A Portal to a Portal

Could it be magic ? Making my narrowband more broad ….

2012-02-10T18:06:00.000Z

So I've been trying to get to the bottom of why my home broadband bandwidth was so poor, both BEFORE and AFTER I moved to BT Broadband, with their Home Hub, BTFON and OpenZone service.

This meant that even basic web activity took time, including podcast downloads ( I need my geeky fix on a regular basis, almost as regular as my caffeine fix ) and streaming TV, including BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, 4OD, Demand 5 etc.

The Home Hub has a great geeky user interface, and I was able to see, at a glance, how poor the bandwidth WAS: -

Whilst lurking around the BT website, I found mention of this BT Broadband Accelerator - working on the principle that, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is, I kept on browsing, and got lost in the wonderful world of line tests and speed tests.

However, I did go back to the Accelerator ( formerly known as the iPlate - perhaps before our friends in Cupertino copyrighted the letter 'i' !! ).

It's a simple piece of hardware, that clips into the standard BT master telephone socket, and seems to "smooth" out the spikes, noise and crackles caused by extension wiring - of which we have plenty.

It looks something like this: -

Given that BT wanted to charge me the princely sum of £1.30 ( for delivery, as the unit was "free" to existing BT customers ), I thought it was worth a try - after all, for £1.30, I can barely get an espresso in my favourite coffee chain :-)

I ordered it on Wednesday, it arrived on Thursday, and installation took about 2 minutes - I merely had to open up the master socket ( Caveat Emptor ), and plug the Accelerator in to the existing socket.

Having done this, I plugged the Home Hub back into the faceplate, and waited for 2-3 minutes for it to re-establish the connection.

Almost immediately, the Home Hub started reporting a fairly significant rise in the Downstream connection: -

Almost immediately, my perception was that downstream performance had improved, with a few podcasts coming down nice and quickly, and no obvious stuttering on the BBC iPlayer.

I left it for a while ( BT recommend 48 hours to 14 days to be sure ), and then ran speed tests using ThinkBroadBand: -

and SpeedTest.net: -

So far, so good.

You pays your money, you takes your chance ( or, in my case, your change !! )

WebSphere and VMware Together - The Balloon Goes POP!!

2012-02-08T18:32:00.001Z

I'm working on a couple of projects where our client is running various WebSphere Application Server-based products, including IBM Connections, IBM WebSphere Portal and IBM Web Content Manager, on VMware ESX.

One specific item of interest is the wonderfully named "Memory Ballooning" …..

Memory Balloon Driver

The balloon driver, also known as the vmmemctl driver, collaborates with the server to reclaim pages that are considered least valuable by the guest operating system. It essentially acts like a native program in the operating system that requires more and more memory. The driver uses a proprietary ballooning technique that provides predictable performance that closely matches the behavior of a native system under similar memory constraints. This technique effectively increases or decreases memory pressure on the guest operating system, causing the guest to invoke its own native memory management algorithms. When memory is tight, the guest operating system decides which particular pages to reclaim and, if necessary, swaps them to its own virtual disk.

You need to be sure your guest operating systems have sufficient swap space. This swap space must be greater than or equal to the difference between the virtual machine's configured memory size and its reservation.

Source: The Role of Memory in VMware ESX Server 3 [PDF]

For us, this caused some performance problems, with symptoms such as hung JVMs, hung threads, apparent 100% CPU utilisation etc., both on the VMs running real end-user workload e.g. IBM Connections, which we have clustered across two nodes, each with oodles of memory and oodles of CPU core. We also saw the same symptoms on our Deployment Manager servers, which aren't exactly what I'd call heavyweight workloads.

We've now disabled this behaviour, and things appear to be a little better.

These two VMware-sourced documents were of considerable use: -

Using VMware ESX Server with IBM WebSphere Application Server

Enterprise Java Applications on VMware - Best Practices Guide

the latter of which says: -

It is recommended that you do not overcommit memory because the JVM memory is an active space where objects are constantly being created and garbage collected. Such an active memory space requires its memory to be available all the time. If you overcommit, memory ballooning or swapping may occur and impede performance.

An ESX/ESXi host employs two distinct techniques for dynamically expanding or contracting the amount of memory allocated to virtual machines. The first method is known as memory balloon driver (vmmemctl). This is loaded from the VMware Tools package into the guest operating system running in a virtual machine. The second method involves paging from a virtual machine to a server swap file without any involvement by the guest operating system.

In the page swapping method, when you power on a virtual machine, a corresponding swap file is created and placed in the same location as the virtual machine configuration file (VMX file). The virtual machine can power on only when the swap file is available. ESX/ESXi hosts use swapping to forcibly reclaim memory from a virtual machine when no balloon driver is available. The balloon driver might be unavailable either because VMware Tools is not installed or because the driver is disabled or not running. For optimal performance, ESX/ESXi uses the balloon approach whenever possible.

However, swapping is used when the driver is temporarily unable to reclaim memory quickly enough to satisfy current system demands. Because the memory is being swapped out to disk, there is a significant performance penalty when the swapping technique is used. Therefore, it is recommended that the balloon driver is always enabled, but monitor it to verify that it is not being invoked when that memory is overcommitted.

Both ballooning and swapping should be prevented for Java applications. To prevent ballooning and swapping, refer to BP5 – Set memory reservation for virtual machine needs.

Bottom line, ballooning and WebSphere aren't a good fit ….

IBM Content Template Catalog V3.0 (CTC) and WebSphere Portal 7.0.02

2012-02-08T12:22:00.001Z

This IBM Technote plopped into my In-Box earlier today, and I immediately shared it via Sametime with a number of my colleagues, most of whom are working with the IBM Content Template Catalog (CTC) right now.

IBM Content Template Catalog V3.0 (CTC) is broken after upgrade to WP/WCM V7.0.0.1 CF009 (or later) or 7.0.0.2 fix pack

Abstract

The IBM Content Template Catalog V3.0 (CTC3) can be installed on IBM Web Content Manager (WCM) V7.0.0.1 or 7.0.0.2. Installing the Combined Cumulative Fix 009 or 010, or upgrading to fix pack level 7.0.0.2 renders CTC3 unusable.

Content

A fix will be made available in the near future and this page will be updated when more information is available.

The IBM Content Template Catalog V3.0 (CTC3) is documented here: -

http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/portalwiki.nsf/dx/IBM_Content_Templates_Catalog_V3.0

One of the files necessary for its successful operation is overwritten when installing either Combined CF009, CF010, or fix pack 7.0.0.2. The .jar file, "wp.wcm.templating.jar", is installed into the WCM shared apps directory during a CTC3 install.

To correct the issue, copy the original .jar file from CTC3 back into the shared apps directory (replacing the file present) and restart the server.

The .jar file is located in "/wp.ctc/components/wp.ctc/enablment/" in the CTC PAA. The non-CTC3 file will be 31KB after installing the CF or fix pack but the CTC3 version is 80KB.

After the restart, the templating functions should be working again.

IBM Content Template Catalog V3.0 doc
Download CTC3
CTC3 Forum Thread

Integrating IBM Connections 3.0.1 with WebSphere Portal 7.0 using Page Builder 2 Themes

2012-02-08T09:12:00.000Z

This popped up on Twitter earlier today - it's a new article up on the Connections Wiki, written by Roberto Boccadoro and Andrea Fontana.

This article describes how to integrate IBM Connections 3.0.1 with WebSphere Portal 7 when using Page Builder 2 themes (the default for Portal 7).

Integrating IBM Connections 3.0.1 and WebSphere Portal 7 is not possible using WebSphere Application Integrator (WAI) because WAI does not support Page Builder 2 themes. This article shows how to obtain a result similar to the one that was possible with WebSphere Portal 6 using WAI, namely, hiding the navigation header of IBM Connections and allowing navigation only through Portal.

• 1 Overview

• 2 Creating a Stylesheet to Customize the UI

• 3 Creating a Stylesheet to Hide the IBM Connections Navigation Header

• 4 Modifying JavaServer Pages (.jsp) Files

• 4.1 Activities

• 4.2 Blogs

• 4.3 Communities

• 4.4 Bookmarks

• 4.5 Files

• 4.6 Profiles

• 4.7 Wikis

• 4.8 Forums

• 4.9 Home Page

• 5 Building the Integration Pages in the Portal

• 6 Verifying Results

• 7 Creating URLs Instead of Pages

• 8 About the Authors

IBM Tivoli Directory Integrator - java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Bad arguments

2012-02-04T20:59:00.001Z

This one baffled me for a good 10-15 minutes on Friday.

When I ran any TDI script ( this is TDI 7.0.0.5 as used with Connections 3.0.1 ), including populate_from_dn_file.sh

<snip>

CTGDKD024I Remote API successfully started on port:1099, bound to:'SessionFactory'. SSL and Client Authentication are enabled.

Platform: 'Generic'
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Bad arguments
at javax.crypto.Cipher.doFinal(Unknown Source)
at com.ibm.di.security.RSACrypto.decrypt(RSACrypto.java:145)
at com.ibm.di.util.PropertiesFile$Property.decryptPropertyValue(PropertiesFile.java:411)
at com.ibm.di.util.PropertiesFile$Property.getValue(PropertiesFile.java:221)
at com.ibm.di.util.PropertiesFile.getProperty(PropertiesFile.java:795)
at com.ibm.di.connector.PropertiesConnector.findEntry(PropertiesConnector.java:635)
at com.ibm.di.connector.PropertiesConnector.getNextEntry(PropertiesConnector.java:595)
at com.ibm.di.config.interfaces.TDIPropertyStore.advanceIterator(TDIPropertyStore.java:693)
at com.ibm.di.config.interfaces.TDIPropertyStore.hasNext(TDIPropertyStore.java:648)
at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor3.invoke(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:618)
at com.ibm.jscript.types.JavaAccessObject.call(JavaAccessObject.java:298)
at com.ibm.jscript.types.FBSObject.call(FBSObject.java:153)
at com.ibm.jscript.ASTTree.ASTCall.interpret(ASTCall.java:151)
at com.ibm.jscript.ASTTree.ASTWhile.interpret(ASTWhile.java:61)
at com.ibm.jscript.std.FunctionObject._executeFunction(FunctionObject.java:230)
at com.ibm.jscript.std.FunctionObject.executeFunction(FunctionObject.java:162)
at com.ibm.jscript.std.FunctionObject.call(FunctionObject.java:148)
at com.ibm.jscript.types.FBSObject.call(FBSObject.java:153)
at com.ibm.jscript.ASTTree.ASTCall.interpret(ASTCall.java:151)
at com.ibm.jscript.ASTTree.ASTObjectLiteral.interpret(ASTObjectLiteral.java:72)
at com.ibm.jscript.ASTTree.ASTAssign.interpret(ASTAssign.java:90)
at com.ibm.jscript.ASTTree.ASTProgram.interpretEx(ASTProgram.java:102)
at com.ibm.jscript.JSExpression.interpretExpression(JSExpression.java:399)
at com.ibm.jscript.JSExpression.evaluateValue(JSExpression.java:249)
at com.ibm.jscript.JSExpression.evaluateValue(JSExpression.java:236)
at com.ibm.jscript.JSExpression.evaluateValue(JSExpression.java:239)
at com.ibm.jscript.JSInterpreter.interpret(JSInterpreter.java:53)
at com.ibm.di.script.ScriptEngine.interpret(ScriptEngine.java:867)
at com.ibm.di.script.ScriptEngine.exec(ScriptEngine.java:495)
at com.ibm.di.script.ScriptEngine.loadScript(ScriptEngine.java:622)
at com.ibm.di.script.ScriptEngine.includeAllScripts(ScriptEngine.java:726)
at com.ibm.di.script.ScriptEngine.includeAllScripts(ScriptEngine.java:752)
at com.ibm.di.server.AssemblyLine.autoIncludeScripts(AssemblyLine.java:2626)
at com.ibm.di.server.AssemblyLine.initScriptEngine(AssemblyLine.java:2205)
at com.ibm.di.server.AssemblyLine.msStart(AssemblyLine.java:3243)
at com.ibm.di.server.AssemblyLine.executeMainStep(AssemblyLine.java:3145)
at com.ibm.di.server.AssemblyLine.executeMainLoop(AssemblyLine.java:2818)
at com.ibm.di.server.AssemblyLine.executeMainLoop(AssemblyLine.java:2801)
at com.ibm.di.server.AssemblyLine.executeAL(AssemblyLine.java:2770)
at com.ibm.di.server.AssemblyLine.run(AssemblyLine.java:1275)

2012-02-03 14:42:40,652 INFO [convert_uids_for_customer] - CTGDIR103W The properties file '/opt/IBM/TDI/V7.0/tdisol_FM/TDI/301.properties' for was not found, and will be created if anything is written to it.
2012-02-03 14:42:40,789 ERROR [AssemblyLine.AssemblyLines/dump_profiles.1] - [read_whole_db] CTGDIS810E handleException - cannot handle exception , initialize java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Bad arguments
at javax.crypto.Cipher.doFinal(Unknown Source)
at com.ibm.di.security.RSACrypto.decrypt(RSACrypto.java:145)
at com.ibm.di.util.PropertiesFile$Property.decryptPropertyValue(PropertiesFile.java:411)
at com.ibm.di.util.PropertiesFile$Property.getValue(PropertiesFile.java:221)
at com.ibm.di.util.PropertiesFile.getProperty(PropertiesFile.java:795)
at com.ibm.di.connector.PropertiesConnector.findEntry(PropertiesConnector.java:635)
at com.ibm.di.config.interfaces.TDIPropertyStore.getPropertyEntry(TDIPropertyStore.java:426)
at com.ibm.di.config.interfaces.TDIPropertyStore.getProperty(TDIPropertyStore.java:384)
at com.ibm.di.config.interfaces.TDIProperties.getProperty(TDIProperties.java:351)
at com.ibm.lconn.profiles.api.tdi.connectors.Util.AbstractProfilesConnector.initializeInternal(AbstractProfilesConnector.java:72)
at com.ibm.lconn.profiles.api.tdi.connectors.Util.AbstractProfilesConnector.initialize(AbstractProfilesConnector.java:53)

at com.ibm.di.server.AssemblyLineComponent.doInitialize(AssemblyLineComponent.java:1129)
at com.ibm.di.server.AssemblyLineComponent.initialize(AssemblyLineComponent.java:1110)
at com.ibm.di.server.AssemblyLine.initConnectors(AssemblyLine.java:1865)
at com.ibm.di.server.AssemblyLine.msInitConn(AssemblyLine.java:3335)
at com.ibm.di.server.AssemblyLine.executeMainStep(AssemblyLine.java:3157)
at com.ibm.di.server.AssemblyLine.executeMainLoop(AssemblyLine.java:2818)
at com.ibm.di.server.AssemblyLine.executeMainLoop(AssemblyLine.java:2801)
at com.ibm.di.server.AssemblyLine.executeAL(AssemblyLine.java:2770)
at com.ibm.di.server.AssemblyLine.run(AssemblyLine.java:1275)
2012-02-03 14:42:40,790 ERROR [AssemblyLine.AssemblyLines/dump_profiles.1] - CTGDIS266E Error in InitConnectors. Exception occurred: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Bad arguments
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Bad arguments
at javax.crypto.Cipher.doFinal(Unknown Source)
at com.ibm.di.security.RSACrypto.decrypt(RSACrypto.java:145)
at com.ibm.di.util.PropertiesFile$Property.decryptPropertyValue(PropertiesFile.java:411)
at com.ibm.di.util.PropertiesFile$Property.getValue(PropertiesFile.java:221)
</snip>

I was getting really really cross as I couldn't see what had led to this problem. However, having just updated the SSL certificates between TDI and LDAP ( Active Directory ), I wasted a bit of time checking that the certificates were correct.

Then I remembered that I'd also updated the password in profiles_tdi.properties for the target database ( DB2 UDB ) ….

Even with that clue, it still took me two or three attempts to realise that, when I'd pasted the new password into profiles_tdi.properties, I'd inadvertently included a …. CR/LF character.

I was fooled because the encoded password wraps around onto a second line so I saw: -

{protect}-dbrepos_password={encr}f9dfa8r348rufdu9r8849089df8f89dfhdjhrkhwerjh32984r9fud9f9dsu90r[23ij4repdfua9sudf90[dsr0u2390ruefjaf

9832rufdifp8dsgy7sysuhuhrh3ur3y48dfsf8sdafkjhlkhrew

and read it as: -

{protect}-dbrepos_password={encr}f9dfa8r348rufdu9r8849089df8f89dfhdjhrkhwerjh32984r9fud9f9dsu90r[23ij4repdfua9sudf90[dsr0u2390ruefjaf9832rufdifp8dsgy7sysuhuhrh3ur3y48dfsf8sdafkjhlkhrew

whereas it was actually stored in the file as: -

{protect}-dbrepos_password={encr}f9dfa8r348rufdu9r8849089df8f89dfhdjhrkhwerjh32984r9fud9f9dsu90r[23ij4repdfua9sudf90[dsr0u2390ruefjaf [CR/LF]

9832rufdifp8dsgy7sysuhuhrh3ur3y48dfsf8sdafkjhlkhrew

meaning that TDI didn't know what to with this line: -

9832rufdifp8dsgy7sysuhuhrh3ur3y48dfsf8sdafkjhlkhrew

in its properties file, hence the nasty ( but actually quite revealing ) java.lang.IllegalArgumentException.

Bottom line, check your property files, and avoid copy/paste.

Newbie error :-)

Lialis - WebDAV for IBM Connections & Lotus Quickr

2012-02-02T21:23:00.001Z

Luis Benitez blogged about this solution earlier today

• Downloading synchronizing content from/to IBM Connections Files

• Deliver shared drives connected to IBM Connections to the users PC (OS independent)

• Allow easy archiving of content stored in IBM Connections by coping the files from the file share

• Readers apps supported: Goodreader, Readdledocs, Bitknex, WebDrive, readers for Android (*)

• Download files from IBM Connections, upload files to IBM Connections via WebDAV

• Delete files in IBM Connections via WebDAV

• Create communities or profiles inside the IBM Connections via Webdav

• Parallel user sessions supported

Now I've used WebDAV in the past with WebSphere Portal and IBM Web Content Manager, but haven't seen it used in this way before.

As a Mac user, I like Luis' next point ….

To me the most exciting feature is the ability to use IBM Connections as a mounted drive directly on your computer. For example, if have a Mac like me you could use this solution to mount all of your IBM Connections Files directly in Finder. Set up your Finder as described here in 3 steps and you are done! Very cool, right?

Guess what I'm going to do next ?

Webinar - Kapow Software: Automating Web Content Migrations to IBM WCM

2012-02-02T21:03:00.000Z

One of my IBM colleagues kindly shared this with me earlier today, and I thought it might be of use to other WCM customers and prospects: -

Date - Thursday, February 9, 2012

Time - 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM EST

Kapow's software is typically reducing the time and cost of web content migrations time by 80-90%, all while improving accuracy and eliminating business disruptions. More specifically Kapow offers a stand-alone content migration platform that can extract content and metadata (from unstructured/flat/static html content and many other sources), transform/enrich content and metadata, map source content to target templates and load directly into IBM WCM …….all with no coding and no freeze on content.

Want to know more ? Please visit here and register.

IBM WebSphere Application Server - Working with Secure Sockets Layer and LDAP

2012-02-01T20:37:00.001Z

We needed to apply this iFix to WebSphere Application Server 7.0.0.17 ( under IBM Connections 3.0.1 ) in order to allow WAS to pull/use the root CA SSL certificates from the client's Active Directory servers via their Big IP F5 Load Balancer.

PM37795; 7.0.0.17: retrievesignersfromport should retrieve the root of the cert

Abstract

The end cert is typically shorter lived then the root certificate so the tasks are changed to get the root certificate.

Error Description

The retrieveSignerFromPort task should return the root signer certificate from the port's certificate chain when available.

Users Affected

All users of IBM WebSphere Application Server that use the console or task options to retrieve signers from port of remote servers.

Prior to this, we were seeing different behaviour between Connections and WebSphere Portal, which runs on WAS 7.0.0.19 - Portal was automatically pulling back the root CA certificates, whereas Connections was pulling the "end" certificates, and occasionally throwing up chaining errors :-(

I opened a PMR with IBM Support, and discovered that this iFix was sneaked into WAS 7.0.0.19 and above, which explained why Portal was working differently to Connections.

Seemples :-)

IBM Connections 3.0.1 - Email Notifications

2012-02-01T13:05:00.000Z

Following on from a question via the Twitter-sphere about whether it was possible to change the date/time that Connections sends out it's email notifications, I checked a couple of existing sources, including the Wiki and the excellent whitepaper - Customizing IBM Lotus Connections 3.0 email digests and notifications - and then asked one of the IC Development team, based in Dublin, Eire, from whence this response comes: -

There is no set 'time' for the digests, they are processed/delivered throughout the day.

The users in the system are split into 20 tranches.
Each hour, a task runs to pick up the next applicable tranche (i.e. one whose daily digest was not processed in last 24 hours, or whose weekly digest has not run in 168 hours).

You could change the time of the hour that the task runs, but this will not give the behaviour you are looking for.

The power of social, from Twitter to Sametime to email to blog post …….

Administering IBM WebSphere Portal 7.0: A comprehensive workshop

2012-02-01T09:26:00.001Z

This plopped into my inbox this morning - kudos to Thomas Hurek and Falk Posch for creating this useful document: -

The goal of this white paper is to explain the various administration and configuration tools offered by IBM WebSphere Portal 7.0. Learn about which tool to use for which task and about the new capabilities of WebSphere Portal 7.0, and understand differences from previous versions of WebSphere Portal. We take you through exercises for each tool so you can learn hands-on how to use them.

ToC

• Introduction

• What is WebSphere Portal?

• WebSphere Portal installation

• WebSphere Portal file system structure

• Command line tools

• Administration user interface: Admin portlets

• WebSphere Application Server Admin user interface

• Conclusion

• Resources

• About the authors

Getting Started with IBM Connections

2012-01-30T19:11:00.000Z

Luis Benitez mentioned this on the IBM Connections Community Chat on Skype earlier

Get people up and running with IBM Connections in your environment. Users can select features or see how others have used IBM Connections to accomplish their work, and then take the same steps they took to be successful.

Fun, interactive learning featuring Learn More, Watch Video, or Do It.

Users take steps to join communities, set up their profile, learn concepts, all the while using your installed IBM Connections.

Uses the same Getting Started application available for Lotus Greenhouse users: http://infolib.lotus.com/resources/connections3/index.html

Download includes a README.TXT with instructions for adding your IBM Connections server name to the files. Download size: 1.5 MB.

Want to get a hold of this - check this link - IBM Getting Started sample for IBM Connections - out on the Catalog.

Introducing the single sign-on diagnostic tool for IBM Lotus Connections

2012-01-30T19:08:00.001Z

Saw this online today, and thought it was definitely worth sharing: -

Configuring SSO for Lotus Connections is time consuming, and it's easy to make mistakes because there are many manual configuration steps.

The main idea of the SSO validation utility is that it sends many requests to Connections with SSO configured, and then checks the returned status code, response headers, and cookies to determine whether the requested resource is protected by form-based authentication, basic authentication, or is unprotected.

Once you install the Connections product and complete the configuration steps per the Product Documentation, you can run the SSO validation utility to verify your configurations quickly.

The SSO validation utility is designed to provide verification for:

• Standalone Lotus Connections, in which there are only WAS and the IHS server involved in the deployment topology

• Lotus Connections integrated with TAM

• Lotus Connections integrated with SiteMinder

• LotusConnections-config.xml file for all three cases above

Want to know more ? Then go to the Wiki here, and have a look.

Webcast replay: WebSphere Application Server V7 - SPNEGO Basics

2012-01-30T14:06:00.001Z

Thanks to Adam Lacey for sharing this: -

This WebSphere Support Technical Exchange is designed to discuss SPNEGO (Simple and Protected GSS-API Negotiation Mechanism) web authentication for WebSphere Application Server V7. It provides a high level overview and basic configuration of how SPNEGO is used for single sign-on in a WebSphere Environment.

Webcast replay: WebSphere Application Server V7 - SPNEGO Basics

What versions of Lotus Notes support Citrix XenApp 6.5?

2012-01-29T18:48:00.001Z

Following on from my recent post about IBM Lotus Notes and Citrix XenApp, I note that Ed has just blogged an announcement that: -

IBM will support Citrix XenApp 6.5 with Notes 8.5.3 Fix Pack 1 Basic and Standard clients, per the standard recommended Citrix XenApp installation guidelines provided, for the usual length of product life cycle/End of Service and/or terms of customer Support & Service agreement. Support will not request that customers reproduce issues in previous versions of XenApp (4.5, 5.0 or 6.0) that are supported with 8.5.3.

The Technote for this is here: -

What versions of Lotus Notes support Citrix XenApp 6.5?

and was released on Thursday.

Lotus Notes 8.5.3 on Mac OSX - Not playing ball

2012-01-29T18:43:00.001Z

I'm an inveterate hacker, in the traditional sense of the word, and cannot resist fiddling with technology, often failing to obey the rule "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" :-)

At some point on Friday, I fell into that trap, whilst "playing" with Lotus Notes 8.5.3 on my Mac, running OSX 10.7.2 Lion.

Having "faffed" about with one particular configuration file: -

/Applications/Notes.app/Contents/MacOS/rcp/plugin_customization.ini

I got into a situation where Notes Standard ( as the "full fat" Eclipse-based client is called ) wouldn't start.

No matter how many times I tried to start the client, it would come up, get as far as the desktop e.g. showing my inbox, the sidebar etc. before dying.

No errors were being displayed, and this problem persisted past a reboot ( yes, even Macs need a reboot from time to time ).

I even went as far as to manually start Notes from a command line: -

$ /Applications/Notes.app/Contents/MacOS/Notes

but to no avail.

Whilst I could start Notes Basic ( the old pre-Hanover client that we know and love as nlnotes ): -

$ /Applications/Notes.app/Contents/MacOS/Notes -basic

Standard didn't want to play ball.

I even tried starting Notes in "debug" mode: -

$ /Applications/Notes.app/Contents/MacOS/Notes -debug

but, again, no dice - nothing obvious was being displayed.

Having plead for help on Twitter, @JimCasale quickly came to my aid, first suggesting that I check out the "workspace\logs" directory.

On the Mac, this is located here: -

/Users/david_hay/Library/Application Support/Lotus Notes Data/Expeditor/Applications/logs

I cleared down the content of the ./logs folder: -

$ cd /Users/david_hay/Library/Application Support/Lotus Notes Data/Expeditor/Applications/logs

$ rm -Rf *

and then re-tried to start Notes, but again the same symptom resulted, and there appeared to be nothing obvious in the logs.

Jim then suggested that I cleared down the "workspace" folder.

Again, on the Mac, this is located here: -

/Users/david_hay/Library/Application Support/Lotus Notes Data/Expeditor

so I took Jim's advice: -

$ cd /Users/david_hay/Library/Application Support/Lotus Notes Data/Expeditor

$ rm -Rf *

That appeared to do the trick - the next time I started Notes, it started and stayed running.

I did find that I had to go back through the process of setting up Notes, similar to that seen after a clean installation e.g. storing credentials for Sametime, Connections etc. but that's a minor inconvenience ( to be quite honest, prior to Jim's intervention, I was looking at a clean reinstallation anyway ).

PS I did note that my Sametime 8.5.2 client appears to have disappeared ( leaving me with 8.5.1 which doesn't give me Sametime Unified Telephony ), but that was also easily rectified.

Kudos (™ Darren Duke) to Jim, much obliged for his kind support.

PS I did find this section of the IBM Lotus Domino and Notes Information Centre to be of use: -

Notes installation directories for Mac OS X

On an Apple® Mac OS X® system, the default installation directories are as below:

• /Applications/Notes.app -- Notes product and binary files installation directory

• /Applications/Notes.app/Contents/MacOS/ -- Notes Java™ code installation directory

• ~/Library/Application Support/Lotus Notes Data/Expeditor -- Notes workspace directory

• /Applications/Notes.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/Data -- Shared data directory

• ~/Library/Application Support/Lotus Notes Data -- Data files directory for each user

IBM WebSphere Developer Technical Journal - Now in eBook Format

2012-01-27T17:25:00.000Z

I often visit the WebSphere Developer Technical Journal site, but rarely get around to reading the articles, before something pulls me away from my PC.

So imagine how pleased I am to see them available in PDF and Kindle versions ?

Get complete issues for your portable electronic reader!

The IBM WebSphere Developer Technical Journal is popular for its mix of essential articles, product-centric columns, and diverse editorials. But if it's difficult for you to find time to spend with all this information online, you can now take advantage of one of the new Tech Journal to go! formats below and bring an entire issue with you for offline reading!

You no longer need to rely on a network connection to read the articles in the Tech Journal, and you no longer need to download multiple individual articles to take an entire issue of the Tech Journal offline. Simply download one of these specially formatted files for viewing either as a PDF or on a Kindle device and you've got a whole issue available when you want it!

Additional issues will be added regularly.

Now the question is which format - PDF on the iPhone and iPad or Kindle ? How about both …. clickety clickety click :-)

Use cases for the IBM WebSphere Portal Controller SPI

2012-01-27T17:07:00.001Z

This came in from @ISSL_NA on Twitter earlier, thanks to my ISSL colleague, Damon Deaner, out there on the West Coast ( which I keep forgetting when I invite him to conference calls mid-way through the UK afternoon!! ).

This SPI isn't something I've yet had a chance to look at: -

This white paper describes the various use cases and sample code for the IBM WebSphere Portal versions 6.1.x and 7 Controller Service Provider Interface (SPI), including creating a page, adding containers to a page, the default layouts, and how to add portlets to a page, change the theme and metadata, change the skins, and create custom layouts.

That needs to change :-)

Here's the TOC

• Overview of the Controller

• Working with the models

• Overview of the sample file

• Conclusion

• Resources

• About the authors

Get it from IBM developerWorks here.

Packt Publishing - IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.3: Upgrader's Guide

2012-01-27T16:30:00.001Z

I heard about this from one of the authors, my ISSL colleague , Barry Rosen, on a recent @ThisWeekInLotus ( I think it was the first #TWIL of the year ! )

In addition, Ed blogged about it earlier today.

Overview

• Upgrade to the latest version of Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.3

• Understand the new features of Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.3 and put them to work in your business

• Covers details on the SOA characteristics of Lotus Notes, features and changes in Lotus Notes Client 8.5.3, and an overview of productivity tools: Lotus Symphony Documents, Lotus Symphony Presentations, and Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets amongst others.

• Packed with expert tips and useful screenshots

What you will learn

• Upgrade to, and understand, the latest version of Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.3

• Get to grips with features including security, mail, calendar, and contacts

• Get solutions to issues that you may encounter during the upgrade process

• Quickly examine coexistence issues involved in running Notes/Domino in a mixed environment and solve them efficiently

• Integrate Lotus Domino 8.5.3 with IBM servers and tools

• Understand the integration of the new social software for Lotus Notes

The authors

Tim Speed is an IBM Systems (IBM Senior Certified) Architect with IBM Software Services for Lotus (ISSL). In that capacity, Tim is responsible for designing, and implementing technical solutions our customers. He has been an IBM/Lotus employee for 16 years. He has been working with Notes for over 19 years focusing on messaging, security, and infrastructure. Tim has published a total of 10 books on various topics including Internet Security and Lotus Notes and Domino.

Barry Rosen is an IBM IT Certified Managing Consultant with IBM Software Services for Lotus. During the last six years, he has worked on several global messaging and migration projects as well as performed Domino upgrades, messaging assessments, and client deployments. Currently, Barry has been heavily involved in LotusLive Notes cloud migrations and hybrid deployments. Prior to IBM Software Services for Lotus, he was a Software Engineer in Lotus Support for over five years. While in support, Barry was on several teams specializing in mail routing, Lotus Notes Client, calendaring and scheduling, and server core. He is an SME on clustering, Lotus Notes for the Macintosh, and rooms and resources. Barry is also a published author with several articles and books written on Lotus products.

Scott O'Keefe is an IBM Advisory Software Engineer and the project lead for the Domino Configuration Tuner. He joined IBM via Iris Associates in 1999 and has been a part of the Domino Administration team since 2001. In addition to DCT, Scott works on Domino monitoring, system administration template development and LotusLive Notes.

Want to know more or, in the words of Ellen, "Buy the book" ?

Then check it out here

More on WebSphere Portal 6.1 and Internet Explorer 9

2012-01-27T14:03:00.000Z

Back last year, I blogged about a customer ( let's call him James ) who had shared a solution to overcome an issue where IE9 was failing to render portal pages which contained iFrames.

Well, that customer - again, we'll call him James - is back, with a similar solution to a related, but different problem.

In essence, when a portal page is displayed in full-screen in IE9, a vertical scroll-bar is shown on the right-hand side of the page, despite the page not needing to scroll e.g. the content fits into the horizontal dimensions of the screen.

What's worse is that this scroll bar serves no purpose - it's not even "scrollable"

Using a similar solution to before, James was able to remove the scrollbar by updating the portal theme as follows: -

Having done that, no more annoying vertical scrollbar :-)

Nice one, James, thanks for sharing.

PS For the record, Microsoft have a neat little document about document compatibility here.

Running IBM HTTP Server as non-root on UNIX

2012-01-26T13:18:00.001Z

This has come up a few times in conversation, so I thought I'd share it again here.

Question

Is it possible to run IBM HTTP Server as a non-root process on UNIX systems?

Answer

Applications running as users other than root are normally prevented from binding to (listening on) low-numbered ports on Unix and Linux systems. Low-numbered ports are those ports below 1024. The standard ports for most popular Internet protocols, including HTTP and HTTPS, are low-numbered ports.

It is possible to run IBM HTTP Server as a non-root process on a UNIX system, but when doing so, use only nonstandard ports above 1024. The following are some snippets from the httpd.conf file showing the directives necessary to do this. After making these changes, stop and restart the server for the changes to take effect.

This Technote - Running IBM HTTP Server as non-root on UNIX - covers in more detail.

Enjoy :-)

WebSphere Application Server for Domino Administrators

2012-01-26T10:17:00.001Z

I was talking with an IBM colleague about IBM Cognos Business Intelligence, with specific regard to the integration with IBM Connections Activities.

During our discussions, I was using the white board to draw up an overview of a typical WebSphere Application Server architecture, including the core and key concepts of cells / nodes / servers, profiles and the web server -> Plugin -> WAS relationship.

Now I remembered seeing a reference to this [PDF] most excellent ( and relatively short ) presentation from my ISSL colleague, Jason T Moore.

I'll be recommending this to my Cognos colleague, I recommend that you also take a look ….

PS You may remember Jason from the book - IBM Lotus Connections 2.5: Planning and Implementing Social Software for Your Enterprise - that he co-authored with Stephen Hardison, David Byrd, Gary Wood, Tim Speed, Michael Martin, Suzanne Livingston and Morten Kristiansen.

Avoiding the seven deadly sins of IBM Connections and how to plot the route to Social salvation!

2012-01-26T08:41:00.000Z

Saw this on LinkedIn this morning, and it resonated with a conversation in which I'd been involved yesterday.

It's from Mr Stuart McIntyre Esq and is definitely worth a read

The presentation is here on SlideShare.

Go check it out ….

Lotus Notes 8.5.3 on Apple Mac OSX - Where do your temp files go to, my lovely ?

2012-01-24T20:43:00.001Z

Now I've done this a few times before, and it's cost me time ( and time costs money, darn it ).

So, here's the situation - one of my colleagues sends me an email, with an attached document ( a Microsoft Word .DOC file, if it matters ! ). Now I know what you're going to say …. why oh why oh why did he send me an attachment ? :-p

Anyway, I double-click on the attachment, and automatically open it up in Lotus Symphony 8.01 which is nice.

I edit the document, and then save it ( to a new filename, of course ), without really focusing on the WHERE e.g. into which folder I'm saving it.

So now I need to send my revised document back to my colleague - via LotusLive, as I just simply refuse to send email attachments :-)

Ah, right, now where did I put the file ?

When you open a file from within a Notes message, it stores it in a temporary location of, apparently, it's own making.

Ordinarily, on the Mac, I'd simply use Spotlight ( [CMD] [Space] ) to find the file by name. Sadly, at least on my system, Spotlight doesn't index absolutely everywhere :-(

After some trial-and-error ( including creating a draft email to myself, which included a similar document attachment, and then opening it in Symphony ), I worked out that the temporary folder is ….. here: -

/private/var/folders/g_/zl9kplwd7hg2fcwh5qrpdwbh0000gn/T/TemporaryItems/notes

Now I *know* that the folder location will change from time to time e.g. perhaps with a newly opened instance of Notes, on a different machine etc. but … it'd do.

So, if I remember to read this blog post IN THE FUTURE, I'll be able to find my attachments :-)

Alternatively, perhaps I can tell Spotlight to index /private or tell Notes to store temporary files in, say, /tmp :-)

IBM HTTP Server - SSL Certification Expiration Situation

2012-01-24T18:47:00.000Z

We saw this in /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/logs/error.log yesterday: -

[Mon Jan 23 14:23:25 2012] [notice] Using config file /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/conf/httpd.conf
[Mon Jan 23 14:23:25 2012] [debug] mod_mpmstats.c(189): mpmstats daemon started (pid 4775)
[Mon Jan 23 14:23:25 2012] [notice] IBM_HTTP_Server/7.0.0.17 (Unix) configured -- resuming normal operations
[Mon Jan 23 14:23:25 2012] [info] Server built: Mar 7 2011 15:49:28
[Mon Jan 23 14:23:25 2012] [debug] worker.c(1859): AcceptMutex: sysvsem (default: sysvsem)
[Mon Jan 23 14:23:25 2012] [notice] Core file limit is 0; core dumps will be not be written for server crashes
[Mon Jan 23 14:23:28 2012] [error] server is within MinSpareThreads of MaxClients, consider raising the MaxClients setting
[Mon Jan 23 14:23:55 2012] [error] [client 10.150.190.217] [9778180] [5576] SSL0221E: SSL Handshake Failed, Either the certificate has expired or the system clock is incorrect. [10.150.190.217:2974 -> 11.125.26.19:443] [14:23:55.000312000]
[Mon Jan 23 14:23:55 2012] [error] [client 10.150.190.217] [9778230] [5394] SSL0221E: SSL Handshake Failed, Either the certificate has expired or the system clock is incorrect. [10.150.190.217:2976 -> 11.125.26.19:443] [14:23:55.000472317]

This took me a while to crack, but I eventually realised (!) that the self-signed certificates that we use in our IHS servers ( this is a NON-production environment ) had expired.

This was how I cracked it: -

$ cd /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/bin

# List the certificates in use

$ ./gsk7cmd -cert -list -db /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/ssl/key.kdb -pw passw0rd

Certificates in database /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/ssl/key.kdb:
SelfSignedCert
Thawte Personal Basic CA
Thawte Personal Freemail CA
Thawte Personal Premium CA
Thawte Premium Server CA
Thawte Server CA
Verisign Class 1 Public Primary Certification Authority
Verisign Class 1 Public Primary Certification Authority - G2
Verisign Class 2 Public Primary Certification Authority
Verisign Class 2 Public Primary Certification Authority - G2
Verisign Class 3 Public Primary Certification Authority
Verisign Class 3 Public Primary Certification Authority - G2

# Display the contents of the SelfSignedCert

$ ./gsk7cmd -cert -details -db /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/ssl/key.kdb -pw passw0rd -label SelfSignedCert

Label: SelfSignedCert
Key Size: 1024
Version: X509 V3
Serial Number: 4D 39 7C B4
Issued by: CN=www.connections.foobar.com, O=FOOBAR, C=COM
Subject: CN=www.connections.foobar.com, O=FOOBAR, C=COM
Valid: From: Thursday, 20 January 2011 12:31:48 o'clock GMT To: Saturday, 21 January 2012 12:31:48 o'clock GMT
Fingerprint: F9:D3:44:F1:81:26:37:90:51:A0:A5:14:79:9D:B8:14:AA:6B:3F:16
Signature Algorithm: MD5withRSA (1.2.840.113549.1.1.4)
Trust Status: enabled

# Delete the old, expired certificate

$ ./gsk7capicmd -cert -delete -db /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/ssl/key.kdb -pw passw0rd -label SelfSignedCert

# Create a new SelfSignedCert

$ ./gsk7capicmd -cert -create -db /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/ssl/key.kdb -pw passw0rd -label SelfSignedCert -size 1024 -expire 365 -dn "CN=www.connections.foobar.com,O=FOOBAR,C=COM" -x509version 3

# Set the new certificate to be the server's default

$ ./gsk7capicmd -cert -setdefault -db /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/ssl/key.kdb -pw passw0rd -label SelfSignedCert

Support Content Highlights for IBM WebSphere Portal and Web Content Manager (January 2012)

2012-01-20T17:15:00.001Z

This is on my regular reading list, along with the IBM Connections Support Highlights, about which I blogged earlier this week

This document contains frequently requested support content as well as those documents identified by IBM Support as valuable in helping answer your questions related to WebSphere Portal and Web Content Manager. The list will be updated periodically to reflect new trends and issues.

if you do owt with Portal and WCM, then I definitely recommend that this be in your bookmarks …..

Optimizing Portal 7 Page Builder Theme for performance

2012-01-18T13:32:00.001Z

Saw this in my in-box this morning: -

How does the theme influence the performance of the Portal site?

The theme influences both the server side and client side performance. Whenever a Portal page is rendered the theme is included on the server. The theme defines the layout and structure of the site – including various static files like javascript, pictures, css, and others. It also triggers the rendering of portlets, widgets or other content. Depending if the theme is a client side or server side theme the requests that are sent after the initial rendering of the Portal in the browser also differ – a server side theme will trigger full server side rendering requests including the theme again with each request while the client side theme would trigger a larger number of small dynamic requests that will update the layout to the newly selected page and its portlet content.

When trying to optimize the performance of the theme one needs to think about both about the time spent on the server as well as the time on the client side. On the server side it is all about execution of code on the server that can take up processing power and memory. This can be analyzed with profiling tools like the Java Health Center or Jprof or … Also the number of requests influences the server side response - if an excessive amount of requests is sent it will slow down the server.

On the client side the performance of the site is determined by the rendering of the returned markup. The markup links to static resources. The static resources can contain javascript, pictures, css, and others. Time is not only spent for the download of those resources but also in the interpretation of the loaded javascript and css. The more complex the css and javascript is the more time is spent in the browser for parsing and execution.

Tools like Firebug or Development Console from other browsers typically allow to determine how much time is spent on the download as well as the rendering of the resources.

My recommendation is to check the time spent for the loading of the page and then optimize the slowest parts. If the main Portal request (typically to .../wps/myportal/... unless you changed the context root) is taking too long you would need to check what is slow on the server side. Most of the other resources being rendering are referenced by the theme or the portlets on the page.

This article does not cover basic tuning tips like ensuring that compression is enabled on the web or proxy server and that the correct cache headers are being set for static resources to prevent subsequent downloads of static resources. Both tunings have a large impact on the theme performance and should be enabled. Please see the Portal tuning guide for more information on those topics:

IBM WebSphere Portal V 7.0 Performance Tuning Guide

and thought …. hmmm, that's VERY relevant to a project on which I'm currently engaged, so will (a) bookmark this for future reference and (b) make sure that my Application Architect colleague sees it.

The article is in the WebSphere Portal Wiki here.

This also ties up with the point that Mark Polly had made a few weeks back about Fixpack 7.0.0.2 doing some nice things for Portal theme performance …...

IBM Lotus Symphony 3.0.1 is released ….. NOW

2012-01-17T16:07:00.001Z

As per Ed's session at Lotusphere 2012 #LS12, IBM has announced and released version 3.0.1 of Symphony.

Am downloading it from here as I type.

*UPDATE* And after a very short space of time, it's downloaded and installed ...

On a related note, Ed has also blogged about Lotus Notes/Domino 8.5.3.

IBM Connections - Reporting and Metrics

2012-01-17T14:54:00.001Z

The Reporting Tool for Lotus Connections (RTLC) enhances and extends Lotus Connection's built-in reporting tools: -

Snapshot and trend reports showing adoption, usage and system metrics across all the Lotus Connection features.
Simple web-based visualization with bar charts, line charts and tables.
Easily view adoption rates for key Lotus Connections features based on days, months and years.
Export metrics to Brio, Excel, Crystal Reports and others.

https://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/services/socialsw_measurementreporting.html

This is in addition to the built-in metrics for the services: -

Activities	https://w3-connections.ibm.com/activities/service/html/servermetrics
Blogs	https://w3-connections.ibm.com/blogs/roller-ui/servermetrics.do?lang=en_us
Bookmarks	https://w3-connections.ibm.com/dogear/toolbox/servermetrics
Communities	https://w3-connections.ibm.com/communities/service/html/servermetrics
Files	https://w3-connections.ibm.com/files/app/statistics
Homepage	https://w3-connections.ibm.com/homepage/web/servermetrics
Profiles	https://w3-connections.ibm.com/profiles/html/servermetrics.do
Wikis	https://w3-connections.ibm.com/wikis/home/statistics

All good information - now I bet YOU didn't know we did that :-)

W00t, WebSphere User Group coming to IBM South Bank on Wednesday 21 March 2012

2012-01-17T12:03:00.001Z

Got the heads-up via email from the delightful Alan Chambers, but have noticed that the WUG website lists the next UK meeting as being at IBM South Bank

We are pleased to confirm that the next meeting of the WebSphere User Group (UK) will take place on 21st March 2012 at IBM South Bank, London. There will be no charge for this meeting and we have an excellent agenda lined up.

You can find out more, and register, here.

See you there.

Open Mic Webcast: Recent Contacts and the New Type-Ahead feature in Lotus Notes 8.5.x Standard - 24 January 2012

2012-01-17T09:13:00.001Z

This popped into my Lotus Notes 8.5.X inbox this morning, and I know that I, and others, have had problems with Recent Contacts in the past.

Therefore, I'm going to add this to my calendar for next week - Tuesday 24 January: -

IBM will host an Open Mic webcast with Lotus Development and Support Engineers on 24 January 2012. The topic will be "Recent Contacts and the New Type-Ahead feature in Lotus Notes 8.5.x Standard."

There's also an option to ask questions ahead of the conference here.

Support Content Highlights for IBM Connections 3.0.1 - December 2011

2012-01-16T16:48:00.001Z

Have been using this today: -

This is the Support Content Highlights mailing for IBM® Connections®. This document contains links to technical content that has been identified by IBM Support as valuable, as well as links to other important information and tips.

Want to read it ? Then go here ...

I also used this query against IBM Fix Central to get the most recent set of iFixes etc. for Connections 3.0.1, and I keep this RSS feed in my Firefox bookmark bar for an up-to-date list of what's hot and what's not :-)

Project Concord takes off … as IBM Docs

2012-01-16T16:07:00.001Z

Saw this post from Ed on Twitter earlier, thanks to @ChoosePortal

Today at Lotusphere 2012, IBM unveiled the beta release of IBM Docs, formerly known as LotusLive Symphony. The beta release is available now on Greenhouse, http://greenhouse.lotus.com . IBM Docs is a completely cloud-based set of social document editors -- word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool -- that are focused on the needs of teams to share and improve productivity, both inside and outside the firewall. IBM Docs authors will be able to store documents in IBM SmartCloud Engage (formerly LotusLive Engage) co-edit documents in real time or assign users sections of the document so they can work privately easing the management of multiple revisions from multiple authors in team-based documents.

I'd previously blogged about IBM Docs aka LotusLive Symphony aka Project Concord last year, so it's nice to see that it's made it's way in the world :-)

WebSphere Application Server and Kerberos - Stuff I did not know ....

2012-01-16T14:06:00.000Z

Number #1223

It is *NOT* necessary to use BOTH the setspn and ktpass commands when hooking the Service Principal Name (SPN) and the service account together, in order to generate the Kerberos keytab: -

You may notice in the WebSphere documentation the usage of the setspn command before ktpass is issued. When you use ktpass with the –mapUser flag, the SPN is set automatically, so you don't actually need to issue the setspn command beforehand in this case. The examples in the later sections of this document show how setspn is used, but you don't need to worry about it right now. You may also note the documentation referring to the –mapOp flag as well. Again, you don't need to worry about that in this example and it will be discussed later on.

( Taken from WebSphere with a side of SPNEGO )

In other words, here's an SPN I created earlier: -

HTTP/www.connections.ibm.com@IBM.COM

and here's the service account: -

ibm.connections

and here's the password: -

passw0rd

so here's a SINGLE command to create the SPN and generate the keytab: -

ktpass -princ HTTP/www.connections.ibm.com@IBM.COM -out c:\temp\keytab.txt -mapuser ibm.connections -mapOp set -pass passw0rd -ptype KRB5_NT_PRINCIPAL

and here's the command to list the SPNs for the ibm.connections service account: -

setspn -l ibm.connections

If I wanted to delete the SPNs, I'd do this: -

setspn -l ibm.connections

If I then wanted to add a second SPN: -

HTTP/www.portal.ibm.com@IBM.COM

to the same service account, I'd do this: -

ktpass -princ HTTP/www.portal.ibm.com@IBM.COM -out c:\temp\keytab.txt -mapuser ibm.connections -mapOp add -pass passw0rd -ptype KRB5_NT_PRINCIPAL

In other words, I'd use -mapOp add rather than -mapOp set as this is a second SPN.

Neat-o

CentOS Linux and IBM Software - The Story Continues ….

2012-01-13T14:18:00.001Z

There's a great post here from Collaboration Ben about the joys of deploying IBM Tivoli Directory Integrator onto CentOS Linux.

He was seeing: -

"Bundled JRE is not binary compatible with the host OS/Arch or it is corrupt. Testing bundled JRE failed."

which is nice.

Want to know more ? Then check his post out ….

I'll be trying this myself in a few days, so it's very timely …..

PS My experiences thus far with CentOS are here.

IBM Connections / Sametime Technical 'Quick Start' Sessions - February 2012 - Manchester/Edinburgh/London

2012-01-11T10:30:00.001Z

This arrived in my in-box this morning from Polymorph

IBM Connections / Sametime Technical 'Quick Start' Sessions

In conjunction with Polymorph, IBM (UK) are pleased to present three 1 day complimentary Technical 'Quick Start' hands-on sessions. In the morning session, we will provide you with all the information you need regarding IBM Connections and the opportunity to ask a Connections expert any questions you may have. During the afternoon we will provide you with a how-to session on IBM Sametime IM and web conferencing, along with the opportunity to participate in a variety of hands-on demonstrations and labs.

When & Where

2nd February 2012 - Manchester
7th February 2012 - Edinburgh
9th February 2012 - London

Who should attend?

These sessions have been designed specifically to give Lotus Notes / Domino Developers and Administrators an understanding of the capabilities & features of IBM Connections / Sametime, together with high-level technical hands-on expertise of 'how-to' for deploying the solutions.

Agenda

AM: Connections 9.30am - 12.30pm

• Connections Overview

• Notes R8.5.3 and Connections

• How to deploy Connections 3.01 best practices

• How to extend and deploy Connections - the art of the possible

• Open questions and 'hands-on' labs

Lunch: 12.30pm - 1.30pm

PM: Sametime 1.30pm - 4.30pm

• Sametime Overview

• How to deploy Sametime IM

• How to extend IM web conferencing

• Open questions and 'hands-on' labs

Further information is available here.

IBM Connections - Files and Firefox - Playing Nicely Together

2012-01-10T13:21:00.001Z

It's been a bone of contention for me that my favourite browser, Mozilla Firefox, fails to correctly render the Files application in IBM Connections, mainly since we upgraded Connections to 3.0.1 and/or since Mozilla have moved to more frequent releases of the browser, I've gone from v5 to v9 in less than a year.

So can you imagine how pleased I was to read this on the Connections Blog ?

Let's start with the good news! There have been some issues with Connections Files and versions of Mozilla Firefox since version 4. Files would simply not load. This has been a known issue for a while, and has been causing some consternation as whilst Firefox 3.6 is the latest supported release, so many users have upgraded beyond that version. So, I am really really pleased that IBM has released an iFix for this issue which means that Files works in all current releases of Firefox once more. 3.0.1.0-IC-Multi-Files-HF1-IFLO58492 is what you need. This is not yet on FixCentral, so contact our good friends in IBM support to obtain the fix package (and thanks to David McCarthy in IBM Dublin for making me aware of this news!).

So, to summarise, IBM has released an iFix for Connections 3.0.1 Files - yet to be listed in Fix Central - 3.0.1.0-IC-Multi-Files-HF1-IFLO58492.

Thanks to Stuart McIntyre for sharing this via the most excellent blog ….

Free to evaluate - IBM InfoSphere BigInsights Basic Edition

2012-01-08T20:28:00.000Z

Was reading about Big Data earlier today, and then saw this plop into my in-box

IBM InfoSphere BigInsights Basic Edition is an integrated, tested and pre-configured, no charge download for anyone who wants to experiment with Hadoop.

InfoSphere BigInsights Basic Edition, our entry-level offering, is available at no charge for download, installation, and use. Solutions developed using InfoSphere BigInsights Basic Edition can be deployed using BigInsights Enterprise Edition. It includes the following:

• Fully integrated, completely compatible – Integrated install of Apache Hadoop and associated open source components from the Apache Hadoop ecosystem.

• Web-based management console for a real-time view of your BigInsights environment.

• Easy integration with IBM InfoSphere Warehouse, IBM Smart Analytics System, and DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows.

• Jaql, a query language that facilitates analysis of both structured (through a SQL-like interface) and non-traditional data types.

• Optional IBM Elite Support for 24x7 phone and web support.

One of my New Year resolutions for 2012 is to learn more about stuff that I don't normal come into contact with in my role as a Collaboration Solutions Architect, so BigData sounds like a challenge ….

Want to know more ?

I do, so I'll go and download BigInsights from here.

IBM WebSphere Portal Theme Optimization

2012-01-08T20:15:00.001Z

Saw this on Mark Polly's blog - Mark is one of the Portal/WCM gurus at Perficient, and the blog is definitely worth reading.

Along with this article, there's also an article by Michael Porter entitled "When to use a Portal" which is again worth a look.

Mark says ….

Themes in WebSphere Portal continue to undergo significant changes. In the past few releases we have seen the following enhancements to themes introduced:

• Splitting theme from the wps.ear into separate applications that can be managed independently of the Portal code

• Introduction of Client Side Aggregation (CSA) which builds a page using Javascript on the browser instead of completely building it on the server first.

• PageBuilder and PageBuilder2 themes that provide better interfaces for managing pages directly without going through the Portal Administration interface.

Now IBM has slipped Theme Optimization into the latest fixpack for WebSphere Portal 7.0.0.2 (see IBM's fixpack documentation). It appears that theme optimization was targeted for Portal 8, so maybe it is making an early appearance here. Fixpack 2 was released in mid December 2011.

Want to know more ? Then read the blog ….

IBM Connections - A set of database indexes to improve the performance for the HOMEPAGE database which hosts Homepage, Search and News and Email Digest data.

2012-01-08T20:08:00.001Z

Saw this via an email from one of our IBM Business Partners

The HOMEPAGE database is used to serve data to different applications likes Homepage, Search and News plus Email Digest data. For performance reasons we recommend to run the attached sql scripts to improve the existing databases indexes. In some cases the script will drop and re-create better indexes, in other cases the script will add new indexes. The technote is shipped with three SQL files depending on the database vendor being used.

The Technote includes SQL scripts for DB2 UDB, Oracle and SQL Server, and is available here: -

A set of database indexes to improve the performance for the HOMEPAGE database which hosts Homepage, Search and News and Email Digest data.

Events at the British Computer Society - January 2012

2012-01-08T20:05:00.001Z

These popped into my in-box today; I fancy one or more of them ….

Date: Tuesday 10 January
Time: 6.00 for 6.30
Title: WebGL - In-browser 3D rendering
Presenter: Dr Nick Whitelegg, of Southampton Solent University
Venue: Southampton Solent University, Herbert Collins building,HC 021,on the ground floor,
This will be jointly with the BCS Hampshire Branch and Southampton Solent University.
Currently, web applications are becoming more and more like desktop applications thanks to HTML5 and related technologies. One particularly exciting technology is WebGL, which allows developers to create in-browser 3D applications usign OpenGL from within JavaScript. This talk will give an overview of the WebGL technology and approaches to development. Ideally you should have a little experience with OpenGL or at least be aware of the basic principles of 3D applications, and have some experience of web development.

Dr Nick Whitelegg is a senior lecturer in Computing (Web Development) at Southampton Solent University and teaches on a range of undergraduate software development courses including Java and web development. He has contributed software and data to the OpenStreetMap mapping project and has developed an open source mapping site and associated tools for walkers.

Date: Tuesday 17 January
Time: 6.00 for 6.30
Title: Green Fields for ICT?
Presenter: Bob Crooks, Lead for Sustainable greenIT for Defra, and Chair of the GreenIT SG
Venue: Southampton Solent University, Herbert Collins building,HC 021,on the ground floor,
This will be jointly with the BCS GreenIT SG, Hampshire Branch and Southampton Solent University.
Bob Crooks will be giving us a talk on where to get started on the Green IT agenda. This now ranges across the whole ICT life cycle and beyond, with ICT being seen increasingly as part of the solution as well as part of the problem around us living more sustainable lives at home and at work. He will draw on his extensive work in this area as chair of the BCS Green IT Specialist Group as well as being the Green ICT lead for Defra and a key player on the Cabinet Office's Green IT delivery Unit that has recently published the UK's Greening Government ICT strategy – see http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/resource-library/uk-government-ict-strategy-resources

Date: Tuesday 24 January
Time: 6.00 for 6.30
Title: Obtaining Chartered Status,
Presenter: Keith Taylor
Venue: Southampton Solent University, Herbert Collins building,HC 021,on the ground floor,
This will be jointly with the BCS Hampshire Branch and Southampton Solent University.

This will be of particular benefit to those thinking of applying for MBCS or Chartered Status (CITP, CEng or CSci) either shortly or as a more long term aim. You could bring a cv with you, so, if time permits, you could have a personal discussion.
Keith Taylor worked for most of his life at IBM Hursley, but separately has for many years been interviewing BCS members wishing to obtain Chartered Status.

All are being hosted at Southampton University.

Adding IBM Connections Search to Your Browser

2012-01-04T19:54:00.001Z

Another tip from Andrew Frayling ( @sphericaln )

I've been playing around with IBM Connections search recently and discovered that you can add the ability to search for content stored in IBM Connections directly from your browser by using the URL that IBM Connections uses for Advanced Search:

That was just a teaser - go and check out Andrew's blog post here.

Apple Macintosh OSX Keyboard Shortcuts

2012-01-04T19:10:00.001Z

The lovely Andrew Frayling ( @SphericalN ) Tweeted this link earlier today.

I've blogged about OSX keyboard shortcuts previously, but the link ( from Dan Rodney ) does a great job of encapsulating all the shortcuts one could ever want. Here's a sample: -

Nice one, Andrew. Nice one, Dan

IBM WCM Offers New Content Authoring Homepage

2012-01-04T19:06:00.001Z

I saw this on Michael Porter's ( @Perficient ) blog earlier today

By far one of the biggest complaints I hear from clients is how hard it is to author and manage content. There's so much you can do to improve the authoring experience but it all starts with what the vendor provides. Last month, IBM release a new content authoring homepage to the Solutions Catalog. For anyone using IBM WCM v 7.x, it's worth downloading. You can also watch a video of the homepage in action. Here's my favorite aspects:

• Thew new authoring homepage actually looks nice

• It takes out a lot of 'busy" UI that's not needed for pure authoring

• Through some configuration, it allows you to define which content templates should be available to which authors. That makes the authoring UI even more useful

The full post is here - nice one, Michael.

Just published: Customizing IBM Connections 3.0.1

2012-01-04T11:06:00.001Z

Saw this on the Connections Blog @CollaborationMatters this morning

IBM Lotus and IBM Redbooks publications have partnered to create wiki content that explains how to customize, develop, and extend IBM Connections 3.0.1. You can customize IBM Connections to fit your corporate branding and social media needs. This Lotus Redbooks wiki provides examples of how to customize the overall user interface, as well as blogs, communities, and profiles. This wiki also includes information about populating the IBM Connections Profiles database using Tivoli Directory Integrator, and using the IBM Connections API to accomplish goals, such as retrieving a person's profile. The intended audience for this wiki includes IBM Connections administrators, web developers, and others who are interested in the specific details of customizing and developing IBM Connections 3.0.1.

n this wiki, we discuss the following topics:

• General customization process

• Customizing the Home page

• Customizing strings

• Customizing blogs

• Tivoli Directory Integrator

• Customizing the Profiles and Communities business cards

• Customizing communities

• Using the API

• IBM Web Experience Factory

• IBM Mashup Center

• Microsoft Outlook Connector

The Redbook is here.

Kudos to ISW - Kudos Badges for IBM Connections

2012-01-04T11:02:00.000Z

Saw this on Adam Brown's blog this morning

Announcing Kudos Badges for IBM Connections!

Kudos Badges for IBM Connections is a flexible gamification engine for IBM Connections. By providing achievements and rewards (Kudos Badges), rank and leaderboards (Kudos Rank), and missions (Kudos Missions), organisations can dramatically improve their user engagement and adoption of IBM Connections.

In addition Kudos Badges is an extensible platform that can leverage game theory to provide performance management mechanics and reward systems for applications outside of IBM Connections such as HR, Sales Force Management, Help Desks, and many more.

I reckon that @DarrenDuke had a subconscious hand in the naming of the solution, as he's the King of Kudos ( at least on @ThisWeekInLouts )

Mobile web - Fortified with XPages and Dojo

2012-01-02T15:25:00.000Z

I saw this on Twitter, thanks to fellow IBMer, Vincent Perrin

Social application developers are continually challenged to deliver applications that provide exceptional work experiences, yet do it in a timely and cost effective manner. Not only does the application experience need to be exceptional, but it needs to be available from a mobile device, web browser or desktop client. Developers need an application development platform that allow them to meet those objectives. With today's release of Lotus Notes and Domino Upgrade Pack 1, meeting those objectives became even easier.

Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.3 Upgrade Pack 1 provides a rich set of assets for building desktop and mobile web applications as well as including two social application templates. Upgrade Pack 1 contains the following:

• Domino XPages Extension Library

• Includes new set of mobile specific XPages controls and other assets

• Updated templates built with controls in Extension Library

• TeamRoom: XPages UI including mobile access

• Discussion: new mobile access

• Domino Access Services: New set of JSON based REST services for accessing Domino data

Here's Pete Janzen's article in full on developerWorks - Mobile web - Fortified with XPages and Dojo

I've also blogged about XPages previously: -

Download Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.3 Upgrade Pack 1 - XPages goes mobile ….

It's so easy to access IBM Connections from XPages

Introduction to IBM Lotus Domino 8.5 XPages - Available on OpenCourseWare on the IBM Lotus Greenhouse

Chat with IBMers from an external Sametime Client

2012-01-02T14:53:00.001Z

Saw this on Twitter from ex-IBMer ( as of today !! ) Robert Farstad

When switching jobs from beeing an IBM'er to becoming a business partner, I knew about the possibility to use an external sametime client to chat with internal IBM'ers. So I googled a bit and came up with this page:

Chris Pepin has written about this in the past here and here, as has Adam Gartenberg, but Robert's post brings things nicely up-to-date.

Nice one, Robert (-:

IBM WebSphere Application Server - Support for 32-bit and 64-bit application servers

2012-01-02T12:40:00.001Z

This goes into the "I did not know that" category ….

IBM WebSphere Application Server supports both 32-bit and 64-bit application servers in the same cluster that are managed by either a 32-bit or 64-bit deployment manager. This scenario applies to both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of WebSphere Application Server on 64-bit operating system kernels and to 32-bit versions of WebSphere Application Server on 32-bit operating system kernels.

It is recommended that you confirm that you are using the latest service levels of the operating system and WebSphere Application Server when you are using both 32-bit and 64-bit application servers in your environment.

as indicated by this Technote - Support for 32-bit and 64-bit application servers

WebSphere Application Server - 64-bits and no buts

2012-01-02T12:15:00.001Z

( with apologies to IBM for re-using the excellent AS/400 CISC -> RISC marketing slogan from 1994 )

I saw this via Twitter and thought it worthy of sharing here as well

As more organizations move to 64-bit IBM WebSphere Application Server, a few common questions always come up in the discussion.

The purpose of this article is to quickly address these common questions in an FAQ style format that is easy to consume

The FAQ is available as a PDF here.

These two webcasts may also be of interest / relevance: -

Webcast replay: What is the difference between 32 and 64bit Java?

IBM WebSphere Application Server and 64-bit platforms: 64-bit Performance Demystified

Mounting an Apple OSX HFS+ drive under CentOS Linux

2011-12-29T17:13:00.004Z

Back in the day, I chose to format my USB external drives using the Apple Mac OSX Hierarchical File System (HFS) format, aka HFS+ or HFSPlus.

This is sometimes a pain when I need to share files with colleagues using Microsoft Windows, but c'est la vie - it's their choice for using such an obscure OS :-)

More importantly, I was somewhat dismayed to find that the CentOS distribution that I've just started to play with does NOT include HFS+ support out-of-the-box.

This compares to Ubuntu, which ( afaik ) has had HFS+ support for some time now.

However, it was an easy problem to solve - after a quick(ish) Google search, I found this thread on the www.centos.org site, which recommends adding the elrepo.org repository to CentOS: -

$ rpm --import http://elrepo.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-elrepo.org

before downloading the required RPM file: -

$ rpm -Uvh http://elrepo.org/elrepo-release-6-4.el6.elrepo.noarch.rpm

and installing the HFS+ drivers: -

$ yum install kmod-hfsplus

As ever, job done - thanks, Internet, we love you :-)

Creating a bootable USB key under Apple Mac OSX

2011-12-29T15:50:00.001Z

I wanted to install a new (to me) Linux distribution - CentOS - onto my Thinkpad W500, and was looking to avoid finding and using a CD-ROM or DVD.

Having a spare USB thumb-drive kicking about, I was hoping that I could use that instead, and also "burn" the image from my Mac.

I'd already downloaded the CentOS ISO to my Mac Downloads folder, and had previously mounted it.

A quick Google search found me this MacRumours forum thread - how to "burn" an ISO to USB flash drive? - which provided a variety of answers, some positive, some not-so-positive.

Having said that, I scrolled to the very end of the thread, and found this post - Final Solution - from someone called Candlejack, which had the answer.

Basically, it's a bunch of Terminal commands :-)

$ diskutil list

/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *320.1 GB disk0
1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Hard Disk 319.2 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3
/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: FDisk_partition_scheme *8.3 GB disk1
1: DOS_FAT_32 DISK_IMG 8.3 GB disk1s1
/dev/disk2
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: CentOS-6.2-x86_6 *731.9 MB disk2

$ diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1

Unmount of all volumes on disk1 was successful

$ dd if=/dev/disk2 of=/dev/disk1 bs=1m

dd: /dev/disk2: Resource busy

$ diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2

Unmount of all volumes on disk2 was successful

$ dd if=/dev/disk2 of=/dev/disk1 bs=1m

698+0 records in
698+0 records out
731906048 bytes transferred in 206.409147 secs (3545899 bytes/sec)

Job done.

I was then able to boot the Thinkpad from the USB drive ( via the [F12] function key ) and install CentOS, far far quicker than I could've installed from a CD or DVD.

PS For the record, I've previously blogged about CentOS, with regard to installing IBM HTTP Server on it here.

Lightweight Third Party Authentication (LTPA) FAQs

2011-12-29T15:34:00.001Z

I've blogged about LTPA in the past, as it's an important part of any Single Sign-On (SSO) configuration, especially where WebSphere and/or Domino are working together.

This FAQ document contains a useful set of answers to common questions, including: -

What happens when the Security Cache, LTPA Token timeout, and session time out?

I want to force my users to re-login after a set "inactivity timeout" period. How is WebSphere Application Server supposed to work with regard to session timeouts and LTPA timeout.

etc.

Definitely worth a look - Security Cache, LTPA Token, and Session Time Outs

IBM Tivoli Directory Integrator - Which Version is Which ?

2011-12-28T20:57:00.000Z

I've got a folder on my USB hard disk called TDI70 within which I have three files: -

-rw-r--r-- 1 hayd hayd 68001502 2010-09-22 08:32 7.0.0-TIV-TDI-FP0005.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 hayd hayd 403947520 2010-10-04 13:50 C1IU1ML.tar
-rw-r--r-- 1 hayd hayd 405719040 2010-09-22 08:12 C1IU2ML.tar

Now I'm trying to install TDI on a 32-bit Linux distribution ( Ubuntu 11.10 ), so which of the two TAR files do I use ?

I'm sure it's obvious .....

The trick was to expand one of the two files: -

tar xvf /tmp/C1IU1ML.tar

which included: -

linux_x86/
linux_x86/install_tdiv70_linux_x86.bin
linux_x86/install_tdiv70_setup.jar

This gives me a clue :-)

Therefore, I'm going to take a bet that: -

C1IU1ML / C1IU1ML.tar == 32-bit
C1IU2ML / C1IU2ML.tar == 64-bit

Make sense ?

Printing from the iPad 2

2011-12-28T16:21:00.001Z

Having been a happy iPad owner for some months now, it's always niggled that we cannot print from it to the Kodak ESP 3250 printer that's hard-wired ( via USB ) to my wife's Ubuntu laptop.

Finally, I invested some small amount of time in a Google search, and found the secret sauce.

Thanks to this blog -> Hartless By Design <- I found out how to enable the required AirPlay service, using a protocol called avahi which is installed as part of the Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) subsystem.

I've already blogged about Apple and CUPS earlier today as well as a purely Linux-related problem a few years back.

However, this particular article - AirPrint with Ubuntu 10.10 - did the job.

In essence, I needed to create a file - /etc/avahi/services/printer.service - and add the following content: -

<?xml version="1.0" standalone='no'?>
<!DOCTYPE service-group SYSTEM "avahi-service.dtd">
<service-group>
<name>My Printer</name>
<service>
<type>_ipp._tcp</type>
<subtype>_universal._sub._ipp._tcp</subtype>
<port>631</port>
<txt-record>txtver=1</txt-record>
<txt-record>qtotal=1</txt-record>
<txt-record>rp=printers/My-Printer-CUPS-Name</txt-record>
<txt-record>ty=My Printer</txt-record>
<txt-record>adminurl=http://198.168.1.4:631/printers/My-Printer-CUPS-Name</txt-record>
<txt-record>note=My Printer</txt-record>
<txt-record>priority=0</txt-record>
<txt-record>product=virtual Printer</txt-record>
<txt-record>printer-state=3</txt-record>
<txt-record>printer-type=0x801046</txt-record>
<txt-record>Transparent=T</txt-record>
<txt-record>Binary=T</txt-record>
<txt-record>Fax=F</txt-record>
<txt-record>Color=T</txt-record>
<txt-record>Duplex=T</txt-record>
<txt-record>Staple=F</txt-record>
<txt-record>Copies=T</txt-record>
<txt-record>Collate=F</txt-record>
<txt-record>Punch=F</txt-record>
<txt-record>Bind=F</txt-record>
<txt-record>Sort=F</txt-record>
<txt-record>Scan=F</txt-record>
<txt-record>pdl=application/octet-stream,application/pdf,application/postscript,image/jpeg,image/png,image/urf</txt-record>
<txt-record>URF=W8,SRGB24,CP1,RS600</txt-record>
</service>
</service-group>

replacing My Printer with the alias of the printer ( Kodak ), My-Printer-CUPS-Name with the "network" name of the printer as it appears in CUPS ( https://localhost:631/admin ) KODAK-ESP-3200-Series-AiO and the IP address - 198.168.1.4 - with the loopback IP address - 127.0.0.1.

Having done this, I needed to add a single line: -

ServerAlias *

to /etc/cups/cupsd.conf and then restart CUPS: -

$ sudo /etc/init.d/cups restart

From that point on, any print dialogue on the iPad ( I was actually trying to print an invoice from within Safari ), will show up Kodak as an AirPrint printer: -

Back in the game … if at first you don't succeed, read your own blog :-)

2011-12-28T15:53:00.001Z

Every so often, I hit a problem that I know I've hit and, perhaps more importantly, overcome before.

Today was no exception, it's been bothering me for a number of months that I seem unable to print from my Macbook Pro to a Kodak printer, connected via USB to my wife's laptop ( running Ubuntu ).

I won't bore you with the gory details, but I seemed unable to automagically find the printer via the Print & Scan preferences page, and kept seeing errors such as this: -

Idle - "An unexpected error occurred. Check for problems at the printer and resubmit the job (100003)"

when printing, having manually added the printer.

To cut a long story short, I visited this very blog -> A Portal to a Portal <- and searched for CUPS and found this post -> SOLVED - Accessing CUPS printer from Mac OSX Snow Leopard

The solution is to run the following command from a terminal session: -

$ cupsctl BrowseRemoteProtocols=CUPS

Prior to doing this, the cupctl command returned this: -

_debug_logging=1
_remote_admin=0
_remote_any=0
_remote_printers=1
_share_printers=0
_user_cancel_any=0
BrowseLocalProtocols=
BrowseRemoteProtocols=DefaultAuthType=Basic
JobPrivateAccess=default
JobPrivateValues=default
SubscriptionPrivateAccess=default
SubscriptionPrivateValues=default
SystemGroup=admin
SystemGroupAuthKey=system.print.admin
WebInterface=Yes

Now it returns this: -

_debug_logging=1
_remote_admin=0
_remote_any=0
_remote_printers=1
_share_printers=0
_user_cancel_any=0
BrowseLocalProtocols=
BrowseRemoteProtocols=CUPS
DefaultAuthType=Basic
JobPrivateAccess=default
JobPrivateValues=default
SubscriptionPrivateAccess=default
SubscriptionPrivateValues=default
SystemGroup=admin
SystemGroupAuthKey=system.print.admin
WebInterface=Yes

Having done this, I can now see and, perhaps more importantly, print to the Kodak.

One addition to the blog post - I'm now running OSX 10.7.2 aka Lion, whereas I was previously running Snow Leopard, and the Linux box is now running Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal.

Nice :-)

Installing IBM HTTP Server 7 on CentOS Linux 6.2

2011-12-27T20:58:00.001Z

Working with a friend to get IHS v7 working on CentOS 6.2, he ( and eventually I ) were hitting the following exception: -

(Dec 27, 2011 8:09:47 PM), Process, com.ibm.ws.install.ihs.ismp.actions.ExecWizardActionFromDirectory, err, java.io.IOException: Cannot run program "/opt/IBM/HTTPServer/bin/htpasswd" (in directory "/opt/IBM/HTTPServer"): java.io.IOException: error=2, No such file or directory

STACK_TRACE: 15

java.io.IOException: Cannot run program "/opt/IBM/HTTPServer/bin/htpasswd" (in directory "/opt/IBM/HTTPServer"): java.io.IOException: error=2, No such file or directory

at java.lang.ProcessBuilder.start(ProcessBuilder.java:470)

at java.lang.Runtime.exec(Runtime.java:604)

at com.ibm.ws.install.ihs.ismp.actions.ExecWizardActionFromDirectory.executeProcess(ExecWizardActionFromDirectory.java:202)

at com.installshield.wizard.StandardWizardListener.currentBeanChanged(StandardWizardListener.java:106)

at com.installshield.wizard.Wizard$RunThread.run(Wizard.java:1569)

Caused by: java.io.IOException: java.io.IOException: error=2, No such file or directory

at java.lang.Throwable.<init>(Throwable.java:67)

at java.lang.UNIXProcess.<init>(UNIXProcess.java:197)

at java.lang.ProcessImpl.start(ProcessImpl.java:101)

at java.lang.ProcessBuilder.start(ProcessBuilder.java:463)

... 6 more

In order to prove and, hopefully, resolve the issue, I downloaded CentOS ( CentOS-6.2-x86_64-LiveCD ) as a 700 MB ISO image. From this, I was able to quickly create a new virtual machine using VMware Fusion, and go through the IHS installation.

Given that I'm using a 64-bit version of CentOS, I also needed to install the corresponding package of IHS - for the record, IHS v7 is a 32-bit binary BUT is delivered in two packages; one 32-bit and one 64-bit.

( If you're looking for more detail, check out my other blog posts here and here )

I downloaded the x86-64 version of the product via this image: -

IBM WebSphere Application Server V7.0 Supplements (1 of 2) for Linux on x86-64 bit (IBM HTTP Server, Web Server Plug-ins and Update Installer) Multilingual (C1G00ML) - 246 MB

as detailed here: -

Download WebSphere Application Server Version 7.0 for the Linux operating system

and unpacked the corresponding TAR file - C1G00ML.tar.gz.

$ cd /tmp

$ mkdir IHS

$ cd IHS

$ tar xvzf C1G00ML.tar.gz

and ran the installation routine: -

$ ./IHS/install

This ran through, with me taking all the defaults, and completed BUT displayed the following message: -

When I looked at the log.txt file, I saw the exception referred to previously: -

<snip>

java.io.IOException: Cannot run program "/opt/IBM/HTTPServer/bin/htpasswd" (in directory "/opt/IBM/HTTPServer"): java.io.IOException: error=2, No such file or directory
</snip>

When I attempted to manually run the htpasswd program: -

$ /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/htpasswd

it failed with: -

bash: /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/bin/htpasswd: /lib/ld-linux.so.2: bad ELF interpreter: No such file or directory

A quick Google search threw up this hit which suggested that I was missing the ld-linux.so.2 library ( which actually ties up with the above error !! ) and, more importantly, showed me the way to go home …..

Simply put, I needed to install the library as follows: -

$ yum install ld-linux.so.2

which downloaded 4.4 MB of code: -

================================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
================================================================================
Installing:
glibc i686 2.12-1.47.el6 base 4.3 M
Installing for dependencies:
nss-softokn-freebl i686 3.12.9-11.el6 base 116 k

Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Install 2 Package(s)

Having done that, htpasswd now runs perfectly: -

$ /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/bin/htpasswd

Usage:
htpasswd [-cmdpsD] passwordfile username
htpasswd -b[cmdpsD] passwordfile username password

htpasswd -n[mdps] username
htpasswd -nb[mdps] username password
-c Create a new file.
-n Don't update file; display results on stdout.
-m Force MD5 encryption of the password.
-d Force CRYPT encryption of the password (default).
-p Do not encrypt the password (plaintext).
-s Force SHA encryption of the password.
-b Use the password from the command line rather than prompting for it.
-D Delete the specified user.
On Windows, NetWare and TPF systems the '-m' flag is used by default.
On all other systems, the '-p' flag will probably not work.

I removed and reinstalled IHS; I still see the "Partial Success" message, but no longer see any nasty exceptions relating to htpasswd and I'm able to start/stop/use IHS without problems.

:-)

Chrome

2011-12-27T20:02:00.000Z

Test post from Chrome 16.0.912.63 on the Macbook Pro ....

*UPDATE* Testing an edit, again from Chrome ...

IBM i 7.1 Technical Overview

2011-12-26T16:48:00.000Z

This is one for @SocialShazza and @StevenCPitcher and @DominoYesMaybe and other OS/400-flavoured chums

This IBM Redbooks publication introduces a technical overview of the main new features, functions and enhancements available in IBM i 7.1. It gives a summary and brief explanation of new capabilities and what has changed in the operating system, and also discusses many of the licensed programs and application development tools associated with IBM i.
Many of the new and enhanced functions are described such as: -

• DB2 for i support for XML and column level encryption

• PowerHA for i asynchronous Geographic Mirroring & LUN-level switching

• Virtualization enhancements for IBM i hosted partitions and PowerVM

• Storage management enhancements for solid state drives

• Systems management enhancements for Systems Director Navigator for i

• Rational software development product enhancements

• Zend PHP Enhancements

• Web Application Serving enhancements

Buy it here or read it in PDF form here.

Build Large-scale Performing Enterprise Solutions for IBM Lotus Connections 3.0.x

2011-12-22T10:54:00.001Z

Whilst looking for some information for a colleague, this came into my search results.

It's a great slide deck, presented at Lotusphere 2011 by David Brooks and Morten Kristiansen, and is definitely worth a look.

Specifically, I was looking for a recommendation on the small vs. medium vs. large deployments of IBM Connections. The presentation references all three types, and says "Use Medium or Large Deployment for any non proof of concept. Small deployment cluster puts all components on one JVM. Unless 64 bit, will not handle user load. "

Bottom line, if you're looking to deploy IBM Connections, this is a recommended read …..

IBM Connections - What version do I have ?

2011-12-21T19:32:00.000Z

This from @SocialShazza via Twitter, following inspiration from the genius @StuartMcIntyre via Skype ( did you know that Stuart runs a great set of Skype chats about Connections, Quickr, Portal etc. ???? )

Question: What version of IBM Connections am I running ?

Answer: Query /homepage/web/jsp/about.jsp on your IBM Connections server, e.g. http://greenhouse.lotus.com/homepage/web/jsp/about.jsp

Looking at three versions of Connections to which I have access, it's a great tip: -

IBM W3 Release v3.0.1.0 build LC3.0.1_FP_20110617.1631

IBM Greenhouse Release v3.0.1.0 build LC3.0.1_FP_20110817.0216

IBM developerWorks Release 2.5 LC2.5.0.2_20100430.1448

Nice :-)

Writing it down in case I forget it … #2

2011-12-21T14:37:00.001Z

There's been many many times this past year or so where I've needed to position text below a picture whilst creating a blog post in IBM Connections.

Now there's probably fifty-eleven ways of doing it better and/or in a supported way ( for the HTML and CSS purists ) but this works for me.

Simply switch into the HTML editor view, and enter the following tag: -

This will then push anything below ( or, I guess, within ) the DIV tag below.

I've used this to position text below images, and images below text.

Every so often I forget this, and need to ask the guru @farbrother for help ….. Perhaps now I'll remember it or, to be more honest, remember to search this blog …..

*UPDATE* Doh ! Doh ! Doh ! - last time I blogged this here and I still forgot it :-)

Writing it down in case I forget it …. #1

2011-12-21T14:31:00.001Z

Want to take a screenshot on the iPhone and, I assume, the iPad ?

Press the [Lock] and [Home] buttons at the same time … you'll hear a camera shutter click, and see a new picture added to the Camera Roll in the Photo app

For those who may not know, the [Lock] button is the one on the top right-hand edge of the iPhone, to the right of the headphone jack. Similarly, the [Home] button is the one on the bottom of the device, used to switch applications, start Siri etc.

As pictured here on the Apple iPhone S spec page

IBM Lotus Notes and Citrix XenApp Together

2011-12-21T13:21:00.001Z

I've blogged on this subject many times before, including: -

IBM Lotus Notes 8.5 on Citrix XenApp 4.5: A scalability analysis

IBM Lotus Notes and Lotus iNotes 8.5.1 on Citrix XenApp 4.5/5.0: A scalability analysis

ibm.com: Notes/iNotes 8.5.2 scalability on Citrix XenApp white paper

Notice a trend ? The version of Notes increments each time, as does the version of Citrix XenApp.

Well, to continue the trend, Ed has just Tweeted a link to the most recent white paper: -

IBM Lotus Notes and Lotus iNotes 8.5.3 on Citrix XenApp 5.0/6.0: A scalability analysis

The timing is perfect as I'm working with a client here in the UK to look at the deployment of Notes and XenApp together.

Download Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.3 Upgrade Pack 1 - XPages goes mobile ….

2011-12-20T18:44:00.001Z

Saw this via the Featured documents for IBM Lotus Notes, Domino, iNotes & Notes Traveler newsletter which plops into my inbox thanks to @LotusSupport

Mobilize your social applications with Upgrade Pack 1. IBM delivers and fully supports over 100 new XPages controls and objects that help accelerate the development of mobile and web applications. Easily extend your Lotus Notes Teamroom and Discussion applications to mobile users with new XPages templates. And socialize Lotus Domino assets via common, lightweight REST interfaces.

Lots of excellent stuff in the newsletter, including the Lotusphere and IBM Connect conferences, and a Wiki Usage Survey

Do you use the IBM Lotus or IBM WebSphere Portal product wikis? If so, we want your feedback. IBM is continuing to develop improvements and release updates to the wikis. We want to hear what is important to you so that we can prioritize improvements that help you most. The data we collect from all wiki usability and feedback activities is used to influence our priorities for future design enhancements and development.

Using wsadmin and Jython to monitor WebSphere Application Server performance

2011-12-20T17:51:00.001Z

This is definitely something that's relevant to my project right here, right now

This article describes how you can use wsadmin introspection with Jython to easily retrieve Performance Monitoring Infrastructure (PMI) metrics for IBM® WebSphere® Application Server. IBM Tivoli® Performance Viewer is used as a model for performance reporting. A high level review of PMI architecture is included. This content is part of the IBM WebSphere Developer Technical Journal.

Thanks to developerWorks for the tip ….

Slow performance or hang in HostName lookup due to high DNS traffic

2011-12-20T13:23:00.001Z

Hmmm, this needs to go towards the top of the Very Useful pile - thanks to @IBM_AppServer for sharing via Twitter

Symptom

There are 2 symptoms you might see:

Calls to the method java.net.InetAddress.getLocalHost takes a long time or the Java™ Virtual Machine (JVM) hangs.
Slow response from the administrative console or from wsadmin command/script.

Cause

There are 2 possible causes:

Cause 1:
Starting with Java™ 1.4.1, the IP address is not cached by default. This can cause delays and performance degradation if the application relies on this caching mechanism, since a lookup is now performed each time.

The WebSphere Application Server runtime code calls the InetAddress.getLocalHost() method in several places which then causes the DNS lookup requests. Applications making outbound calls would also trigger DNS lookup requests

- OR -
Cause 2:
The problem could be lookup issues between IPv6 versus IPv4 in releases of the Java 2 SDK 1.4. The problem may be that the JVM performs both IPv6 and IPv4 queries. If the Domain Name System (DNS) server is not configured to handle IPv6 queries, the application might issue an unknown host exception. If the DNS is not configured to handle IPv6 queries properly, the application must wait for the IPv6 query to time out.

You might also notice that getting the wsadmin command prompt takes a long time or sometimes fails because of the preceding problem.

In addition, there is a known problem in Linux on OS/390 with IPv6 that will lead to a JVM crash. For more details, review the Related information section at the bottom of this technote.

This is the Technote -> Slow performance or hang in HostName lookup due to high DNS traffic

It’s so easy to access IBM Connections from XPages

2011-12-19T12:01:00.001Z

This from Niklas Heidloff

I've implemented another feature for XSnippets to share snippets on the IBM Connections instance deployed on Greenhouse.

I've used the XPages Social Enabler which comes with great functionality to handle the authentication including SSO and functionality to invoke REST services easily and parse XML. I also used the documentation of the Connections REST services. If I have time I document later more how I've done it. For now you can read the source code on OpenNTF. I want to thank my colleague Yun Zhi Lin whose code I used as starting point.

On the XSnippet page there is a new icon now to share on Connections.

Want to know more ? Then read the article ….

WebSphere and Open Authorization

2011-12-16T20:38:00.001Z

Saw this on Twitter today, thanks to IBM developerWorks

Using Trust Association Interceptors with WebSphere Application Server to support OAuth tokens

Summary: Are you looking to share access of your protected resources by becoming an OAuth service provider? This article describes how you can use IBM® WebSphere® Application Server (V7.0 and later) with Trust Association Interceptors (TAI) to accept OAuth tokens for authorizing calls from applications or web sites (consumer) to protected resources. TAIs make it possible to support OAuth alongside other token services, such as LTPA, while meeting WS-Security restrictions. This content is part of the IBM WebSphere Developer Technical Journal.

Having presented on WebSphere Portal and Security at the WebSphere User Group back last year, and having delivered a project integrating WebSphere and Active Directory ( via Kerberos and SPNEGO ), this is a subject close to my heart.

My next challenge is to integrate IBM Connections with IBM Tivoli Access Manager ( aka WebSEAL ). That's a job for 2012 ….

There's a bunch of other related material on this topic, including this and this.

Web Content Authoring within a Virtual Portal

2011-12-16T11:10:00.001Z

Having had a number of conversations about Virtual Portals this week, I though this post from Cody Burleson was definitely worth a read.

Though it is not necessary to have a unique WCM Authoring UI per virtual portal, there are some reasons why you might find it useful. Here are three that I can think of:

• Configuring a unique WCM Authoring UI in a virtual portal can allow you to configure specific Authoring Portlet preferences. For example: which libraries are visible to the portlet and relevant to the virtual portal.

• Previewing items from within WCM in a virtual portal context can automatically render the previews inside of the virtual portal's theme.

• Content authors may get confused by switching between the virtual portal and base portal. Directing all access beyond the virtual portal context path can simplify things.

IBM Connections and Desktop Single Sign-On using Microsoft Active Directory, Kerberos and SPNEGO

2011-12-16T11:04:00.001Z

I was fortunate to be asked to present at the Social Connections II event at the most excellent Cardiff University last week.

My chosen topic was the integration between the worlds of IBM and Microsoft, specifically my recent experiences with Active Directory, Kerberos and SPNEGO: -

Understand how to integrate IBM Connections with Active Directory
Understand how to implement desktop single sign-on with IBM Connections
Describe the integration possibilities with Microsoft SharePoint

I've blogged about this subject before, including this and this.

Hope this helps.

Please feel free to ping me if you need further information.

Social Scheduling Now in IBM Connections

2011-12-14T15:58:00.000Z

This from the guru, Mr Luis Benitez Esq

IBM Business Partner Intravision has created a great integration point between OnTime Group Calendar and IBM Connections. If you haven't heard or used OnTime before I suggest you check them out. They provide an awesome add on with a powerful and very slick group calendar interface.

OnTime also allows you to work with group calendars even when you are on the go by providing mobile access from your favorite mobile device.

Social Connections II - My observations

2011-12-10T17:15:00.001Z

I was lucky enough to be invited to attend AND speak at Social Connections, the IBM Connections user group meeting, in Cardiff yesterday - 9 December.

This is the second time that I've attended this event, the inaugural meeting being kindly hosted by The Salvation Army back in July. This time around, Cardiff University were kind enough to host us, including the rather lovely Simon Vaughan, who is definitely a man to watch :-)

The event was well-attended, by customers, Business Partners, and IBMers, with a good 50:50 mix of business and technical.

The presentations were very social, as one might expect, and predominantly focused on the business and social benefits of IBM's collaboration solution, IBM Connections, with a few more technical sessions ( including one by Yours Truly ). The speaker list is here and the sessions listing is here.

Stuart McIntyre was the MC of the event, ably assisted by Sharon "Social Shazza" Bellamy and Lisa "Where's Darren?" Duke.

The event was live-streamed, thanks to the sterling efforts of Mark Calleran , Gaz Rose and the Salvation Army team.

Stuart has promised to upload the presentations to http://socialconnections.info/

The event was rounded off by an absolutely wonderful reception and dinner at Cardiff Castle, including a tour of three of the most gorgeous rooms in the place.

The entire day went smoothly, thanks to the hosts, the organisers and the genuine good nature of all of those attending. It was truly the perfect place to establish "Social Connections" :-)

So, with two excellent events delivered during 2011, in London and Cardiff respectively, I'm looking forward to 2012 - who knows which other UK capital cities are on the agenda, but I know that there's a bloomin' good castle in Edinburgh :-)

Ooops, nearly forgot to mention - if you want to know more about what went on during the day, check out the hashtag #soccnx on Twitter; you don't have to join the site to follow the Tweets from the audience, speakers, sponsors and web-watchers.

Help make Microsoft a Social Business … or, at least, help make Microsoft software more social ...

2011-12-10T15:53:00.001Z

These from Chris Crummey

IBM Connections vs. Microsoft Sharepoint: Social Personal File Management

IBM Collaboration for Microsoft Outlook, Office and SharePoint Part 1 of 3

IBM Business Profiles vs Microsoft, Cisco, Jive, & Salesforce

Louis Richardson - Where ideas come from - livestream -- IBM Smarter Business 2011

Troubleshooting: Node agent monitoring WebSphere Application Servers

2011-12-10T15:45:00.001Z

I saw this today on Twitter, thanks to @IBM_AppServer

Troubleshooting for problems with the node agent monitoring an IBM® WebSphere® Application Server. This should help address common issues with this component before calling IBM Support and save you time.

Worth a look next time ….

A pearl of wisdom from George Bernard Shaw here at Social Connections Ii

2011-12-09T12:12:00.000Z

"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas."

Thanks to Louis Richardson for sharing

Searching Profiles programmatically

2011-12-08T18:48:00.003Z

Mikkel Heisterberg Tweeted about this earlier, and it's a subject close to my heart, having done a lot of work with IBM Connections Profiles in the past few months, mainly via IBM Tivoli Directory Integrator and the ProfilesService.UpdateUser() command.

As part of IBM Connections you will find a big REST API that allows you to work with almost every part of Connections such as searching for profiles, managing files and working with communities. As part of our new product (see my previous post) I'm doing a lot with this API. Right now one of my favorite wiki documents is "Searching Profiles programmatically".

Demo of the IBM Content Templates Catalog

2011-12-08T18:48:00.001Z

Cody Burleson posted this on Twitter earlier today, and I thought it was definitely worth a look - especially as I'd been talking about the Content Templates Catalog ( aka CTC ) to a colleague earlier this week.

Demo of the IBM Content Templates Catalog: youtube.com/IBMXWebX

Using Trust Association Interceptors with WebSphere Application Server to support OAuth tokens

2011-12-08T10:45:00.000Z

I saw this on Twitter this morning, thanks to the @LotusEducation account which is ably run by Sonia Malik and Lorraine Ludwicki.

Summary: Are you looking to share access of your protected resources by becoming an OAuth service provider? This article describes how you can use IBM® WebSphere® Application Server (V7.0 and later) with Trust Association Interceptors (TAI) to accept OAuth tokens for authorizing calls from applications or web sites (consumer) to protected resources. TAIs make it possible to support OAuth alongside other token services, such as LTPA, while meeting WS-Security restrictions. This content is part of the IBM WebSphere Developer Technical Journal.

Intoduction: OAuth (Open Authorization) is an open protocol that permits secure API authorization from desktop and web applications (consumers) by enabling the consumer to act on behalf of a user without requiring the user to provide sensitive account information, such as username and password.

An example of a consumer might be a company that wants to aggregate all of its customers' photos onto a single web page. Rather than asking every user to enter the username/password for each of their photo sharing accounts, the company can act as a consumer and each of the photo sharing web sites can act as service providers and exchange OAuth tokens. This gives the photo aggregator company access to a user's photos without the user potentially compromising the security of their account by giving out username/password information.

WebSphere Portal and IBM Web Content Manager - Search

2011-12-07T11:08:00.000Z

Having blogged about Portal search in the past, and having had recent discussions IBM Web Content Manager and Google Search Appliance integration with a colleague earlier, I found and shared these two links

Home > Redbooks Wiki: Creating External Web sites with WebSphere Portal > Search

Table of Contents

• 1 Search engine optimization

• 1.1 Overview of Search Engine Optimization

• 1.2 Definition of terms

• 1.3 How search engines work

• 1.4 More on Google

• 1.4.1 Google optimization basics

• 1.4.2 Other factors that will affect your ranking

• 1.4.3 Sitemaps

• 1.5 How Internet search engines work

• 1.6 Challenges with portal crawlability

• 1.7 Portal crawler awareness and normalized URLs

• 1.8 Sitemap portlet

• 1.9 External crawlability of Portal with WCM content

• 1.10 Web 2 0 and search

• 1.11 Case study using the sitemap portlet

• 1.11.1 Adding sitemap portlet to a page outside of the default navigation

• 1.11.2 Adding sitemap portlet to the theme

• 1.11.3 Configuring robots directives

• 1.11.4 Reconfiguring nrmalized URLs to include request parameters

• 2 Searching and crawling portal and other sites with portal search

• 2.1 Understanding portal search

• 2.2 Portal search architecture

• 2.3 Search services collections and scopes

• 2.4 Search and administration user interfaces

• 2.4.1 Search center

• 2.4.2 Search and browse

• 2.4.3 Suggested links

• 2.4.4 External links

• 2.4.5 Manage search

• 2.4.6 Portal Search Toolbox

• 2.4.7 WCM search component

• 2.5 Portal search APIs

• 2.6 Seedlist framework

• 2.7 Crawlability of portal with WCM content

• 2.8 Categorization and taxonomy

• 2.9 Case study crawling the portal and displaying search results

• 2.9.1 Suggested links

• 2.9.2 External search results

IBM WebSphere Portal and Lotus Web Content Management search: Essentials and best practices

1 Basics of search engine functionality
2 Search services
3 Best practices
4 Conclusion
5 Resources
6 About the author

This is also worth a look

Knowledge Collection: WebSphere Portal search

Resolution – 404 errors accessing WCM content through the POC Servlet (/wps/mypoc/…)

2011-12-05T09:05:00.001Z

Am reposting this from Cody Burleson as it has a strong linkage to a project on which I was engaged earlier this year - in my case, we were using the Google Search Appliance to index WCM, in Cody's case, they were using IBM Omnifind.

Recently, we had a problem where WCM URLs in OmniFind search results (generated by the Portal seedlist mechanism) were giving 404 errors when clicked. These are URLs that contain /wps/mypoc in the URL. This page documents a solution that worked for us.

However, it's definitely worth a read ….

A surfeit of VMware and Linux goodies … including running VMware ESXi from a USB Key :-)

2011-12-05T08:59:00.001Z

Whilst lurking around the blogroll on this very site, I noticed an interesting post from Graham Bucknell in IBM Australia. The title Unable to install VMware Tools – no such file or directory caught my eye, the content even more so, especially when he goes on to talk about: -

Now I use the very cool repo/unmanaged solution for the majority of our guests, since they run RHEL 6. If you don't know about this check it out here. If you use RHEL kickstart, it is trivial to make new guests come out with tools installed and the tools repo enabled. Anyway, enough gushing, just check it out if you use RHEL on VMware.

and: -

I should note before getting into this, that I am running ESXi from a USB key.

both of which look (a) sweet and (b) interesting.

I shall now go and read a bit more …..

Michael Sampson - Collaboration Roadmap: You've Got the Technology — Now What?

2011-12-05T08:48:00.001Z

Having thoroughly enjoyed Michael's earlier book: -

User Adoption Strategies: Shifting Second Wave People to New Collaboration Technology when it came out last year ( thanks to ThisWeekInLotus from whom I received it as a prize !! ), I'm going to be putting in an order for Michael's latest book: -

Collaboration Roadmap: You've Got the Technology — Now What?

Many firms are struggling with collaboration technology. Either it's been installed and is not being used, or they are not sure what to do. How do you make great decisions about collaboration technology and its use within organizations?

Collaboration Roadmap answers both questions.

- Introduction and Overview
- Foreword - by Ed Brill (IBM Corporation)
- Chapter 1. Setting the Scene
- Chapter 2. Really Understand the Technology
- Chapter 3. Outline the Vision
- Chapter 4. Accept Technology is a Small Factor in Success
- Chapter 5. Determine Your Governance Approach
- Chapter 6. Make Every Effort to Engage the Business
- Chapter 7. Apply Intentional Energy to Adoption
- Chapter 8. Pursue Increasing Value
- Chapter 9. Your Collaboration Journey
- Appendix 1. Collaboration Theory

Collaboration Roadmap packs 15 years of experience into 320 pages.

If you or your organisation are looking at collaboration technology, or considering its implementation, it's definitely worth a look.

PS Just to remind you, "...The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions. My blog is PERSONAL…."

Using packet trace tools iptrace, snoop, tcpdump, wireshark, and nettl

2011-12-05T08:41:00.000Z

Saw this Technote float by my Twitter river of news this morning, kindly tweeted by the IBM_AppServer account

It was ostensibly writing for WebSphere Edge Server, but is going to be relevant to many other use cases as well.

In essence, it provides a very brief description of the monitoring tools available on various flavours of Unix … oh, and Windows as well.

Well worth bookmarking, it may just save your ~~life~~ project.

It also allows you to feel like a character from the Matrix film, although don't start using nmap at work, kids, unless you know precisely what you're doing :-)

I  Lotus on my iPhone :-)

2011-11-25T19:56:00.001Z

Just downloaded three new apps for my shiny new iPhone

IBM Lotus Sametime

IBM Lotus Notes Traveler Companion

IBM Connections

I also noticed that the Connections app now supports WordPerfect documents via their app - which is nice - I'm sure that someone on Twitter mentioned a need for WP on the iPad or iPhone recently ?

Understanding IBM Tivoli Directory Integrator for IBM Lotus Connections 3.0: A getting started guide

2011-11-24T16:11:00.000Z

One of my IBM colleagues drew my attention to this: -

The purpose of this white paper is to give users a good understanding of how IBM Lotus® Connections uses IBM Tivoli® Directory Integrator, so they can understand how to look at the Lotus Connections AssemblyLines and understand what they do.

In this white paper

• Introduction
• Installation
• Out-of-the-box Profiles population
• Setting up the development environment
• Testing your configuration
• Logging/tracing
• Connections 2.5 "Best Practice" approach
• Connections 3.0 "Best Practice" approach
• Custom delete logic
• New Connectors
• Sample files
• Conclusion
• Appendix: Comprehensive overview of all notifications in Lotus Connections 3.0
• Resources
• About the authors

Definitely worth a read ….

Understanding HTTP plug-in failover in a clustered environment

2011-11-21T10:31:00.000Z

This is another of my "file it away because I know it'll be useful in about 5 minutes time" links: -

Understanding HTTP plug-in failover in a clustered environment

Problem(Abstract)

After setting up the HTTP plug-in for load balancing in a clustered IBM® WebSphere® environment, the HTTP plug-in is not performing failover in a timely manner or at all when a cluster member becomes unavailable.

Cause

In most cases, the preceding behavior is observed because of a misunderstanding of how HTTP plug-in failover works or might be due to an improper configuration. Also, the type of Web server (multi-threaded versus single threaded) being used can affect this behaviour.

Lotus Symphony Viewer up in the Android Market

2011-11-21T10:29:00.001Z

Now I don't have any Android devices, being an acolyte of the Temple of Apple, with two iOS devices, and a 3rd on the way.

However, this looks to be rather shiny.

With the IBM® Lotus® Symphony Viewer you can view Open Document Format (ODF) text documents, presentations, and spreadsheets downloaded to your phone or tablet without the need for any network connection. Launch the viewer directly from the application icon and choose an ODF file to view, or select Symphony when you want to view an ODF document from another application such as IBM Lotus Notes® Traveler.
Connect a projector dongle to your phone or tablet to use the viewer as your presentation source

Got an Android phone or tablet ? Use Open Document Format ? Then get some of this ….

Now ask me what I use to view ODF documents on the iPad ?

Customizing IBM Lotus Connections 3.0 email digests and notifications

2011-11-16T19:51:00.001Z

For my current project, I was looking at a mechanism to customise the look, feel and content of IBM Connections email notifications.

This article - Customizing IBM Lotus Connections 3.0 email digests and notifications

Summary: One of the primary new features of IBM Lotus Connections 3.0 is the email digest capability, which provides personalized daily and weekly newsletters that are generated based on the activities and updates in the user's social network. This white paper describes how to customize the daily and weekly digests emails, ranging from changing the look and feel of emails to more complex customizations such as adding your company-specific content to the email digests. In addition, this paper also covers customizing individual notification emails sent by the Lotus Connections services.

written by Vincent Burckhardt and Lorenzo Notarfonzo looks to be just the ticket.

Definitely worth a peek ….

WebSEAL and WebSphere Portal - An Integration Pattern

2011-11-16T11:48:00.001Z

Saw this on Stephen Swann's blog

Thanks to Niall, I've been encouraged to provide my thoughts on how Single Sign On from WebSEAL to WebSphere Portal can be achieved.

In reality, the integration pattern is one of the simpler patterns to adopt. I say simple, but as Niall alluded to when asking me to provide my thoughts on the issue he quite rightly stated that there are at least two approaches to the problem - the LTPA approach and the TAI approach.

Definitely worth a read, as he's a pretty sharp cookie ( if that's even possible ).

IBM Web Experience Factory - My First Time Out

2011-11-16T11:43:00.001Z

I was updating a WebSphere Portal Express v7 VMware image for a colleague, using an existing VM built using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5.

Having updated Portal to use the latest 7.0.0.1 CF009 codebase, I also wanted to include the most recent version of WebSphere Portlet Factory Designer, now known as IBM Web Experience Factory.

Having sought and downloaded the product: -

IBM Web Experience Factory V7.0.1 Multiplatform Multilingual (CI1XDML)

as CI1XDML.zip and the corresponding fix pack ( WEF_7012_FIXPACK.zip ), I also needed a copy of Eclipse into which to install WEF.

For some strange reason, IBM includes Eclipse with WEF on Windows, but not on Unix :-(

Looking at the System Requirements document, I noticed that Eclipse 3.6.1 is required.

This led me to the Eclipse.org website, from where I downloaded Eclipse JEE Helios.

This gave me a file - eclipse-jee-helios-linux-gtk.tar.gz - which I installed by simply expanding it ( via tar xvzf ) into its own directory - /opt/IBM/WebSphere/PortletFactory/eclipse.

Having done this, I was able to install and fix pack WEF, and create portlets to my heart's content.



Lotus Traveler workshop. Dublin 6th December

2011-11-14T13:24:00.001Z

This from Paul Mooney

We have never ran the Traveler workshop in Dublin, so with the end of the year rapidly closing in, it's about time to rectify that.

The Lotus Traveler deep dive workshop will be held in the Conrad Hotel in Dublin on the 6th December. Details here. Register here.

New backup & restore tool for IBM Connections Communities

2011-11-09T18:40:00.001Z

Saw this posted by Suzanne Livingston on synch.rono.us earlier, and thought "Wow, that's shiny, oh so shiny"

There is a new asset in the Greenhouse Catalog for IBM Connections users.

IBM Connections community backup and restore is an easy way to back up and restore Connections communities.

Features:

• Back up a Connections community to a zip file. Backs up Members, Forums, Feeds, Bookmarks, Activities, Blog, Wiki, and Files in a community, interactively or via script.

• Restore a Connections community from the backup zip file. Restores Members, Forums, Feeds, Bookmarks, Activities, and Blog to a community.

• NOTE: Files and Wiki pages cannot be automatically restored.

Now we need some of that :-)

Nice one, folks

IBM Connections – Incorrect Global Moderation Alerts

2011-11-08T12:52:00.001Z

This from Jon Halman's blog, one which I regularly follow for the gems, nay pearls, of wisdom

I've been working with a customer recently on Moderation within IBM Connections 3.0.1 and we discovered an issue where alerts are being sent to Global Moderators when they shouldn't.

In this scenario pre-moderation (content approval) is disabled but post-moderation (content flagging) is enabled and Blog owners (both Community and standalone) are allowed to moderate comments on their blogs.

If a Blog owner enables moderation on comments then they will receive a notification asking them to approve (or not) comments when they are submitted. The problem is that the Global Moderators also receive this notification which they shouldn't (as pre-moderation is disabled).

Want to know more ?

Then check out the blog post ...

Integrating Lotus Connections V3 with WebSphere Portal Search V7

2011-11-08T11:35:00.001Z

Saw this in two places this morning ….

(i) My colleague, Cali, bookmarked it on our internal IBM Connections 3.0.1 deployment, which meant that the IBM Lotus Connections alerts plugin for Lotus Notes told me about it almost immediately ….

(ii) My other colleague, Stu, Tweeted about it, within a few seconds

Ah, serendipity, how sweeeeeet you are ….

Here's the TOC

• 1 Prerequisites

• 2 Preparation

• 3 Lotus Connections

• 4 WebSphere Portal Search

• 5 Procedures

• 5.1 Creating Lotus Connections crawlers

• 5.2 Creating a content source

• 5.3 Troubleshooting

• 5.4 Crawling the content

• 5.5 Starting the content sources manually

Worth a read ….

Cateye HL-EL530 Cycle Light

2011-11-07T19:20:00.001Z

Well, I've just taken delivery of a new front-light for my bicycle - a Cateye HL-EL530.

Haven't yet had a chance to road-test it, but I nearly fell at the first hurdle when I couldn't open the darn light to fit the batteries.

However, the internet had the answer, the internet is my friend.

Or, to be more specific, this YouTube video did the job - thanks to CycleWare for posting it.

Essentially, it's all in the twist …..

Will post a more full review tomorrow ...

Import pictures from Domino database into IBM Connections

2011-11-06T18:53:00.001Z

Saw this on Robert Farstad's blog, and thought it was worth a re-post

Many organizations who buy IBM Connections already have a employee pictures database in Domino of some sort.

I do believe this would work for all kinds of domino databases, either if you are using the names.nsf or some other picture DB. You just have to find the correct fields in the domino db you are using.

In this scenario, the Iterator is a standalone pictures DB, called pictures.nsf. The field "bc_mapping" contains an email-address of the user. This is used as the link-criteria when doing a lookup to the employee table. The Employee table then gives us the "PROF_KEY" value for that profile/employee, which I then use in the link criteria in the Photo table.

Enabling and Disabling SSL Redirection in IBM WebSphere Portal

2011-11-04T19:17:00.001Z

This is something that came up in a recent project, where we noticed that we were unable to access our WebSphere Portal environment whilst the front-end IBM HTTP Server (IHS) servers were down.

This is a bit of a PITA as we wanted to access the Portal instance directly on, say, TCP port 10039/10040 whilst IHS was down(ish), allowing us to do systems maintenance whilst the end-users get a nice friendly "Closed for maintenance" page.

When I dug into the configuration with the SME who built Portal for us, it turned out he'd kindly hardened Portal for us, using the redirect.login.ssl and host.port.https Custom Properties for the WP ConfigService Resource Environment Provider.

This Wiki post says it far more elegantly than can I.

Enjoy

5 Reasons to Attend Lotusphere 2012

2011-11-03T20:13:00.000Z

IBM Sametime Standard 8.5.2 - Port allocations for NAT traversal

2011-11-03T11:47:00.001Z

Saw this on my IBM Connections homepage this morning, thanks to the Recommendations widget on the Updates page, and thought it might be of use to me ( and others ) at some point down the line.

The Sametime® Connect client will dynamically allocate UDP ports as a result of ICE negotiation.

Ephemeral ports are allocated on clients and are assigned by the client's operating system. Ephemeral ports are usually in the range of 1024-5000 and are dynamically re-allocated by the operating system as needed. Proper function of the Sametime NAT traversal feature requires open access to UDP ports on both the TURN server and the Media Manager's Packet Switcher.

Note: UDP is the preferred protocol; TCP should be used only if UDP is not available (for example, due to company policy).

Introduction to IBM Lotus Domino 8.5 XPages - Available on OpenCourseWare on the IBM Lotus Greenhouse

2011-11-03T11:33:00.001Z

Saw this in my inbox this morning, and thought it worth sharing.

Not sure if I have the brain-power to learn XPages right now, but it's definitely hot technology, being used in many IBM Lotus products, including Quickr for Lotus Domino.

If you're interested in knowing more, check this out: -

The OpenCourseWare (OCW) movement, part of the larger Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, was pioneered 10 years ago when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched its OpenCourseWare initiative, making educational course materials in digital form available on a free and open basis to all.

ISSL Education is pleased to announce an OpenCourseWare Pilot in IBM Lotus Greenhouse. The free courseware available, as part of this pilot is the material used in the instruction of Course D8L55 - Introduction to IBM Lotus Domino 8.5 XPages. The timing for building Social Business application development skills that leverage XPages technology could not be better - especially with the recent announcement of the Domino 8.5.3 XWork Server.

Here are a few key points about the OpenCourseWare Pilot :

Materials usage is intended for those who would like to setup their own environment and self-instruct on XPages.

Classroom and self-paced eLearning versions of this course are available (at the public list price) for individuals who prefer formal instruction and lab support.

A variety of additional XPages Application Development courses are available for a fee to continue your study of this technology and further develop your skills.

To access and download the free courseware you need to be a member of Lotus Greenhouse.

Already a member? Login to access "Introduction to IBM Lotus Domino 8.5 XPages" courseware.

With the launch of this pilot, ISSL Education takes a step forward to advance informal learning through the sharing and use of free, quality educational materials to build skills in the marketplace.

Please share this announcement with peers, partners and clients.

Thank You!