HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Juniper Networks\Device Id
Summary:
This article describes the issue of Junos Pulse being frequently
disconnected for multiple Junos Pulse Desktop users.
This issue can occur, if multiple users have the same guid string
value for the local machine ID in the Connection Store configuration
data file; which is created, when installing Junos Pulse for the first
time.
The issue is intermittent and can occur at any time during the
session. At other times, the session is not affected and the Junos
Pulse user stays connected, until they sign out.
Problem or Goal:
Multiple users report frequent disconnects with the Junos Pulse
desktop client that occur randomly. The following error message is
generated on the desktop, when Junos Pulse is disconnected:
Cause:
When deploying Junos Pulse desktop to end-users, if the Junos Pulse
client is pre-installed on Windows OS and an image is created from
this, which is shared across multiple endpoints, then the local
machine ID that gets stored in the Junos Pulse Connection Store
configuration data file will be the same for every machine that the
image is used on.
The Junos Pulse Secure Access Gateway Series device identifies user
sessions that connect with the Junos Pulse clients by the local
machine identifier, which is sent to the server, when a connection is
established via Junos Pulse. The Junos Pulse Secure Access Gateway
Series device will terminate a Junos Pulse session, if another Junos
Pulse session is started with the same guid value, for security
reasons.
To determine if Junos Pulse users in your environment are affected by
this issue, collect the Junos Pulse logs and diagnostics logs from the
Junos Pulse client, from each individual client PC. Open the logs and
Diagnostics folder from the user's PC and browse to the
ConnectionStore folder, which will contain the connstore.dat file.
Open this file with a text editor and locate the following parameter:
machine "local" {
guid: "d96b50d4275ef266d402348641e6b57b10b48bd3"
pulse-language: "en-US" }
If the guid string is identical across multiple client PC's, then this
confirms the issue.
Solution:
When deploying Junos Pulse, which is pre-installed for a Windows OS
image being shared across multiple endpoints, the guid value for the
local machine should be removed from the Junos Pulse configuration
file, after installing Junos Pulse; so that the Junos Pulse
configuration data files in the root image do not contain a guid value
that would be replicated on all machines. A new and unique guid value
will be generated for each user, when Junos Pulse is launched and run
for the first time.
Perform the following procedure to reset the guid for users, who have
already installed Junos Pulse and have duplicate guid values in the
Junos Pulse configuration file or the master image (which is used to
pre-image multiple PC's with an image that Junos Pulse has already
been pre-installed on):
1.When Junos Pulse is installed browse to C:\Program Files(x86)\Common Files\Juniper Networks\Connection Store and open the connstore.dat
file in a text editor.
2.Locate the following parameter: machine "local" {
guid: "41cbc0d2a1a100855755b4355d6d2579836694cd"
pulse-language: "en-US" }
3.Remove the guid value from the parameter by deleting the entire second line. This will change the parameter setting to:
machine "local" {
pulse-language: "en-US" }
4.Save the modified connstore.dat file to the original directory.
Note: It may be necessary to edit the 'connstore.dat' file in a Text
Editor, which is 'Run As Administrator', if these changes are locally
made from the affected PC; due to the folder and file permissions that
are set on the directory.
5.Go to Task Manager > Services tab, locate and stop the JuniperAccessService service, and/or reboot the PC to restart the
service. When the service is restarted and Junos Pulse has been
launched again, a new and unique guid will be generated and stored in
the user's connstore.dat file.
6.On Mac OS X the following script can be used:
!/bin/bash
stop pulse access service
remove local guid from connstore.dat
restart service plist='/Library/LaunchDaemons/net.juniper.AccessService.plist'
connstore='/Library/Application Support/Juniper Networks/Junos
Pulse/connstore.dat' guid=xxx....xxx sudo launchctl unload
${PLIST.EN_US} sudo sed -i .bak "/${GUID.EN_US}/d"
"${CONNSTORE.EN_US}" sudo launchctl load ${PLIST.EN_US}
Note: The 'connstore.dat' file also contains the connections that are
displayed in the Junos Pulse UI, when it is launched. So, it is
recommended that the above procedure be performed to modify only the
portion of the 'connstore.dat' file, which was specified above, to
resolve this issue; as opposed to deleting the 'connstore.dat' file
from the user's PC. If the connstore.dat file is deleted from the PC,
the user will need to manually recreate any and all connections that
they regularly access.
