Notes 8: External feeds are not working in feed reader behind a proxy

At a customer location we did have the problem that external feeds were not working in the Notes 8 feed reader application. Internal feeds had no problem. Customer was using a proxy server to connect to the Internet.

In the location document the proxy settings including the correct exception list was defined correctly but we could not connect to the feeds on the Internet.

We found out that the file “com.ibm.rcp.net.http.prefs” in the directory
“…workspace\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.core.runtime\.settings\
(under Notes data) did not contain the correct exception list in the line “http.nonProxyHosts=”. This line still had an entry in the form “10.*” and trailing “*” characters are not allowed as exception list entries within Notes.

As soons as we corrected this entry the feeds were working without a problem.

We then did some more testing and found out, that changing the proxy exception list in the location document will not change the corresponding line in the file above. It will only be written correctly into this file if the line “http.nonProxyHosts=” is not present in the file. In this case the settings are written correctly. All other settings are updated correctly.

So until this bug is fixed as a workaround you can change the line “http.nonProxyHosts=” in the file “com.ibm.rcp.net.http.prefs” to the correct settings.

BTW: Im quite sure that this file will be used in Notes 8.0.1 for widgets also. So if you have problems here have also a look into this file.

How to change the design of the Lotus Quickr (Domino) landing page?

The landing page of Lotus Quickr (the one you see if no user is logged in resp. where MyPlaces are displayed) is stored in lotusQuickr/Main.nsf. This is just a stripped down version of a regular place with it’s own style. What you need to do is add in some elements to allow you to create a customized version of the landing page. Here are the instructions:

Read more …

[Thanks to my colleague Gary Ernst]

Disable Connector Download Link in Lotus Quickr (Domino Services)

To disable the possibility for a user to download the Lotus Quickr connectors via the browser you can add the following lines to QPCONFIG.XML:

 <webservices> 
   <connector_install_url>”javascript:alert(‘The software is disabled.’)”</connector_install_url> 
</webservices> 

If a user then clicks on the link a message box will be displayed, telling him that the download of the software is disabled.

Currently there is no possibility to hide the link completely.

My colleague Klaus Bild (thanks!) told me that it is in deed possible to hide the download link completely. Just insert the following lines in your QPCONFIG.XML:

 <server_messages> 
   <footer> 
      <![CDATA[<style type=”text/css”> #downloadLink {display:none} a.conn_dl {display:none} </style> ]]> 
   </footer> 
</server_messages> 

Update (2008-09-18):

As both solutions did not really work nicely with 8.1 (first one only worked in MyPlaces but not within a place and the second one just hide the word “Download” but leave the rest alone) I just tried another one which now completly hides all references to the connectors:

 <server_messages> 
   <footer> 
      <![CDATA[<style type=”text/css”> .ConnectorSection {display:none} </style> ]]> 
   </footer> 
</server_messages> 

Active Directory: How to change the DN format in LDAP

At a customer site the distinguished name of an Active Directory user in the LDAP directory had the following format:

CN=Lastname\, Firstname,OU=OrganizationalUnit 1,OU=OrganizationalUnit 2,DC=acme,DC=com

In my test environment all users I created had the following format

CN=Firstname Lastname,OU=OrganizationalUnit 1,OU=OrganizationalUnit 2,DC=acme,DC=com

which seems to be the default for Active Directory. Therefore I was not able to reproduce several issues.

To change the distinguished name attribute to the format the customer uses you have to do the steps which are described in this MS Knowledge Base article.

Lotus Domino: Different IP Addresses for Inbound and Outbound SMTP Traffic

I was just asked the question if it is possible to define different IP addresses on the same machine for inbound and outbound SMTP traffic for a Domino server.

The answer is: No, that is not possible. Although you can define a network port which should be used for SMTP traffic by setting the NOTES.INI variable “SMTPNotesPort=portname” this port would then be used for both incoming and outgoing SMTP traffic.