What's the first rule ?

No, not Fight Club, I mean the first rule of anything technical.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. This is especially true if it's the night before a major customer demonstration, and you don't have a whole load of time to deploy a new VMware image and get it back to the point you were at ( AND YOU DON'T HAVE A DARN BACKUP ).

My Connections demo was looking really really sweet, and was working like a dream. Bearing in mind that it's a VMware running Connections, Domino and Sametime, I was really really impressed.

Then I noticed that, for some reason, the SMTP notification wasn't working ( or wasn't enabled - have yet to check ).

So what did I do ? I enabled SMTP within the Domino Directory, and thought nothing more. I stopped the Domino server ( ignoring the NSD that was generated on the shutdown - THERE WAS MY FIRST WARNING ).

This morning, I powered up the VM, started Domino, started WebSphere Application Server ( on which Connections runs ), and then started my Notes and Sametime Connect clients ( on the host Windows OS ).

"Hmmm, that's funny", I mused, "I wonder why Sametime is failing to connect"

"Hmmm again, I wonder why I cannot access Domino on port 8080"

"Oh dearie me, I wonder why I cannot even access the Domino web admin console"

At that point, I flipped over to the Domino console, and noticed lots of Sametime-related error messages - THAT WAS MY SECOND WARNING.

Thankfully, I remembered what I'd done and thought to myself - I wonder if a Sametime server can have SMTP enabled ? Guessing what I'd done, I rebooted the VM ( 'cos Domino was way hosed, and I couldn't even get to the console's command line ) and managed to start Domino in a kinda restricted way ( I used the server rather than ststart ).

Once Domino was up, I was able to get in with webadmin and disable SMTP. I stopped Domino, and restarted using ststart and all was well.

At that point, I sighed with relief, struck myself firmly around the head with a RPG developer's guide, and STOPPED/BACKED UP THE VM.

Moral of the story - IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING, DO NOTHING

Dave