The knack

There are a few new configuration settings that can be exposed via Get-AppVClientConfiguration. Looking at the output of the PowerShell cmdlet on the side we can spot four new in total;

PackageStoreAccessControl
EnablePublishingRefreshUX
ProcessesUsingVirtualComponents
EnableDynamicVirtualization

PackageStoreAccessControl can restrict users from browsing, and starting applications from, the PackageInstallationRoot to locate any published applications and gain access to something that was not intended for them.

EnablePublishingRefreshUX aims at providing a user interface, a progress bar, for the publishing refresh operation. Since the new architecture for App-V 5 has been put into production this is a topic that has surfaced that the publishing refresh is slower compared to App-V 4.X and interrupts the user. As part of improving that experience there are two changes – one is to provide the user with a visual indicator on how far along the progress is. The second part is that the start menu is only refreshed for every 5 applications that are published – to avoid it refreshing to often.

The Sync-AppVPublishingServer also has a –HideUI to give the option to not present the progress bar when performing a sync.

ProcessesUsingVirtualComponents is a new setting that seems to relate to the ability to provide the new shell extensions and the browser helper objects. Its not documented, but it seems to provide a list of processes that can access the virtual environment to utilize resources part of the package.

Sample value; ProcessesUsingVirtualComponents         {%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe, %Program…                                  

EnableDynamicVirtualization simple toggles the ability to use the virtual extensions on or off.

App-V 5 has provided us with many granular logs to identify issues, but when troubleshooting there needs to be an overview of errors. For the last few days quite a lot of effort on my own part has been in browsing through the logs, so as opposed to manually traverse individual logs or filtering all of them we can leverage PowerShell to identify errors quite easily. The below piece of code will traverse all but one of the logs and quickly identify any errors.

#Nicke Källén – 2013-05-08
#Define App-V logs
$appvlogs = Get-WinEvent -ListLog *AppV* -Force
#Define start-time - suggested time yesterday
$starttime = (Get-Date).AddDays(-1)
#Define end-time - now
$endtime=[datetime]::Today
#Set Culture to en-US, otherwise Message goes blank
$orgCulture = Get-Culture
[System.Threading.Thread]::CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = New-Object "System.Globalization.CultureInfo" "en-US"

#Loop through all log-files
foreach ($log in $appvlogs) {
write-host “Log; ” $log.LogName
#Skip operational log as it most contains informational messages and is heavy
if ($log.Logname -ne "Microsoft-AppV-Client/Operational") {
#Select only errors (level = 2) and select time and message of the event
Get-WinEvent -FilterHashTable @{Logname=$log.LogName;starttime=$starttime;endtime=$endtime} -Oldest -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue| ?{$_.Level -eq "2"} | Format-List TimeCreated, Message
}}
# Reset Culture to orginal
[System.Threading.Thread]::CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = $orgCulture

Been diving into the App-V 5 logs for a few days and got tired of enabling the debug and analytic log files. Made a small sample to enable them in a loop;

Enable all App-V 5 logs;

##Nicke Källén 2013-05-08
##Enable all logs
$appvlogs = Get-WinEvent -ListLog *AppV* -force | Where-Object {$_.IsEnabled -eq $false}
foreach ($logitem in $appvlogs) {
     write-host “Log enabled: ” $logitem.LogName
     $logitem.IsEnabled = $true
     $logitem.SaveChanges()
}
##Disable all logs
$appvlogs = Get-WinEvent -ListLog *AppV* -force | Where-Object {$_.IsEnabled -eq $true}
foreach ($logitem in $appvlogs) {
if (($logitem.LogName -ne "Microsoft-AppV-Client/Admin") -or ($logitem.LogName -ne "Microsoft-AppV-Client/Operational") -or ($logitem.LogName -ne "Microsoft-AppV-Client/Virtual Applications"))
{
     write-host “Log Disabled: ” $logitem.LogName
     $logitem.IsEnabled = $false
     $logitem.SaveChanges()
}}

No error handling is available, this is just a quick start to avoid loads of clicking.

(2013-05-05 – Added the Where-object to avoid getting errors…)