Upgrade to VirtualBox 4.0.4 (Ubuntu Host): Issues solved

As almost everytime after upgrading Virtualbox to a major version I had trouble to get it up and running on my Ubuntu host. This time I upgraded from 3.2 to 4.0.4 and had the following issues:

Vboxtool no longer working:

I am using Vboxtool to manage my virtual machines from the command line. This tool stopped working because a major redesign of the VBoxManage command. I found a hacked version here. This version works for me.

No access to the virtual machines via RDP:

I was able to start my virtual machines but I could no longer connect to them via the RDP protocol. There were two issues here:

First I neeeded to start the VirtualBox Manager and go to “File -> Preferences -> General”. Choose “Reset” in the field “RDP Authentication Library”. Afterwards it should read “VBoxAuth” instead of “VRDPAuth” which was here before.

In addition you need to install the Oracle VirtualBox Extension Pack as this seems to provide the RDP functionality. You can download it from here. You need to be root to install it (or run Virtualbox Manager with sudo).

After completeing the steps above Virtualbox now seems to run again …

BTW: A step by step instruction to install Virtualbox 4.0.4 on an Ubuntu host can be found here.

Quickr 8.5.x Domino: Replacing the English version of online help with a different language version

Although Lotus Quickr 8.5 does support multiple languages by selecting the desired language in the browser, the online help is only available in English by default. If you need to replace the online help with a different language, please follow the instructions in this Wiki article.

This will replace the english help with the one you choose.

If you want to have the online help available in more than one language, you can save more than one MAIN.NSF in the help directory with different names. You then can place an additional link to that database in your custom theme.

RPR Wyatt – Essential Quickr Tools

Just learned about two small tools for Lotus Quickr (Domino):

Essential Place Catalog

Essential Place Catalog is a Notes database that reads the “Place Catalog” on your Quickr server and puts the information into an easy-to-understand, and easy-on-the-eyes format.

A breeze to install and use, Essential Place Catalog provides you with the information you need for:

  • Information about every Place on your server, such as size, owners, last accessed, etc.
  • Ability to see all the Places a particular person Manages
  • Ability to see all the Places a user is a member of
  • Ability to see all members of a particular Place
  • Ability to see the inactive Places
  • Ability to see the biggest places

and

Essential File Extractor

One of the many uses for a Quickr server is to organize files into Places.  But what if you need to get all the files off your Quickr server for some reason?  Essential File Extractor is the answer.

With Essential File Extractor, you can extract the files from selected places on a Quickr server onto the file system.   The output goes into the folder specified in the configuration document, and based on the place name.

If you need to get files out of Quickr, there is no quicker way to do it.

Both tools are currently free of charge until end of Lotusphere 2011 and can be downloaded from RPR Wyatt’s website.

New book “IBM Lotus Quickr 8.5 for Domino Administration”

A new book and eBook about “IBM Lotus Quickr 8.5 for Domino Administration” will be released in January:

Overview of IBM Lotus Quickr 8.5 for Domino Administration

  • Gain a thorough understanding of IBM Lotus Quickr 8.5 Team Collaboration, Repository, and Connectors
  • Recommended best practices to upgrade to the latest version of IBM Lotus Quickr 8.5
  • Customize logos, colors, templates, and more to your designs without much effort
  • A combination of technical insights, step-by-step instructions, and guidelines to successfully enable team collaboration within your enterprise

Sametime 8.5.1: No user/password prompt in iPhone web client

If you are using the Sametime 8.5.1 web client for the iPhone and only the Sametime logo is visible and there is no prompt for user and password to login, then you might have disabled guest logins for web clients.

This issue is fixed in 8.5.1.1. If you need to get it working in 8.5.1 you need to enable guest login for Sametime web clients. To do this, edit the file “stproxyconfig.xml” which can be found in “<WAS server>\profiles\<profilename>\config\cells\<cellname>\nodes\<nodename>\servers\STProxyServer>”.

You need to add the parameter

<AccessEnabled>true</AccessEnabled>

to the <server> section.

If you have a clustered installation make sure to edit the file on the deployment manager and to synchronize your nodes afterwards. Then restart the proxy server.

Now the login prompt should appear correctly.

<AccessEnabled>true</AccessEnabled>

Quickr 8.5 (Domino): Remove h_VersionType from NOTES.INI

Please check if you do have the parameter “h_VersionType” in your NOTES.INI of a Quickr 8.5 (Domino) server. This parameter was used to make sure that documents which were created with a pre-8.1 release of Quickr do have versioning enabled. (see this wiki article).

If you do have that parameter in your NOTES.INI you really should remove it as otherwise you get strange results e.g. while creating custom forms and maybe during other operations as well. Also server console messages like “You are not authorized to perform this operation [/dm/atom/library/….”…] might occur because of that.

From my point of view the problem will be introduced if the parameter is present during creation of a place so you should really delete that parameter immediately as otherwise new places will be affected even if you remove the parameter later.

Problem is logged in the meantime as SPR# DWHN89XL95 and APAR LO55323 but there is not yet a statement if and when it will be fixed.

So again: Remove “h_VersionType” from NOTES.INI NOW

Error “The medium type … is differencing but it is not associated with any parent medium in the media registry” after upgrading to Virtualbox 3.2.8

After I upgraded my Virtualbox server to 3.2.8 I was unable to access certain disk images. I got the error

The medium type <path to image file>.vmdk is differencing but it is not associated with any parent medium in the media registry

I was able to fix all images with a tool called VBoxFixHdd which is described in this forum entry.

The medium type
> C:\...\ftp_server.vmdk is differencing but it is not associated with any
> parent medium in the media registry