IBM Connections 4.0 Links

As most of you already know, IBM has released IBM Connections 4.0 last week. I have collected some important links about this new version for my convenience. Maybe they are for some interest for others as well:

IBM Connections Homepage (English)
IBM Connections Homepage (German)
IBM Connections 4.0 Reviewers Guide
IBM Connections 4 Video Tutorials
What’s new in Connections 4?
New Capabilities in Connections V4.0
IBM Connections 4 Overview Video
Experience IBM Connections

IBM Connections 4.0 System Requirements
IBM Connections 4.0 Documentation
IBM Connections 4.0 Download Document

IBM Connections Support Page
IBM Connections 4.0 Fixes (FixCentral)

Hide “Activities” sidebar during installation of Lotus Notes client

If you want to hide the IBM Connections “Activity” sidebar as you install a  Lotus Notes client you need to add the following parameter to the PLUGIN_CUSTOMIZATION.INI file of the client package:

com.ibm.rcp.ui/HIDE_PANEL_com.ibm.workplace.ae.client.views.AESideShelfView=true

I did not find that documented  somewhere and it took quite a while to solve this, so maybe someone else is looking for that as well …

IBM Sametime: Blacklisting Community servers for Media Servers

If you have a IBM Sametime Media Manager server installed in your Sametime environment the Conference Manager component will try to connect to all Community servers in its own Sametime community. If, for whateveer reason, the Conference Manager is not in the list of trusted IPs on a Community server or not reachable you will get messages like the following:

[4/19/11 16:09:47:084 EDT] 00000045 ServerManager >
com.lotus.sametime.telephonymanager.cluster.ServerManager loggedOut
ENTRY Logged out from: CN=NotATrustingCommServer/O=YourOrg due to ST
reason: -2147483108, desc: ST_CONNECT_NOT_PRIVILEGED, event:
com.lotus.sametime.community.LoginEvent Id: 80000002

[4/19/11 16:08:45:006 EDT] 0000003c ServerManager >
com.lotus.sametime.telephonymanager.cluster.ServerManager loggedOut
ENTRY Logged out from: CN=NotAParticipatingCommServer/O=YourOrg due to ST
reason: -2147483129, desc: ST_CONNECT_HOST_UNREACHABLE, event:
com.lotus.sametime.community.LoginEvent Id: 80000002

The Media Manager must successfully connect to all community servers that it knows of for Telephony to function.
For Community servers that should be omitted from this connect you can blacklist these on the Media server thus preventing this connection attempt from occurring.

  • Open the properties directory under the Media Server (Conference Manager) application profile (E.g. D:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\STMSPNProfile2\properties)
  • Add a file with the following name: st.telephony.adapter.properties
  • In this file, add 2 entries:

connecting.server.dns=<host name>
servers.exclude.list=<list>

where <list> is a semicolon separated list of servers to be excluded.

The server to be excluded must match exactly the name from the Community Server cluster configuration. If you have only one item in the list you don’t need a separator.

The first entry, connecting.server.dns, is for the name of the community server cluster node. It is actually overridden by the MediaServer configuration so you don’t need to set it to the actual server name, but you need to set it to something to prevent a SEVERE error from being logged. Just set any value so it is not null. I have set it to the host name of the first community server in my cluster.

If you have a cluster of MediaServers you need to put this file on every MediaServer server in the cluster.

Websphere: Setting the session timeout for the administrative console

In case I am looking for again next time … Here is how to change the default timeout of 30 minutes for the session timeout of the Websphere Integrated Solution Console:

  • Go to the following directory:
    <WAS_APPSERVER_DIR>\profiles\<DMgrProfile>\config\cells\<Cell name>\applications\isclite.ear\deployments\isclite
  • Open the file “deplyoment.xml” with an editor.
  • Change the value for “invalidationTimeout” from “30” to the value you would like to have.
  • Save the file and restart the Deployment Manager

NirCmd – Freeware command-line tool to automate tasks on Windows

NirCmd is a small command-line utility that allows you to do some useful tasks without displaying any user interface. By running NirCmd with simple command-line option, you can write and delete values and keys in the Registry, write values into INI file, dial to your internet account or connect to a VPN network, restart windows or shut down the computer, create shortcut to a file, change the created/modified date of a file, change your display settings, turn off your monitor, open the door of your CD-ROM drive, and more…

NirCmd – Freeware command-line tool for Windows

Error messages during upgrade of Virtualbox on Ubuntu

As I upgraded to version 4.1.8 of Virtualbox on my Ubuntu host system today I got some strange error messages. Although Virtualbox still seems to work fine afterwards I tried to solve these issues as these messages appeared now for a while already during every upgrade.

They looked like

* Stopping VirtualBox kernel modules [ OK ]
* Uninstalling old VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules dkms.conf: Error! No ‘DEST_MODULE_LOCATION’ directive specified.
dkms.conf: Error! No ‘PACKAGE_NAME’ directive specified.
dkms.conf: Error! No ‘PACKAGE_VERSION’ directive specified.
dkms.conf: Error! No ‘DEST_MODULE_LOCATION’ directive specified.
dkms.conf: Error! No ‘PACKAGE_NAME’ directive specified.
dkms.conf: Error! No ‘PACKAGE_VERSION’ directive specified.

Error! Bad conf file.
File: /var/lib/dkms/vboxhost/4.1.8/source/dkms.conf does not represent
a valid dkms.conf file.
dkms.conf: Error! No ‘DEST_MODULE_LOCATION’ directive specified.
dkms.conf: Error! No ‘PACKAGE_NAME’ directive specified.
dkms.conf: Error! No ‘PACKAGE_VERSION’ directive specified.
dkms.conf: Error! No ‘DEST_MODULE_LOCATION’ directive specified.
dkms.conf: Error! No ‘PACKAGE_NAME’ directive specified.
dkms.conf: Error! No ‘PACKAGE_VERSION’ directive specified.

Error! Bad conf file.
File: /var/lib/dkms/vboxdrv/3.2.2/source/dkms.conf does not represent
a valid dkms.conf file.
dkms.conf: Error! No ‘DEST_MODULE_LOCATION’ directive specified.
dkms.conf: Error! No ‘PACKAGE_NAME’ directive specified.
dkms.conf: Error! No ‘PACKAGE_VERSION’ directive specified.
dkms.conf: Error! No ‘DEST_MODULE_LOCATION’ directive specified.
dkms.conf: Error! No ‘PACKAGE_NAME’ directive specified.
dkms.conf: Error! No ‘PACKAGE_VERSION’ directive specified.

Error! Bad conf file.
File: /var/lib/dkms/vboxnetflt/3.2.2/source/dkms.conf does not represent
a valid dkms.conf file.
dkms.conf: Error! No ‘DEST_MODULE_LOCATION’ directive specified.
dkms.conf: Error! No ‘PACKAGE_NAME’ directive specified.
dkms.conf: Error! No ‘PACKAGE_VERSION’ directive specified.
dkms.conf: Error! No ‘DEST_MODULE_LOCATION’ directive specified.
dkms.conf: Error! No ‘PACKAGE_NAME’ directive specified.
dkms.conf: Error! No ‘PACKAGE_VERSION’ directive specified.

Error! Bad conf file.
File: /var/lib/dkms/vboxnetadp/3.2.2/source/dkms.conf does not represent
a valid dkms.conf file.
[ OK ]
* Trying to register the VirtualBox kernel modules using DKMS [ OK ]
* Starting VirtualBox kernel modules [ OK ]

To get rid of these messages I had to do two things:

To remove the references to the old Virtualbox version from dkms run the following commands (as described in this thread; make sure you use the version numbers from your error message!):

$ sudo rm /var/lib/dkms/vboxdrv/3.2.2/source
$ sudo ln -s /var/lib/dkms/vboxdrv/3.2.2/build /var/lib/dkms/vboxdrv/3.2.2/source
$ sudo dkms remove -m vboxdrv -v 3.2.2 –all

$ sudo rm /var/lib/dkms/vboxnetflt/3.2.2/source
$ sudo ln -s /var/lib/dkms/vboxnetflt/3.2.2/build /var/lib/dkms/vboxnetflt/3.2.2/source
$ sudo dkms remove -m vboxnetflt -v 3.2.2 –all

$ sudo rm /var/lib/dkms/vboxnetadp/3.2.2/source
$ sudo ln -s /var/lib/dkms/vboxnetadp/3.2.2/build /var/lib/dkms/vboxnetadp/3.2.2/source
$ sudo dkms remove -m vboxnetadp -v 3.2.2 –all

To get rid of the message regarding the current version of Virtualbox you want to upgrade to, you need to run these commands (as described here):

sudo mv /var/lib/dkms/vboxhost /var/lib/dkms/vboxhost.old
sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

Although I did not test it I think it should be sufficient to just remove the existing vboxhost folder as described in the last step which should make the first step obsolete! At least now running the setup does no longer show any errors:

sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup
* Stopping VirtualBox kernel modules [ OK ]
* Uninstalling old VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules [ OK ]
* Removing old VirtualBox pci kernel module [ OK ]
* Removing old VirtualBox netadp kernel module [ OK ]
* Removing old VirtualBox netflt kernel module [ OK ]
* Removing old VirtualBox kernel module [ OK ]
* Trying to register the VirtualBox kernel modules using DKMS [ OK ]
* Starting VirtualBox kernel modules [ OK ]

 

 

JXplorer – a powerful open source LDAP browser

I just found a great replacement for the LDAP Browser from Softerra which I normally used:

JXplorer – an open source LDAP browser – http://jxplorer.org/.

JXplorer is also free and does have, among others, the following nice features:

  • It can also write to the LDAP
  • Search filters can be created with a dialog (especially useful for me as I am not an LDAP specialist ;-))
  • LDIF files can be loaded and can be browsed
  • also working with Linux, AIX etc.

A small disadvantage is that you cannot save the passwords for your LDAP servers which you have defined. However this can be solved by registering the tool (US-$ 10) and getting access to the JXWorkBench plugin. You will get some more features with that plugin as well.

IBM Connections 3.0.1.1 update to CR1

Although it is also documented in the IBM Connections wiki here it is a short summary of the commands for Linux which might be useful. Although it describes the update to IBM COnnections 3.0.1.1 CR1 it can be used for other fixes/fixpack as well:

IBM WebSphere and Lotus Buzz: IBM Connection 3.0.1.1 update to CR1

Attention:

If you are not logged in as “root” change to root access with just “su” and NOT “su -“. And also be sure that you use the syntax “.  ./setupCmdLine.sh”. If you do not precede the command with the period and space, the Java environment will not be properly set for the active shell.