Setting a WebSphere Application Server 6.1 node to be run as a Windows service

WASService.exe -add nodeagent -serverName nodeagent -profilePath p:\IBM\WebSphere\wp_profile -startType automatic

Two new virtual/online courses for IBM Lotus Web Content Management

Course description: Developing Web Sites with IBM Lotus Web Content Management V6.1.5 Workshop 1

IBM Lotus Web Content Management (WCM) V6.1.5 is a WebSphere application that is installed into WebSphere Portal. WCM is a collection of Portlets used to create, and then deliver, a content rich web site. This course developed by Perficient Inc. covers topics needed to build a web site infrastructure and deliver content to WebSphere Portal using Web Content Management, including content libraries, workflows, workflow actions, workflow stages, site architecture, presentation and authoring templates, page design, content management, content security, user access, and content authoring. Hands-on labs will demonstrate the features of Web Content Management.

http://www-304.ibm.com/jct03001c/services/learning/ites.wss/us/en?pageType=course_description&courseCode=WPC43

Course description: Developing Web Sites with IBM Lotus Web Content Management V6.1.5 Workshop 2

IBM Lotus Web Content Management (WCM) V6.1.5 is a WebSphere application that is installed into WebSphere Portal. WCM is a collection of Portlets used to create, and then deliver, a content rich web site. This course developed by Perficient Inc. covers topics needed to build a web site infrastructure and deliver content to WebSphere Portal using Web Content Management, including personalization, the WCM API, process flow components, interacting with the framework, custom development and integration with WebSphere Portal. Hands-on labs will demonstrate the features of Web Content Management.

http://www-304.ibm.com/jct03001c/services/learning/ites.wss/us/en?pageType=course_description&courseCode=WPC44

LotusScript and Java problems - hotfix recall

One of our customers, James, drew my attention to this Technote: -

Hotfix Recall: SPR CSCT836HFL - LotusScript and Java functions can return "The collection has become invalid" when accessing frequently updated views plus clarification on who needs this fix

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21424178

and to Erik Brooks' blog posting: -

8.5.1 FAIL. Your code may just break.

https://www.bleedyellow.com/blogs/erik/entry/8_5_1_fail_your_code_may_just_break19?page=1&lang=en_us

Hope it helps someone out there ...

A reminder to myself - SEL

As an aide-memoire to myself, as most of my blog postings are, I hit this exception today: -

"JVMJ9VM011W Unable to load j9jit23"
"JVMJ9VM011W Unable to load jclscar_23: cannot restore segment prot after reloc: Permission denied"

etc.

when running Java-based WebSphere commands such as versionInfo.sh and WPVersionInfo.sh, even though WebSphere Portal 6.1.5 had installed and started without problems ( this being on a 64-bit instance of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 ).

which led me to this semi-related Technote: -

Impact 5.1 is not starting on any Security-enhanced Linux (SELinux) system

which helped resolve the problem - in my case, I chose to "tell" my current user's shell to ignore SELinux, via the command: -

setenforce 0

but I could have as easily disabled it by setting "SELINUX=disabled" in the /etc/selinux/config and then rebooting.

Sharon Bellamy - Champion Coffee Drinker and, perhaps even better, WebSphere Guru(ette)

Two great postings in less than a day: -

Portal failing to start for no obvious reason

Lotus Connections and Oracle on Solaris

and there's more coming, so head over to http://dilftechnical.blogspot.com/

Best Practice : WebSphere Portal & WCM: Some good look and feel websphere portal examples

This comes under the heading of serendipitous searching - I found this whilst I was looking for something completely different: -

Examples of good looking public sites using WebSphere Portal

Lotus Forms Server WebForm Server 3.5.1 and WebSphere Portal 6.1.5 together

I hit an interesting problem last week where I was finding that the Lotus Forms sample portlets were failing to render, with the error: -

Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site.

http://portalcluster.demoibm.com/wps/myportal....................

Operation aborted

I was accessing the portal using Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0, which was running on the Windows Server 2003 server on which Portal/Forms etc. was running.

It was getting late in the day, so I didn't use my nous and try accessing the portal using another browser or, even better, another browser on another device.

However, one of my more clever colleagues did suggest that I run the command netstat -aon on the Windows box whilst the error message was displayed. This showed an active connection, in SYN_SENT status, to 64.4.52.169:80, which resolved to the MSDN site -> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/ie/default.aspx

This is the MSDN ActiveX library and, it transpired, the Lotus Forms portlet(s) were trying to download a particular ActiveX control which, due to the server being semi-locked down, could not be accessed.

When I accessed the portal via Firefox 3.6 on my own Mac desktop, I was able to access the portlets and the back-end Lotus Forms Translator server, without any problems. Given that I wasn't using Internet Explorer, I didn't have any requirement for ActiveX controls.

The moral of the story - the Lotus Forms portlets require ActiveX controls when accessed via IE and, more importantly, the netstat -aon command is absolutely invaluable :-)

WebSphere Portal 6.1.5 and Web Application Integrator

One of my IBM US colleagues, Richard Robbins, hit a problem with the Web Application Integrator portlet and WebSphere Portal 6.1.5 / 6.1.3.0.

He was following one of my earlier blog posts, Using Web Application Integrator to integrate Lotus Quickr Services for WebSphere Portal into WebSphere Portal, to integrate Quickr 8.1.1 into WebSphere Portal 6.1.5, but was finding that the WAI JavaScript was not being injected into the Quickr page header, even though he'd added the JS to the header.jsp on the Quickr server.

Thanks to a quick turnaround on a PMR with IBM Support, Richard was able to identify that he was missing a crucial fix for WP615, reported in this APAR PM09151, which states: -

Error description

Web App Integrator needs to be able to support theme policy and multiple levels on integration.

Problem summary

Changes to the WAI theme to keep backward compatability for the new and previous WAI portlet.

Problem conclusion

This fix has been packaged with PM09187 and is found on FixCentral here:

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg1PM05947

There are also similar fixes for 6.1.0.1 and 6.1.0.2.

With the fix applied, and the page configured to use the default Portal 6.1 theme ( rather than the new enhanced Page Builder theme ), all worked according to plan.

Will test at some point but hopefully this'll help others out in the meantime ...

Thanks, Richard, much appreciated ...

Support Content Highlights for IBM WebSphere Portal/ Web Content Management (March 2010)

This document contains links to new information and current key technical support documents for IBM WebSphere Portal and IBM Lotus Web Content Management (WCM) that are frequently requested or identified by IBM as valuable. This is key information to help you derive the most value from software licenses, find answers to common questions, and work through current issues that might affect your environment.

http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/nflsblog.nsf/dx/SuCH-WPWCM-Mar10

Webinar: Web Content Management for Banking with IBM and Ephox

Saw this from Adrian Sutton via the power of Twitter, so thought I'd share it here as well: -

Webinar: Web Content Management for Banking with IBM and Ephox

Banks and financial institutions must create and manage information on corporate Web sites and trading communities using open, standards-based tools. Further, those sites need to integrate with existing Web infrastructures and backend databases.  Using real-world examples, we will discuss how Web sites in the Banking Sector are using Lotus Web Content Management with Ephox EditLive! to include data from back office systems, integrate with other Web applications, and custom tailor information to individuals through personalization.

During the webinar you will see how users leverage integrated workflow management for various initiatives to improve content development, quality control, and publishing.  This approach allows organizations to focus on providing an interactive user experience for each customer touch point. In turn, this is achieved by using a single content management solution that works across multiple initiatives to save development time and reduce resources.

We will show the newest features available in EditLive! and IBM Lotus Web Content Management including a sneak preview of the new WebRadar tool that helps web content administrators and project managers identify, monitor and fix problems with their web content processes via workflow reports, charts and mass updates.

http://blog.ephox.com/weblog/2010/02/webinar-web-content-management-for-banking-with-ibm-and-ephox.html

WebSphere Portal 6.1.0.2 and Lotus Domino 8.5

here is a document that I pulled together last year showing how to use the WebSphere Portal ConfigWizard to hook Domino LDAP in as a Federated Repository.

Will get around to writing up same for WP615 and also for the ConfigEngine scripts, which I'm getting to love more and more ...

Tonight, a blogger saved my life ( well, metaphorically speaking )

After a number of years out on loan, an old IBM Ideascan USB scanner came back into my life, and after a few weeks of dust-gathering, I decided to pull it into use for a particular project on which we were working.

Trouble is - I bought the scanner back in the 90s and it was a Windows-only device, and I don't use Windows any more ( as most readers will know ).

No problems, I thought, the Mac will just recognise it .... #FAIL, the Mac did not recognise the scanner, and a Google search didn't suggest a short-term solution.

Thankfully, I have a number of PCs running Ubuntu. I plugged in the scanner and .... no joy there either.

Thankfully, a further Google search led me to George Notaras' blog G-Loaded Journal which, in a few simple steps, showed me how to add support for the scanner, using the Viceo drivers, which I was able to add to the stock SANE tool that Ubuntu uses for scanning etc.

The actual blog thread is here: -

Viceo Backend for SANE with libusb support

One thing; using scanimage, I did see: -

scanimage: WARNING: read more data than announced by backend (2979990/2977443)

with a similar message appearing when I used xsane.

Nice one, George, that saved another bit of kit from going in the skip ...

Configuring IBM Tivoli Access Manager SSO for IBM Lotus Connections 2.5

My IBM colleagues, En Hui Chen and Chao Feng Yang, have produced a potentially very useful document showing how IBM Tivoli Access Manager for e-Business ( aka TAMeB ) can be used to secure Lotus Connections, via a "front-end" reverse web proxy server.

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/documentation/d-ls-lc25tamsso/

This is especially relevant to me as I'm about to embark on a project using TAMeB and LC ( and Portal and Quickr ) together, and I'm also presenting a piece on TAMeB etc. to the upcoming WebSphere User Group meeting at IBM Bedfont next week - Thursday 18 March, which is nice.

Creating and updating blogs in ... WebSphere Portal Express 6.1.5

Having spent some time playing around with the new blog and wiki templates in WP/WCM 6.1.5, one of my clients asked how a non-administrative user could create new blogs and add comments to existing blogs.

I realised that, in my limited exposure to the new components ( which are a very clever combination of portal page automation - creating new pages and adding components via a very nice GUI - and Lotus WCM content and resource libraries ), I'd done everything as the wpsadmin ID, which isn't particularly useful outside of my own Ubuntu-based demonstration environment.

Therefore, I dug into things a little bit more, and wrote up the following: -

---

In order to meet the requirement of a non-admin user creating/editing blogs, you'd need to add the required additional users/groups to the Editor role of the WCM library that forms the basis of the blog itself.

As an example, I created a new page called My Blogs, and then used the Blog Template library to create a blogging site called Blog-o-matic ( I did this via the Edit Page -> Customise -> Add Blog Library dialogue, as the portal administrator - wpsadmin ).

This allowed me to create blogs within the library, and add posts and comments. Other users could see the page/blog library/blogs/comments, but weren't able to create their own blogs etc.

Therefore, as wpsadmin, I navigated to the Administration page, and selected Portal Content -> Web Content Libraries and then clicked the Set Permissions button. From the Resource Permissions page, I then hit the Edit Role button for the Editor role and, in my case, added the "group" All Authenticated Portal Users to that role.

This means that any portal user can now log in, access the My Blogs page, create a new blog, view and comment upon other people's blogs etc.

Depending upon your requirements, you may want to restrict the usage of certain blogs to certain user groups ( in LDAP ) rather than using All Authenticated Portal Users.

---

And it looks sweet  ..

And here's a screenshot, by popular demand :-

 

Lotus Mobile Connect on Linux and DNS

Whilst helping out a friend, Mike, with a Lotus Mobile Connect on Ubuntu issue, I realised that I'd never actually written the solution up.

Mike was connected, via LMC to a VPN within the company network, whilst being connected to the intranet via a wired connection. All was well, apart from the fact that he was then unable to log in to the Sametime server that's on the intranet.

When we checked, it appeared that the LMC connection was updating the DNS name resolution ( on Linux, this is driven by the /etc/resolv.conf file ).

The solution ?

a) Disconnect from LMC
b) Open a command prompt
c) Navigate to the directory - /home/<USERNAME>/.wclient
d) Edit the file - connX.conf - where X is the number of the LMC connection needing change e.g. 0 for the first connection, 1 for the second connection etc.
e) Change GatewaySuppliesDNS=1 to GatewaySuppliesDNS=0
f) Save the file and reconnect via LMC

Having done this, Mike was able to connect to the VPN'd hosts via LMC whilst also connecting to Sametime, Notes etc. via the normal intranet.

Seemples !!