Connectivity Problem with DB2 V10.1 on Suse Linux

Today I tried to install IBM DB2 V10.1 on a Suse Enterprise Linux 10.1 SP2. However, although the installation went smoothly with no errors, I was unable to connect to the DB2 server via TCP/IP. The install program told me that the server is using port 50001 but there was no connect and a “netstat -an | grep LISTEN” showed that there was no process listening on port 50001.

I checked /etc/services and there was no entry for port 50001 as well.

Running the command “db2 get dbm cfg | grep “(SVCENAME)” showed that the service name did not seem to be correctly configured as the entry was empty.

So, to solve the problem I ran the following command: “db2 update dbm cfg using svcename db2c_db2inst1” to correctly configre the service name and also added the line “db2c_db2inst1  50001/tcp” to the file /etc/services.

Afterwards I stopped DB2 (“db2stop”) and restarted it again (“db2start”).

A quick check with netstat now shoed that there was a process listening on port 50001 now and I was also able to connect via TCP/IP to the database.

However I still have no glue what caused the problem as it should normally work without these steps.

Update:

Check also (with “db2set -all”) if the variable “DB2COMM=TCPIP” is set correctly. If not, set it with “db2set DB2COMM=TCPIP” and restart DB2 afterwards.

IBM Redbook: Installing and Deploying IBM Connections

There is a new IBM Redbook available about installing and deploying IBM Connections. Currently it is only available online but a PDF version should be available soon.

Table of Contents:

0.0 Preface

1.0 IBM Connections overview

1.1 The software components and their roles
1.2 What is new in IBM Connections 4
1.3 Architecture Overview
2.0 General deployment considerations and requirements

2.1 Architecture considerations
2.2 Hardware requirements
2.3 Software requirements
2.4 Performance considerations
2.5 Deployment options
3.0 Planning the environment

4.0 Planning Profiles​

5.0 Preinstallation tasks

5.1 Verify software requirements
5.2 Setting up DNS and testing host names
5.3 Setting up LDAP and testing LDAP for data quality
5.4 Populating photo repository
5.5 Verifying operating system installation and disk space available
6.0 Product deployment

6.1 Setting up the Installation Manager
6.2 Installing the database management system
6.3 Installing Tivoli Directory Integrator
6.4 Installing WebSphere Application Server
6.5 Creating databases
6.6 Populating Profiles using propulation wizard
6.7 Installing Cognos Buisness Intelligence
6.8 Installing IBM Connections applications
6.9 Installing IBM HTTP Server
6.10 Postin installation environment configuration
6.10.1 Configuring IBM HTTP Server
6.10.2 Setting the single sign-on domain for future integration
6.10.3 Secure Sockets Layer encryption
6.10.4 Setting the Java Virtual Machine heap size
6.10.5 Creating additional administrator with the WebSphere Integrate Console Solution
6.10.6 Configuring Cognos Business Intelligence
6.11 Post installation IBM Connections configuration
6.11.1 Additional languages
6.11.2 Media components
6.11.3 Configuring and creating search indexes
7.0 High availability and disaster recovery

7.1 Database management systems
7.2 Multiple LDAP servers
7.3 Edge Components Caching Proxy Server
7.3.1 Installing Edge Components Caching Proxy Server
7.3.2 Configuring Edge Components Caching Proxy Server
7.3.3 Configuring SSL support on Edge Components Caching Proxy Server
7.3.3.1 Creating an SSL certificate on Edge Components Caching Proxy server
7.3.3.2 Extracting personal self-signed SSL certificate from IBM HTTP Server
7.3.3.3 Importing an SSL certificate into Edge Components Caching Proxy server
7.3.3.4 Configuring the SSL certificate on the Edge Components Caching Proxy server
7.3.4 Configuring disk cache on Edge Components Caching Proxy server
7.4 Role of load balancers
7.4.1 Installing Load Balancer
7.4.2 Configuring Load Balancer
8.0 Working with IBM Connections mobile

9.0 IBM Connections metrics

10.0 IBM Connections mail

10.1 Features of IBM Connections mail
10.2 Configuring Mail for IBM Connections
11.0 Customizing IBM Connections user experience

12.0 Integrating with other software

13.0 Upgrading from previous versions

14.0 Administering IBM Connections

14.1 Introducing the Integrated Solutions Console
14.2 Working with servers
14.3 Finding and using server logs
14.4 Working with enterprise applications
14.5 Using wsadmin to modify and update application settings
14.6 Where is the IBM Connections data
14.7 Backing up and protecting data
15.0 Performance tuning

16.0 Troubleshooting IBM Connections

16.1 What can be found in WebSphere Application Server logs
16.2 How to troubleshoot IBM Connections Applications
16.3 Adding additional tracing to the logs
16.4 Gathering information for support
16.5 Using the IBM SWG Support Portal to upload files to a PMR
Appendix A.0 IBM Greenhouse

Appendix A.1 The IBM Greenhouse Collaborations Solutions Catalog
Appendix A.2 Searching the IBM Greenhouse Collaboration Solutions Catalog
Appendix A.3 Downloading from the IBM Greenhouse Collaboration Solutions Catalog
Appendix A.3.1 IBM Connections Plug-in for IBM Sametime (Standalone)
Appendix A.3.2 IBM Connections Desktop Plug-in for Microsoft Windows
Appendix B.0 Working with Tivoli Directory Integrator for custom Profiles

Appendix B.1 What is customizable?
Appendix B.2 Creating and using custom functions to manipulate data
Appendix B.3 Creating custom mapping
Appendix B.4 Setting up Tivoli Directory Integrator properties files
Appendix C. Downloading the software from Passport Advantage and PartnerWorld

IBM Notes: Missing menu option “File – Application – Install”

If you are still missing the option “File -> Application -> Install”  in the menu of the Notes client although you already followed the instructions in this article, then try to set the value “enable.update.ui=true” in the file

[codesyntax  lang=”text”]

…\<notesdata>\Workspace\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.core.runtime\.settings\com.ibm.notes.branding.prefs

[/codesyntax]

Make sure you have closed your Notes client before you make any changes in order to avoid that Notes will overwrite them again while closing.

IBM Connections 4.0 CR3 Fixpack Published

Since yesterday you can download IBM Connections 4.0 CR3 fixpack from here.

The fix list is available via this link.

Update – 22-03-2013:

An additional fix(COMMON 4.0.0.0 CR3 – LO74465) has been published for CR3. So make sure you also download and install it as well (especially if you have clients accessing Connections 4 CR3 with IBM Notes 9 clients). I have updated the link above to include this as well.

Update – 28-03-2013:

Do not miss the necessary steps for upgrading the metrics database (starting with CR3) and homepage database (starting ith CR2)!

 

Replacement for Google Reader

As Google Reader will disappear starting July 1st, I was looking for an alternative as I am still reading many RSS feeds on a regular basis. I looked at Feedly first, which looks quite ok especially if they really will rebuild the Google API and will be independent from Google Reader bevor Google stops the service.

However there are two reasons why I will not use it:

1. It is already overcrowded because of the many people currently switching to Feedly from Google and sometimes no longer reachable.

2. It is again a solution which might be ended sometime in the future and then you need to look for a replacement again

So I bought a licence of Fever (30 US-$) and installed it on my own hosting environment. So I have my online feed reader under my own control and this will hopefully prevent it from disappearing in the future ;-). So far it looks fine. There is a also special iPhone theme available which can be used to read the feeds while mobile.

I am also using Reeder for iPhone which has built in support for Fever as well so it is a full replacement of my former Feedler/Google Reader combination. I am just missing an iPad version of Reeder (the currently available version seems not to support Fever yet).

Let us see how this new tools will work in if used daily …

IBM Connections 4.0: Follow a community by default

*** MANIPULATING DATA DIRECTLY WITHIN THE DATABASE MAY LEAD TO DATA LOSS AND DATA CORRUPTION. THIS IS NOT SOMETHING WHICH IS OFFICIALLY SUPPRTED SO USE IT ON YOUR OWN RISK  AND DO NOT BLAME IBM FOR ANY DAMAGE ***

We just had the customer request that every user who will be added to a community should automatically follow the community as well. As this is by default only done for users who created the community or are added as owner to a community we needed to find a solution for normal users as well.

If a user follows a community there is a row in the  table SNCOMM.FOLLOWING which contains the COMMUNITY_UUID (from SNCOMM.COMMUNITY) for the commnity beeing followed and the MEMBER_UUID (from SNCOMM.MEMBER).

So you can define a database trigger which automatically adds a row to SNCOMM.FOLLOWING as soon as a new member row will be created in SNCOMM.MEMBER. The SQL code for this trigger will be:

[codesyntax lang=”sql”]

CREATE TRIGGER SNCOMM.auto_follow_community
AFTER INSERT ON SNCOMM.MEMBER
REFERENCING NEW AS NEW_MEMBER
FOR EACH ROW 
WHEN ( ROLE = 0 AND ( NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM SNCOMM.FOLLOWING WHERE NEW_MEMBER.MEMBER_UUID = SNCOMM.FOLLOWING.MEMBER_UUID AND NEW_MEMBER.COMMUNITY_UUID = SNCOMM.FOLLOWING.COMMUNITY_UUID)))
INSERT INTO SNCOMM.FOLLOWING (COMMUNITY_UUID, MEMBER_UUID, CREATED_BY, CREATED) 
VALUES (NEW_MEMBER.COMMUNITY_UUID, NEW_MEMBER.MEMBER_UUID, NEW_MEMBER.MEMBER_UUID, NEW_MEMBER.CREATED)

[/codesyntax]

The trigger fires only for “ROLE=0” which means only normal members and not owners (which would be “ROLE=1”). This is because Connections by itself does already add such a row to the table SNCOMM.FOLLOWING or all owners.

This trigger was tested with DB 2 but should be working as well with the other supported databases.

Caution: Be sure to drop the DB trigger before upgrading or changing Db schemas. You can re-apply it afterwards.

*** MANIPULATING DATA DIRECTLY WITHIN THE DATABASE MAY LEAD TO DATA LOSS AND DATA CORRUPTION. THIS IS NOT SOMETHING WHICH IS OFFICIALLY SUPPRTED SO USE IT ON YOUR OWN RISK  AND DO NOT BLAME IBM FOR ANY DAMAGE ***

 

Uninstall of Sametime Gateway Not Possible

Note to myself:

If you ever try to uninstall IBM Lotus Sametime Gateway and the uninstaller always tells you that there are still running processes / servers and therefore no uninstall is possible even if you have made sure that all services, processes etc. are stopped:

Have a look in your Websphere profile log directories (<WAS_install\profiles\<profile name>\logs) and delete all *.pid files which still might exist there. Afterwards the uninstall should be possible without problems 😉

WordPress: Paste Pictures From Clipboard

I really missed the feature of  just pasting an image (e.g. made with a screenshot tool) into the WordPress editor. I know found a small tool which almost does that. It is called PicturePaste. And it just adds one additional small step between the normal copy / paste operation.

I am using the Home Host version of the tool which allows me to configure my own FTP server to upload the images (so they are just automatically saved into my WordPress media folder).

So from now on I will more often use screenshots in my blog entries, which I did avoid in the past because of the additional effort of first saving them to disk, uploading them to the media gallery and then pasting the link into the editor.

Great tool!