Finding in the Wild | Citrix Workspace App + IGEL – BadWindow in Multi-Monitor Setups

At a customer, I encountered an interesting issue with Citrix Workspace App on IGEL OS. The symptoms: In a multi-monitor configuration, individual Citrix windows occasionally misbehaved. The session itself generally worked, but the logs showed X11 errors such

At a customer, I encountered an interesting issue with Citrix Workspace App on IGEL OS.

The symptoms:

In a multi-monitor configuration, individual Citrix windows occasionally misbehaved. The session itself generally worked, but the logs showed X11 errors such as:

BadWindow
BadDrawable
BadGC

After some investigation, I narrowed the issue down to the interaction between IGEL OS, Citrix Workspace App and X11 window handling.

One interesting parameter provided by IGEL for Citrix Workspace App is:

app > cwa > wfclient > thinwire30 > ignorexerrors

Specific X11 errors can be ignored there using values such as

20.0/3, 55.0/9, 60.0/13

.

This mitigated the behavior in my case.

But be careful: this is not a true fix for the underlying cause.

IgnoreXErrors causes the relevant X11 errors to be ignored. These errors also stop appearing in the logs.

That must be considered during troubleshooting. A clean log afterwards does not automatically mean the underlying cause has disappeared.

My learning from this case:

If Citrix generally works on an IGEL endpoint but unusual window issues occur, particularly with multiple monitors, examine the CWA/X11 logs.

BadWindow, BadDrawable or BadGC can be useful clues.

And before dismantling the VDA, HDX Graphics or the entire Citrix infrastructure:

Check the endpoint first. 😉