSStatus -1712).

Odd thing was, he was able to connect to his Windows 8 desktop just fine. So the connection to the server was working, as was the connection to at least one VM. The Win7 machine was showing up as registered and ready in Citrix Studio on the XenDesktop Controller. Win7 appeared to be responsive when interacting with it through XenCenter. I tried restarting the Windows 7 machine but the error persisted. A brief look through the longs on the Win7 machine and the XDC didn't show any errors, so it seemed like the problem wasn't server-side. Had the user logout/close receiver on his machine and reopen it, but the error continued to occur.

Up in the user's office I brought up the activity monitor and saw the unresponsive process -- see "Solution" above. After killing and restarting all citrix processes the user was back up and running. Rebooting the Mac probably would've had a similar effect.

 

a security package specific error occurred - Security-Kerberos EventID 4

Solution

Root problem was that there were static DNS entries set for some computers whose IP addresses had changed. Deleting static entries and waiting for changes to propagate out solved the problem.

Full Story

Had an issue this morning where some new computers on our network were not getting printers mapped. This is not an uncommon occurrence, because printers, but the cause of the problem was a new one for me. These computers had just been upgraded (new hardware, same hostnames) and seemed to be functioning fine on the domain. The print driver was working fine on other machines, and the usual fix, restarting the print spooler, had no effect.

Trying to access the Event Viewer on the lab machines I got the error "A Security Package Specific Error Occurred". This error (or a variation) came up trying to access the computer via any WMI / RPC / DCOM method.

On the print server I had the following error, listed as Level:Error, Source:Security-Kerberos, Event-ID: 4

The Kerberos client received a KRB_AP_ERR_MODIFIED error from the server MYLAB-04$. The target name used was cifs/MYLAB-02.My.Domain.Com. This indicates that the target server failed to decrypt the ticket provided by the client. This can occur when the target server principal name (SPN) is registered on an account other than the account the target service is using. Please ensure that the target SPN is registered on, and only registered on, the account used by the server. This error can also happen when the target service is using a different password for the target service account than what the Kerberos Key Distribution Center (KDC) has for the target service account. Please ensure that the service on the server and the KDC are both updated to use the current password. If the server name is not fully qualified, and the target domain (MY.Domain.Com) is different from the client domain (My.Domain.Com), check if there are identically named server accounts in these two domains, or use the fully-qualified name to identify the server.

 One thing jumped out here right away, the error is from lab computer 04 (SPN: MYLAB-04$), but the FQDN is listed as computer 02 (cifs/MYLAB-02.My.Domain.Com). So that set off some alarm bells, but I still did some additional research before jumping in.

Supposedly this error can be caused by a number of things (a Google of "A Security Package Specific Error Occurred" returns about 6 difference causes on the first page of results). In my case, as mentioned above, was a DNS issue. While upgrading these lab machines, the IP addresses we assigned through DHCP changed slightly. Normally, we just let the machines register themselves with the DNS server after they pick up their IP via DHCP, we don't have many static DNS entries. For some reason, these machines had static entries, though, so our DNS server was resolving their hostname differently than AD was, which is what caused the authentication errors. Deleting the static entries and waiting (DNS changes can take a while to replicate) solved the problem.