Secure IBM Sametime Meetings URL

A customer just asked how he can prevent that Sametime uses the e-mail address of a user to create the ID of a meeting room. Because of that the user’s e-mail address is beeing revealed to everyone which might not be something we would like to do especially on external meeting servers.

There is already a solution for that available which is described in this technote.

Before you can use that feature you will need to install hotfix JJON-8WGPF9 or later on your meeting server(s). If you are not only using web based meetings but also the meeting rooms in the Sametime client you will also need to use the ST client version 20120207-1900 or later.

After activating that feature newly created rooms will use a unique ID independent from the mail address. Older rooms however will still have the same ID as before.

Be aware: UUID based rooms are not backward compatible i.e you will not be able to use them via older Sametime clients. But rooms created via older clients will still be usable in the updated clients.

[Tnx to Vincent]

iOS 6: My first experiences

I upgraded both iPhone 4 and iPad 2 to iOS 6 this morning. Here is a short list of my first experiences:

  • The feature I was really waiting for is the “Do not disturb” mode. It now allows me to be available via phone at night for family members but not being disturbed by incoming mails, messages or other phone calls. So far the feature works as it should, with one exception: If you do have contacts which are linked to another contact and put them into your “Favourites” group, then calls by that contacts will not come through the filter. As soon as you unlink this contact it does work again. For me it sounds like a bug (or I maybe did not yet understand the linked contact feature).
  • In general the phone feels a bit more responsive. But that might be just a feeling 😉
  • The VPN configuration does now really save my password .. something which was not working for me in 5.1.1. Unfortunately the VPN connection is still disconnected as soon as you put the phone in standby mode. So I still cannot use my FritzPhone app to be connected to my home phone if I am not at home.
  •  If you search for an App the result does now display in which folder the App is located. Something I missed often.
  •  If you update your Apps you no longer need to enter the password for your Apple ID. Also something I like.
  •  The German keyboard has now an additional new layout where the German Umlaute are displayed. It does help on the iPad but I will disable that on the iPhone due to the smaller keyboard.
  •  Shared photo streams: Something I think will not use. I would have liked it if you were able to send a link to anybody even if they do not have an Apple ID and iCloud. So I would be able to do fast sharing of photos with anybody else. However as it is limited to Apple iCloud access it is quite useless for me.
  •  The new Maps application is quite a mess and I would call it the biggest disadvantage and disappointment of iOS 6. You will find e.g. restaurants which no longer exist or which are located somewhere else in the meantime, the satellite view is worse compared with Google Maps and so on. You will find many, many complaints in the Internet already. Either Apple needs to do rework here very fast or Google needs to publish a native app. In the meantime I have created an icon for Google Maps on the Home screen and use that as a workaround.

So if I look at the list above: Only small things. So not sure if it is worth upgrading … However: At least it is free 😉

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 ]