LotusKnows - When should I use Connections and when should I use Quickr ?

A very useful re-post from my friend, Darren  Adams, about a blog post that Louis Richardson, IBM's Worldwide Sales Executive for Social Software, on when one should use Connections and when one should use Quickr.

I've been asked this question many times before - my elevator version is that Quickr is for structured team collaboration and that Connections is for unstructured one-to-one and one-to-many collaboration, but Louis has done a far far better job of explaining it: -

"...
Within IBM's social software offerings, we have a couple of great products (Lotus Connections and Lotus Quickr). While on first glance, they may appear to serve similar functions, they each have their own strengths in meeting certain social business needs. You may have heard this question around which one to use or maybe you've pondered this question yourself. If you look feature vs. feature, you could get confused, but it's really not that difficult. Let's take a minute and think about this from another perspective.
...

Here's the original post - have a read, and  comment accordingly.

Suspend and Resume using Ubuntu 10.10 on the Lenovo Thinkpad W500

Following an upgrade to Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) and a series of kernel updates, I'm now finding that the Thinkpad fails to suspend correctly each time.

Regardless of whether I initiate suspend using the [Fn] + [F4] key sequence, or by closing the lid, or similar, I get the same problem.

The screen goes blank, and the half-moon suspend indicator flashes. At the time, I get a blank screen, and cannot switch to any other virtual terminal to look at dmesg, logs etc.

When this first happened, I left it for an hour but it didn't suspend. I ended up having to power off completely, which is a pain.

The PC is a 4061-BL5 Lenovo ThinkPad W500 and I have the 2.6.35-24-generic-pae kernel.

I have seen this: -

<snip>
When the XHCI module is loaded for USB 3.0 operation the system cannot suspend.

Manually unloading XHCI will allow suspend to complete normally. To avoid future suspend problems, the workaround is to add SUSPEND_MODULES="xhci-hcd" to /etc/pm/config.d/unload_module then the system can suspend normally. (522998)
</snip>

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MaverickMeerkat/ReleaseNotes

but I'm not using USB 3.0 ( I don't think the W500 supports it ).

I've also seen references to problems with suspend/resume when using the SD-card reader, but again this doesn't apply.

Digging further, with a lot of assistance from other Ubuntu-on-Thinkpad users, I found that the problem ONLY occurred if I used the integrated Intel graphics adapter, which is reported as follows by the command lspci | grep -i "vga": -

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)

If I switched to the OTHER graphics card, the discrete ATI Radeon card: -

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Mobility Radeon HD 3650

via the BIOS, then suspend/resume work OK.

Sadly, however, the ATI card draws a LOT more power, meaning that the battery life is very poor, whereas the Intel card is much more efficient.

Thankfully one of my colleagues found the following bug report on Launchpad: -

Suspend problem with Maverick on ThinkPad W500

and posted this script: -

/etc/pm/sleep.d/20_chvt_mjf

#!/bin/sh
case "$1" in
suspend) chvt 1; ;;
resume) chvt 7; ;;
esac
return 0

I created this script, set it as executable ( via the command chmod a+x /etc/pm/sleep.d/20_chvt_mjf ) and then tried the suspend process again.

This appears to have done the job. I'll keep an eye on it, and report back.

So, in conclusion, using the integrated Intel graphics option , I can safely suspend/resume and also get a better battery life.

We shall see ...

Project Vulcan update: The IBM Collaboration Toolkit is out - aka Vulcan "developer APIs" released

From Ed's blog: -

<snip>
At Lotusphere 2010, IBM announced Project Vulcan, a vision for the future of our collaborative solutions.  While Project Vulcan isn't a product, it is a blueprint for where the Lotus products are going--and you'll hear more about that progress at Lotusphere 2011 in January.

Meanwhile, one of the commitments made at Lotusphere was that we would release Project Vulcan "developer APIs" by the end of 2010.  That objective has been met through delivery of the IBM Collaboration Toolkit.  Now available to an initial community of ISVs and business partners on Lotus Greenhouse, the toolkit provides documentation on how to develop using the Toolkit APIs, some sample gadgets, and methods for polling for event information.  All of this feeds into the activity stream, a key component of the Project Vulcan user experience.
</snip>

Click here for more details.

Top 10 64-bit IBM WebSphere Application Server FAQ

"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."

[PDF] Top 10 64-bit IBM WebSphere Application Server FAQ

IBM HTTP Server - Error "undefined symbol: apr_sockaddr_port_get" seen when starting IHS on Linux

Having installed IBM HTTP Server 7.0.0.11 and the corresponding version of the WebSphere Plugin, I started seeing the following: -

httpd: Syntax error on line 918 of /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/conf/httpd.conf: Cannot load /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/Plugins/bin/mod_was_ap20_http.so into server: /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/Plugins/bin/mod_was_ap20_http.so: undefined symbol: apr_sockaddr_port_get

when I tried to start the web server using the command: -

/opt/IBM/HTTPServer/bin/apachectl start

I had the following lines in my httpd.conf: -

LoadModule was_ap20_module /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/Plugins/bin/mod_was_ap20_http.so
WebSpherePluginConfig /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/Plugins/config/IHS7/plugin-cfg.xml

LoadModule ibm_ssl_module modules/mod_ibm_ssl.so
<IfModule mod_ibm_ssl.c>
        Listen 0.0.0.0:443
        <VirtualHost *:443>
                ServerName connections.lcboot.issl
                DocumentRoot /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/htdocs/en_US
                SSLEnable
        </VirtualHost>
</IfModule>
SSLDisable
Keyfile "/opt/IBM/HTTPServer/Plugins/config/IHS7/plugin-key.kdb"
SSLStashFile "/opt/IBM/HTTPServer/Plugins/config/IHS7/plugin-key.sth"

After a bit of a Googling, I found this forum post  which mentioned: -

did you check that the path is correct. Is the mod_was_ap20_http.so file found at /opt/ibmIHS/HTTPServer/Plugins/bin?

Also since you are using IHS v7, are you also using v7 of WAS and the Plugin? Or are you using v6 or v6.1 etc?

If you are using WAS and Plugin v7..then you should be using mod_was_ap22_http.so instead of ap20.

I checked, and I had both versions of the module: -

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 480735 Dec 22 08:05 /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/Plugins/bin/mod_was_ap22_http.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 480738 Dec 22 08:05 /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/Plugins/bin/mod_was_ap20_http.so

so I amended my httpd.conf as follows: -

LoadModule was_ap22_module /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/Plugins/bin/mod_was_ap22_http.so
WebSpherePluginConfig /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/Plugins/config/IHS7/plugin-cfg.xml

LoadModule ibm_ssl_module modules/mod_ibm_ssl.so
<IfModule mod_ibm_ssl.c>
        Listen 0.0.0.0:443
        <VirtualHost *:443>
                ServerName connections.lcboot.issl
                DocumentRoot /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/htdocs/en_US
                SSLEnable
        </VirtualHost>
</IfModule>
SSLDisable
Keyfile "/opt/IBM/HTTPServer/Plugins/config/IHS7/plugin-key.kdb"
SSLStashFile "/opt/IBM/HTTPServer/Plugins/config/IHS7/plugin-key.sth"

and I can now start IHS without any problems.

Another day, another lesson learnt.

I *love* my job :-)

Lotus Connections - Problems with Document Indexing Service on Lotus Connections 3.0 on Linux

One of my mates, Jon, was seeing the following set of exceptions with Lotus Connections 3.0: -

[12/20/10 18:21:00:649 GMT] 00000051 DocumentIndex E com.ibm.lotus.connections.search.service.files.impl.DocumentIndexingServiceImpl isEnvironmentValid CLFRW0493E: Unable to start the document indexing service, please ensure that the PATH environment variable has been set.
[12/20/10 18:21:00:650 GMT] 00000051 DocumentIndex E com.ibm.lotus.connections.search.service.files.impl.DocumentIndexingServiceImpl isEnvironmentValid - PATH:  /opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/java/ibm_bin:/opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/java/bin/:/opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/java/jre/bin:/opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/java/ibm_bin:/opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/java/bin/:/opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/java/jre/bin:/opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/java/ibm_bin:/opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/java/bin/:/opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/java/jre/bin:/usr/kerberos/sbin:/usr/kerberos/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/root/bin
[12/20/10 18:21:00:651 GMT] 00000051 DocumentIndex E com.ibm.lotus.connections.search.service.files.impl.DocumentIndexingServiceImpl isEnvironmentValid CLFRW0493E: Unable to start the document indexing service, please ensure that the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable has been set.
[12/20/10 18:21:00:652 GMT] 00000051 DocumentIndex E com.ibm.lotus.connections.search.service.files.impl.DocumentIndexingServiceImpl isEnvironmentValid - LD_LIBRARY_PATH:  /opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/bin:
[12/20/10 18:21:00:652 GMT] 00000051 DocumentIndex I com.ibm.lotus.connections.search.service.files.impl.DocumentIndexingServiceImpl isEnvironmentValid:  false

At my suggestion, Jon set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH and PATH variables: -


export PATH=/opt/IBM/LotusConnections/data/search/stellent/dcs/oiexport:$PATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/opt/IBM/LotusConnections/data/search/stellent/dcs/oiexport


This came from some previous experience with Lotus Quickr and also the Lotus Connections 2.5 Information Centre here.

Hope this is of use to someone else out there :-)

Lotus Connections 3 - More problems with Profiles Population Wizard with DB2 on Windows

Following Otto's comments on my TDI7 on Linux post , one of my colleagues, Rob, saw a similar problem today, using DB2 9.7 on a Windows platform.

Like Otto, he saw: -

Cause: com.ibm.db2.jcc.am.SqlSyntaxErrorException: DB2 SQL Error: SQLCODE=-551, SQLSTATE=42501, SQLERRMC=DB2ADMIN;SELECT;EMPINST.PROF_CONSTANTS, DRIVER=3.59.81

In Rob's case, the problem appeared to be due to the fact that he was using the db2admin account rather than the lcuser account.

He'd performed a quick installation of DB2 and the fix pack, and didn't have the DB2ADM and DB2USERS groups created.

Therefore, the db2admin account was a member of the Administrators group.

For Rob, the solution was to create a new user, lcuser, and then add it to the Administrators group.

In conclusion, follow the documentation and create a lcuser account which can then be given DB2 privileges via the DB2USERS group.

This actually makes sense - would you really want your WebSphere servers ( Connections ) connecting to DB2 as the super-user ? No, of course you wouldn't :-)

*UPDATE* Rob also mentioned that, apart from the above recommendation to use lcuser for the Profiles Population Wizard, the database  wizard ( DBWizard ) must be run using the db2admin account on Windows - this is a database administrator account, whereas Lotus Connections connects, via WAS/JDBC, to DB2 as a user ( lcuser ).