Lotushints » Lotus Domino

Sametime 8.5 rant

Vladimir Kocjancic — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 06:00:05 +0000

As upgrading to Domino 8.5.1 went so fine, it is time to upgrade our only Sametime server. Yes. Only Sametime server. We are a company of 80 and there is really no need for something more. Specially as we use WebEx as a meeting and conferencing software.

Thanks to Lars Berntrop-Bos and the news of Domino 8.5.1 I went to download it from IBM partner site. During the download I remembered that the last time I did a Domino upgrade on Linux, our Sametime stopped working as upgrade overridden / deleted some Sametime files and folders. Hence, for the reasons specified in previous upgrade article, I decided to also download newest Sametime 8.5.

In the past, installing Sametime was almost a piece of cake. You installed Domino server, installed Sametime, did some configuration voodoo and you were done. Now, I am presented with 7 or 8 binaries to download. What on earth is System Console Server? Why do I need separate install for 7 other things that were mostly included in one binary in previous release? Why do I need WebSphere Application Server? And I am not even starting on DB2.

Thankfully, uncle Google led me to this blog, where all possible options are described in detail. Now, apparently, to run all new and shiny features, you need at least two servers. Most likely because mixing Domino and Websphere Application Server is not a good idea if not impossible. If you are willing to sacrifice all new and cool meeting and conferencing features, you can keep your one dedicated server and run Sametime 8.5 Classic.

My real question is, what was IBM thinking? I get that separating each and every major feature of Sametime may mean better performance, but I really cannot see smaller companies (up to 150 employees) sacrificing at least one additional server for the sake of running a simple messaging and meeting application. Specially not those (like the one I work at) that already use other meeting and conferencing software. How can I go to my boss and tell him that we need Sametime for meeting and collaboration, when it takes more resources than existing implementation of competitive software? Also, integrating WAS as a framework? Really?

Phew… now with that off my chest, I am off to prepare a plan of upgrading…

Upgrading to 8.5.1

Vladimir Kocjancic — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 06:00:41 +0000

Come end of last week, we started upgrading our servers to release 8.5.1. I did test upgrade of our development server couple of days back and find it incredibly easy. All test servers were installed in some 15 minutes. Without a glitch. Yeay for us and let’s go upgrade our production servers.

First in line were our internal servers. It took my colleague a significant amount (and by significant, I mean up to 5 times what was our worst case prediction) of time to upgrade. Upgrade went without a glitch. Problem was, that one server couldn’t start up JVM anymore and both internal servers were now failing to log people in. First was solved by copying JVM from one of our 8.5.1 servers. Second, was a tedious task of finding an option to disable SSO using AD instead of Notes Address Book.

With that sorted and running for several days, it was time to start upgrading remaining servers. One of them runs on 64 bits, btw. Install went fine, quick and did not enable SSO with AD. Hurrah! Other servers (32-bit ones) were not as kind. All failed to work after starting for the first time. Seemed to be some problem with java controller. Disabled it and ran the server. Failed. I then performed an upgrade again, at which point, install program started bitching as windows service for Domino Server was already of the same version. Ignoring that, I ran the server again. Nope, service shut down with erra again. I then disabled java controller at start up and started the server, only to quit it as soon as it was fully operational. Why? To enable java controller. After performing that task, I started the service, again, and then it finally worked. Yipi!

The only server remaining on 8.0.2 is our Sametime server, which runs on Linux. As far as I know, 8.5.1 is still not out for RHEL.

Lotus Notes 8.5.1

Vladimir Kocjancic — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 06:00:47 +0000

With the abundance of posts out there, I thought I would chip in my 5 cents worth. Yes, I know I am a bit late.

Release 8.5.1 is for LotusScript developer everything he could ever hope for. Specially if you are into OO programming. Finally you don’t have to check your old classes what parameters they take, you can easily locate them by going to class definition and helper works. Now, you have really no excuse to start OO development in LotusScript.

On the other hand, 8.5.1 introduced some strange bugs. My colleague found an interesting bug while editing forms. For some reason, formula wasn’t saved when the document was. I think he solved it by removing formula completely and then re-pasting it back. Another funny thing is code formatting. Still not working properly. Hope to see it solved in 8.5.2.

Don’t get me wrong. I take 8.5.1 over any release any day.

What not to do in multi-domain evnironment

Vladimir Kocjancic — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:00:25 +0000

There is one thing you oughtn’t do in multi-domain environment. Ever. We did it, as it was needed to successfully connect Cisco Click-to-call plug-in for Sametime with Cisco Presence server.

What is it?

Don’t change UserId in names.nsf database. OK. So I am not entirely truthful. You can do that, but make sure you add previous UserId to Username field. But if you don’t, in best case, you can expect angry calls from your users, as e-mails from alternative domains will not be delivered to them. That’s your best case. Worst case is, no one will know and you will lose customers. Lucky for us, we had best case scenario.

System time is not in sync with Domino time

Vladimir Kocjancic — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 07:00:42 +0000

A funny thing happened to our servers on multiple occasions. Server system time was not equal to Domino server time. Some times they were even as much as 5 minutes apart.

After contacting IBM support and filling that standard questionnaire, they provided us with a link to knowledge-base article containing a solution.

To summarize an article…

1) If you are running 8.0.2, install fix-pack 1 immediately. This will solve the issue.

2) If you are running inferior versions, you can use SERVER_TIMESYNC_INTERVAL ini file parameter. Values are:

SERVER_TIMESYNC_INTERVAL = 1 – every 5min (default)
SERVER_TIMESYNC_INTERVAL = 2 – every 1min
SERVER_TIMESYNC_INTERVAL = 3 – every 60min
SERVER_DISABLE_TIMESYNC = 1 – disable polling

Remember to restart the server after applying this setting.

Security Certificate expiration in Lotus Domino on May 18th 2009

Vladimir Kocjancic — Thu, 07 May 2009 05:08:06 +0000

Got this e-mail from IBM Notes & Domino team todayand thought it worthy of sharing with public…

What is happening
The certificate for some Java applets in Lotus Domino 6.5.x, Domino 7.0.x, Domino 8.0.x, and Domino 8.5 have an expiration date of May 18, 2009. Starting May 19th, Web users will see a dialog with a message similar to one of the following when loading a Web page that contains a Java applet from the Domino server:

“The digital signature was generated with a trusted certificate but has expired or is not yet valid.”
“The security certificate has expired or is not yet valid.”

This issue can occur even if IBM is set up as a trusted publisher in the browser.

What does this mean
Please be assured that this message does not mean security has been compromised. It simply reflects the expiration of the signature originally provided in the security certificate used with certain Domino applets. You can find an explanation in the following technote:

Title: “Security certificate expiration messages generated from Domino applets (May 18, 2009)”
URL: http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=899&uid=swg21381298

Action needed to resolve
To resolve the situation, you have three options: (1) Instruct users to “Always Trust” content from IBM, (2) if using Domino 7.x, upgrade to Domino 7.0.4, or (3) download and apply fixes. IBM recommends that you replace the affected Jar files (option 3) as described in the following download document for any supported release of Domino:

Title: “Download re-signed Java applets for Lotus Domino (May 18, 2009)”
URL: http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=899&uid=swg24022981

Alternatively, an interim fix will be posted to Fix Central for the latest Modification and Fix Pack levels by May 8th. These include Domino 6.5.6 FP3, 7.0.3 FP1, 7.0.4, 8.0.2 FP1, and 8.5.0. If you’re not running one of these releases, access the download document above, which provides fixes for all supported release levels.

General Self-Help Resources
Here are links to other ways that you can access IBM Lotus Notes & Domino self-help support information on the Web:
1. My Support (http://www.ibm.com/software/support/einfo.html)
2. Lotus Support is just a click away (http://www.ibm.com/software/lotus/support/clickaway/); learn more about Lotus Software Self-Assist Options.
3. IBM Software Support Site design update (http://www.ibm.com/software/support/gcnews.html)
4. New Lotus Notes Domino Wiki (http://www.lotus.com/ldd/dominowiki.nsf)
5. Fix Central (http://www.ibm.com/support/fixcentral/)

Sincerely,

The IBM Lotus Notes & Domino Team

Securing names.nsf content from the web

Vladimir Kocjancic — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 08:00:45 +0000

Database names.nsf on public servers usually contains all details about users, groups, server configurations. With R8 this content is now seen on the web by default. There are plenty of possibilities how to secure the data. The easiest one though is to check Don’t allow URL open on application properties.

As always there is a catch. As ?Login web command still works on names.nsf, ?Logout doesn’t. However ?Logout works on any other database that allows URL open.

Problems with names.nsf refresh

Vladimir Kocjancic — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 08:00:49 +0000

At work, we experienced an interesting problem. We use public servers names.nsf to register new web users. However, a couple of months back, that suddenly stopped working. A person document was created, user was added to all required groups, but upon login, a user would obtain an error that he is not authorized to perform that operation. The only thing that did the trick was to restart domino server.

We opened PMR and had a huge testing with IBM support team. However, it was not until LotusSphere, when one of our developers got a hint we never expected. In servers .ini file, there was a following line: NLCACHE_VERSION=4. Now, apparently setting NLCACHE_VERSION to value 4 causes some sort of a bug that stops cache from refreshing. However, if you delete parameter from .ini file, default value of 2 will be set for this parameter and everything will work just fine.

Web Services on ND8 vs ND7

Vladimir Kocjancic — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 08:00:21 +0000

One would think, creating and running web services on ND8 should not be incompatible with ND7 process. Wrong. There are a few quite important differences when creating web services on ND8 instead of ND7.

You can now create clients. The one we’ve all been waiting for since ND7 came out.
Web services created/built on ND8 don’t work on ND7 anymore! So, keep in mind that if you are running web services on ND7, you shouldn’t upgrade your designer to release 8 just yet.
You can now use Java libraries when creating web services in Java. You couldn’t in ND7.
You can now have port class defined in a script library when creating web services using LotusScript. This was not possible in ND7.
You can now return empty array. if you wanted to do this in ND7, you had to create a class, containing an array and then return object of that class.
More SOAP error handling elements.

Domino Linux startup script – Addon

Vladimir Kocjancic — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 08:00:12 +0000

An error has come to my attention. Linux startup script for domino does not work by default. Instead it returns an error in a form of: “tty is disabled during system start up”.

What you can do, if you have sufficient rights (otherwise, ask your admin to do it), is to add the following line into sudoers file:

Defaults:your_notes_user !requiretty

Replace your_notes_user with username that can run notes, save it and that is it.

How do you do that?

Login to your linux machine
In console type visudo and press enter
Edit the file by pressing either i or a vi command
Go to the end of the file and add above mentioned line
Save the file using :wq