Mobile and not so mobile access to Domino apps

I was recently checking out the IdeaJam website and really liked the work that Bruce and Matt having been doing there. Matts use of xPages has resulted in a very functional yet modern looking web application that just happens to be built on Domino.

Matt has recently been working with the Hursley team on the xPages workshop - so he knows a thing or two about the subject.

I noticed that there was a url to access IdeaJam via the iPhone. Take the time to have a look as it's a lovely piece of work. Bruce informed me that this was based on work by Jeff Gilfelt - with instructions on how to do it here.

This should make it easy to give iPhone users access to Domino data - at least to view it, however it also shows up really well as a widget in the notes 8.5 sidebar, (which is nice).

How to determine the version of Portal or Quickr you are running

After installing Quickr I wanted to check for updates on the IBM Fix Central website.

The check for the correct fix the site requested whether I was using version 8.0.0.0 or 8.0.0.2.

To check this I looked for the file C:\IBM\Quickr\PortalServer\version\TS.product which is an xml file - Wordpad should be ok to read it.

The installed version was listed as "8.0.0.0"

Easy when you know how :-)

Portal 6.1 - difficulty adding an administrator

I installed WebSphere Portal express 6.1 on a Windows 2003 server in a demo environment and ran the config wizard to secure the server to an Active Directory running on a second server.

Adding an Active Directory user as a member of the preexisting "wpsadmins" group proved difficult and resulted in the "EJPAL3030E" error - most likely relating to a misconfigured group attribute.

As time was limited to complete the demo I simply logged into the Portal as the "wpsadmin" user, chose the AD user I wanted to promote to a Portal administrator and selected the icon to "duplicate role" of the wpsadmin user.

Now the AD user can see the "administration" tab in portal.

Whew!

Analysis of a Domino NSD report - howto

Looking through the LDD website can be a good use of time. There are plenty of tips to be found. Today I was looking through this section and found a presentation from Lotusphere 2008 on "Using NSD – A Practical Guide".

This was written by Elliott Harden and Joe Wallace.

The explanations seem pretty clear, while not suited for an absolute beginner, it is certainly a good starting point.

Semaphore debugging has never been so much fun.

Ubuntu 8.10 on my Thinkpad T60p - (Part 3 - External Monitors/Projectors)

Since the upgrade to 8.10 of Ubuntu from 8.04 I found that the ATI Catalyst Control Centre (ccc) had been removed from the Applications menu.

Looking at Synaptic I saw that there was a package called fglrx-amdcccle already installed. This is the control Centre - it had just been missing from the menu. After a little hunting I determined the Control Centre could be invoked by running the command "amdccle".

To Simplify this a little I created a menu item for the "ccc" by right clicking on the "Applications" menu, selecting "Edit Menus" and then "New Item" - and filling out the details as shown below.


The is the app you need to control external monitors working with the T60p.

Ubuntu 8.10 on my Thinkpad T60p - (Part 2 - Cool Effects )

Earlier this week there were a few updates for Ubuntu via Synaptic. As usual I let the system apply the updates in it's typical smooth manner, however this time there was a problem.

When I restarted the system the usual Compiz graphics would not work at all. The cube you can keep - but I ned those wobbly windows. I restarted the system and chose to boot an older version of the Kernel and found the Compiz graphics were working to an extent, I had the wobbly windows but no Cube effect.

I booted back to the latest kernel. Running "fglrxinfo" in a terminal windows gave the error "BadRequest (invalid request code or no such operation)".

As usual there are a few websites giving long and complicated solutions to this problem. I just ran EnvyNG on the command line... "envyng -t" and selected the option to "Uninstall the ATI driver", then chose the option to "Install the ATI driver".

After a reboot the "fglrxinfo" gives a more useful output...

john@monza:~$ fglrxinfo
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI MOBILITY FireGL V5200
OpenGL version string: 2.1.8087 FireGL Release

And now I have the cylinder effect going in conjunction with the cube.


Thanks go to Alberto for EnvyNG yet again.

Google predict the flu - what can they not do?

Google have done a little bit of work predicting your likelihood of catching the Flu if you live in the US. They have tracked search terms and found that queries on the Flu can allow them to predict outbreaks two weeks faster than existing systems.

In itself this is quite interesting - but what else could they track? Political affiliation in an upcoming election? Predict share price fluctuation in specific markets?

If I was a betting man I'd quite full access to their data - however I suppose google trends goes somewhere to this effect - however not with this granularity of geography.

Have a look here

Ubuntu 8.10 on my Thinkpad T60p - BADSIG anyone?

As the latest release of Ubuntu has been out for a little while now – I decided to upgrade my laptop OS from 8.04 to 8.10. Ubuntu has the really nice facility of upgrading the OS in place – just by clicking the upgrade button. It was really nice to use when I upgraded from 7.10 on another PC. This time there was a problem.

There were various errors including “BADSIG 40976EAF437D05B5” and “Hash Sum mismatch” on the various Ubuntu repositories. I tried a number of fixes found via Google, mostly to no avail. Eventually I found an article in a forum pointing to a proxy server caching issue.

The fix that worked for me was as follows.

I added the following two lines...

Acquire::http::No-Cache "true";
Acquire::http::Max-Age "0";

to the file /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10broken_proxy. This file did not previously exist on my system – but is referenced if it exists (as I found out due to a typo :-) ).

And separately did this....

sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list_backup
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list (then delete all the contents)
sudo apt-get update

Then replace the empty sources.list with the sources.list_backup – effectively putting all the original contents back into the sources.list file.

Run "sudo apt-get update” again.

My system could access the repositories perfectly. Finally I upgraded the system by running “Sudo do-release-upgrade -m desktop”.

All went well and now Ubuntu is running version 8.10.

Thanks to Asiyu on the Ubuntu forums

Websphere Portal 6.1 Tuning Guide

I have had a quick read through of the, just published, Portal 6.1 tuning guide.

Generally I would describe it as a "mostly friendly" read.

I was pleased to see a section on "Recommended database maintenance for DB2". This is something that has been on my mind for a while - especially for SMB installations where true DB skills would be a "nice to have" resource. There is also a section on DB2 database tuning showing how the teams test setup was altered.

If you are interested in Portal 6.1 from a technical aspect - you really should read this.

Portal 6.1 Tuning Guide

The BBC and content distribution

The BBC are a great British institution. The UK would be a poorer place without them in my opinion. I do have the odd grievance here and there regarding how often they seem to promote Microsoft. Sometimes the news.bbc.co.uk frontpage can seem like an advertorial for that company. Today for instance the technology page contains the word "Microsoft" 5 times. Not much mention of any of their opposition there.

I don't mind, it's nice that they think about things more important than Russel Brand (although I have always liked Andrew Sachs).

Previously there were issues with how the iPlayer would be mostly a Windows product. The iPlayer has worked to a limited extent on Linux. Today however the BBC have published a little info on work the BBC have undertaken to bring BBC content to the linux desktop. A nice read.

This is quite an important step as it is bringing some content that I have already paid for through the license fee - to me - regardless of the desktop in question.

Looking at PlanetLotus - the BBC keeps cropping up in news stories. Does that relate to the importance of the BBC or the demographic? I will be interesting to find out which.

XPages workshop in the UK

The Hursley team are working on a XPages workshop in Hursley. If you work for an Lotus BP I would seriously suggest registering for this one.

XPages

There is one seriously good (external to IBM) consultant working on the content.

Sub Prime - starter kit

I found this presentation via Presentation Zen
Quite good really.
Subprime Primer

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: subprime mortgages)

email - keep it short

On any given morning I receive quite a number of emails that, on the face of it, require some attention.

I prefer to actually get on with doing my day job as opposed to attending to an email inbox as my boss appears to want me to actually achieve certain things for the business rather than simply work in a glorified mail room - the inbox. Luis Suarez is a good example in that he has actively stopped (that can not be good grammar) reading his email - I don't believe that course of action is likely to work for me just yet.

I keep my "email time" to a minimum using a few tricks such as using Notes to highlight mail sent to me only and colour coding mail that comes from customers or management. This works pretty well.

One of the biggest factors on how much value an email has is the content - and how it is written.

One of my management team tends to analyse things for a while and send out the odd blockbuster email which starts of with a paragraph of "scene setting" for the rest of his email which will be the equivalent content to a couple of sides of paper. When I was unaware of a request he had made he stated it was in an email - which I then retrieved from an archive. After reading the email I told him that the first paragraph contained no real information and that having reached the end of it I had archived the email (luckily I hadn't deleted it) and missed the pertinent content.

Some longer emails, such as the one mentioned above, need to be written in the form of a news story with Title, Synopsis and then Detail (or something to that effect) where the synopsis gives me the pertinent detail pretty early on in the narrative.
Shorter email should be no more that a short paragraph.
Preferably email should be as short as a Status update in Twitter or Facebook.

You could, of course, just use the phone.

You will be pleased to know that the colleague concerned and I came to an arrangement - he writes his email as normal and I read them - he is after all a manager.

On a similar note - IBM are noting the same things here

Ubuntu 8.04 on my Thinkpad T60p (Part 6)

I have a Logitech Orb webcam which I use to demonstrate Lotus Sametime video for customers. Recently it has been sitting in the corner ever since I moved from Windows to linux and as there is a demonstration due next Wednesday I decided to see what effort was required to get it working on Ubuntu.

After the usual investigation of the support forums I realised I needed to install a UVC (Universal Video Class) driver. Finding the right one could be tricky - however just like envyNG there is a utility to do this for you called EasyCam. the install instructions are here.

As I already had the camera connected via USB the EasyCam software detected it correctly as a "Quickcam Orbit/Sphere MP (2006 model)".

EasyCam then, when prompted, installs the correct driver. Once that has completed you can click "Execute - Webcam" from the EasyCam menu to start streaming video.

Skype picked up on the video straight away.

Removing Grafitti

I think this is superb - Banksy has created art that is some of the best around.
From Flickr

Email becomes a dangerous distraction

The Sydney Morning Herald ran a story on the effects of email on a persons productivity and had this to say.

"In a study last year, Dr Thomas Jackson of Loughborough University, England, found that it takes an average of 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after interruption by email (bit.ly/email2). So people who check their email every five minutes waste 81/2hours a week figuring out what they were doing moments before."

There is more to life than email - but I do wonder about all those Twitter and IM interuptions. :)

drthomasjackson.com
The related study, at least I think it's the one, is here

iNotes in Domino 8.5

I really like the idea of being able to work without relying on email.

To a large extent I rely on sametime and my mobile phone (a really dodgy old nokia - kudos points only for the antique value).

However for those times when you do need to access email - I thought this looked kind of cool.

Domino 8.5 beta 2

Interestingly I composed an email using Chrome and could see th received email in Lite and Ultralite mode - but not in Full mode. Then again it was in a win2003 vmware

Ubuntu 8.04 on my Thinkpad T60p (Part 6)

I already had Notes 8.5 beta 1 installed on Ubuntu 8.04 and wanted to upgrade to beta 2. As this is at beta stage there is apparently no upgrade from beta 1 to beta 2 so the first thing I did was backup my Notes data directory which was in /home/myname/lotus/notes/data.

Secondly I used Synaptic to remove “ibm-lotus-notes”.

Once this was successfully completed I closed Synaptic, opened a terminal window, and ran the following commands in this particular order...

sudo dpkg -i ibm_lotus_notes-8.5.i586.deb
sudo dpkg -i ibm_lotus_activities-8.5.i586.deb
sudo dpkg -i ibm_lotus_cae-8.5.i586.deb
sudo dpkg -i ibm_lotus_sametime-8.5.i586.deb
sudo dpkg -i ibm_lotus_symphony-8.5.i586.deb

I was then able to start Notes from the Applications menu - There was a license agreement to accept – otherwise straight in.

It is fast – really fast.

Thanks to Ray for the pointers.

Ubuntu - White Screen at Login

This white Screen in Compiz happened again after a kernel update - I really should pay more attention to what the updates were for - but life's more interesting than that.

As before the fix was simple and quick, it's just a pity it's needed at all.

A non-techie Linux user would have difficulty.

Olympic BSOD

Who would have thought that this would happen?

Via Gizmodo

I hope the server wasn't responsible for any high wire gymnastics.

Ubuntu 8.04 on my Thinkpad T60p (Part 5)

Today there was a kernel update for Ubuntu. After the update installed I continued to work for a few hours before shutting the laptop down even though the update recommended a restart for the changes to take effect.

Later I started the laptop to check something online - only to get the "White Screen" problem. The symptom is that I could login as normal however when the desktop loads you can only see a white cursor on a white background, luckily the cursor has a dark outline :). The Compiz "Cube" effect still works.

The online howto documents all seemed to go deep into the command line to reconfigure the X Windows system. Some advice given was to update the ATI drivers or reconfigure ATI via the "aticonfig" command.

Then I remembered the EnvyNG program that I used to install the ATI drivers in the first place. I logged in to Ubuntu and chose to use the "Gnome FailSafe" desktop. Actually the FailSafe Desktop was rather nice - basically my full desktop at full resolution without the funky Compiz effects. Then I ran the "EnvyNG" program and chose the option to "install the ATI driver".

After this had completed I rebooted and found the system safe and well - all fixed and the funky effects are back - even though I don't use the cube effect that much at all but life would be poorer without the wobbly windows.

Demonstrating Lotus Sametime

When demonstrating Lotus Sametime I like to show dialogue between real people logged into the system. When a network connection is not available this can get a little tricky.

Mikkel Heisterberg has published a tool via Intravision that allows you to simulate people logged into Sametime in various states such as Avalable, In a Meeting, etc.

I've used similar tools in the past that people have hacked together - however this looks like a really nice solution.

Now, if I just had a little Sametime "bot" that could give answers to questions.

Lunar Transit

The Bad Astronomer has published a movie of a lunar transit in front of the earth. This is simply stunning.

iPhone

While the iPhone continues to struggle to become as fantastic as the Nokia 6021, - it is still a very good way of demonstrating iNotes.


Thanks to macazin.de

After Windows Update - difficulty going online

There was a Windows update for XP over the last day or two - and it seems to create difficulty for some XP users who are connecting via ADSL to the interweb.

The fix that works seems to be - go into add/remove programs and remove the last windows update - and after a restart you are back online.

Three separate home users have all had the same issue today that was resolved in the same manner.

update: from the BBC

F1 moves to Donnington

Formula One will move from the Silverstone circuit to the Donnington Park circuit from 2010 onwards.

Silverstone could have kept the Grand Prix if the government had invested a little money.

According to the BBC Bernie recons...."I believe that the government should have supported them, which would have cost probably less than .002% of the government's commitment for the Olympic Games."

The Olympics are becoming quite expensive - and it looks like they are having great fun with the building projects.

It's great that we still have a British Grand Prix - and Donnington should be fantastic.

Installation of Lotus Foundations - Part 3

Foundations Start

Now that Foundations Core has been installed and is up and running it's time to install Foundations Start. This is the part of Foundations that includes the Domino email server.

From my Ubuntu client – I started Nautilus file browser, clicked on Network Servers and the system found the Foundations server. Windows Explorer should do the same (file - run - \\ipaddress).


Opening the “Foundations” server required the “root” username and password. The shared folders included one called "autoinstall".

Foundations start is supplied in a file called lfstart-domino-2960.pkg. Copy this file to the autoinstall directory on the Foundations Base server.


Once it has been copied click the "Software Update" menu to see when it is recognised.


When you see the "Installed add-on package" is available you can click on "install". As this package contains a Domino server you should ensure you have sufficient ram allocated to the machine. When you have clicked "install" you should see the following message on the "Status" page.

As the install progresses informational messages are displayed like the next screenshot.

Eventually, after 10 minutes or so you should see.....

So easy.

Installation of Lotus Foundations - Part 2

Once you have logged in to Foundations as the root user you should see the "System Status" screen where you can make alterations to your system.


At this point the Foundations server is running entirely in memory as there are no Hard Disks available. Looking further through the “Services Status” in the screenshot above you will find the following detail.


Click the "Configure disk #1 as a standalone disk" to format the hard disk and write the Foundations code to it. As this example was created in a VMware image there is no existant data to worry about - just make sure you don't overwrite something important.

Click the "Update Status" button to keep track of when the server has finished configuring the disk.

Once the “Update Status” shows that the disk is available – srcoll down to the bottom of the “Web Configuration” page and choose to “Shutdown” the server. Edit the settings for the VM image and set the DVD drive to be the physical drive, we don't want it to open the ISO image now that the Foundations server can boot fron the hard disk.

Restart the Vmware image and login as root.

At this point the foundations Core server has been installed. The Next step is to install “Foundations Start”.

Installation of Lotus Foundations - Part 1

Installation of Foundations into VMWare

I created a new VMware machine as a Suse Linux machine with 20GB HD. In the VM settings for the machine I set the DVD to point to the Foundations ISO file, "10_00a1.iso", as the CD drive.

When the Virtual Machine starts the ISO file is loaded and boots Lotus Foundations into memory and displays the following screen.

From your host machine point firefox at https//9.180.19.179:8043. (your ipaddress will differ). You will likely have to add a security exception to add the x.509 certificate for the Foundations server to your browser. Then you should see the following screen, followed by a similar IBM Software Agreement screen.

Once the agreements have been accepted you will see the initial setup screen below.

Fill in a suitable password for the root user and enter your domain name. If you have an Activation Key – fill it in – otherwise the server will run in a time limited mode. Once you click “Save Changes” the root account is created and you are provided with a "Login" button.

Click to Login, and enter the username “root” and the pasword you created previously. You can then view and alter the system status and configuration in the next screen

Ubuntu 8.04 on my Thinkpad T60p (Part 4)

I was just chatting with Dave Hay about VMWare Workstation on Ubuntu.

After installing VMWare and running "/usr/bin/vmware-config.pl" to configure it - sometimes VMWare will not start. Typically at this stage most people run /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl again in the vain hope that it will "just start working" this time.

It can be easier than that.

Just rename the file "/etc/vmware/not_configured" to something else such as "/etc/vmware/not_configured_backup" (or just delete it).

Try starting VMWare again - it should now work. You might just have to run "vmware-config.pl" again if there really is something wrong.

If, for some apparently random reason, VMWare decides there is anything less than perfect it seem to generate this file. All you have to do is update your system and apply kernel patches to get the file to regenerate.

Ubuntu 8.04 on my Thinkpad T60p (Part 3)

I was due to attend a web conference today and found that Firefox was not correctly supporting Java.

Some of the fixes on the interweb for this issue are truly horrific and over engineered. After a little research I fixed the problem like this

First I created the link to the java plugin in the firefox plugin directory... using the commands below...

cd /usr/lib/firefox-3.0/plugins$
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so

Second I used the Synaptic Package Manager to remove the package called "icedtea-gcjwebplugin". This was courtesy of Eirik

Just to test that java was working properly - went to www.java.com, clicked on "do i have Java" and saw this little fellow...

Ubuntu 8.04 on my Thinkpad T60p (Part 2)

Now my thinkpad T60p is running Ubuntu successfully with Lotus Notes 8.5, Symphony office suite, video and the VPN into work is a treat (Lotus Mobile Connect).

A part of my job is giving customer briefings - so I need to be able to use projectors and external screens from my Laptop. This has previously been a real issue when running with Linux. Now it works.

To get an external screen to work I used "Envy", an automated installer for Video drivers. First I used Synaptic to install "envyng-gtk". Then I ran Envy from the menu "Applications/System tools/EnvyNG". This detected my video card, an ATI, and installed the appropriate drivers. This also installed the "ATI Catalyst Control Center" that allowed me to setup the resolution for an external monitor.

Sametime Advanced and Active Directory

I was working with Mark Rattray with a customer in Mayfair, London, on a Sametime Advanced installation.

We started off by installing sametime Standard 8.0.1 server. We used the customers active directory (2003) directly without directory assistance. At this stage we ran a few tests to ensure the system was wrking well.

Next we installed the Sametime Advanceed server. Again we used the Active Directory for the user directory - Mark was superb in his understanding of active directory and soon made all the right choices to get the LDAP integration sorted - although this was not to the standard LDAP port.

Once both servers were up and running we setup Single Sign On to allow integration between ST Standard and ST Advanced web interfaces. Finally we setup the Sametiem plugins to be delivered directly to the users Sametie clients.

I believe this is the first Sametime Advandced installation on Active Directory at a customer site in the UK. Mark deserves full respect.

Ubuntu 8.04 on my Thinkpad T60p

Now that my T60p has been repaired, after the LCD had developed multiple horizontal lines, I have upgraded the hard disk to 200GB at 7200rpm.

Ubuntu 8.04 installed sweetly.

To enable the desktop effects I had to enable the ATI drivers first. This was easily done by clicking the menu items System/Administration/Hardware Drivers - then click the box to enable the "ATI accelerated graphics driver". This is a non-free driver. The driver is downloadedand installed automatically and after a restart is ready for action. Then click the menu item System/Preferances/Appearance followed by the "Visual Effects" tab - then click "Extra".

Then the wobbly windows start working. :-)

Once that was all working I ran the Synaptic Package Manager and searched for "Simple Compiz Config Settings Manager" and installed it. The I ran it by the menu item "System/Preferences/ Advanced Desktop Effect Setting" and enabling "rotate cube".

Essential stuff. It's very smooth and the wireless setup was really easy.

goosh !

goosh is the unofficial Google shell...

and it is lovely.

Try it now - go on.

Sametime Advanced - Not that difficult shocker

Today I was working with a UK Business Partner who is working towards a deal on Sametime Advanced at a London based customer.

In order to get the partner up to speed we had already worked with the Sales team to understand the benefits of ST Advanced - however it had come time to help the technical team with their first test installation.

This was also my first installation of Sametime Advanced - so we started with a Windows 2003 server and installed Domino 8.0.1 and Sametime 8.0.1 authenticaing via LDAP. Then we installed the Sametime client and checked all was well. That's a simple Sametime Standard setup.

On with the advanced...

Next step was to install DB2 Enterprise Edition which went easily, followed by DB2 Search Extender.

I created the BRKRDB and STADV tables and installed the DB2 license key.

Next up was the install of MQ series, the system requirements showed that Eclipse was missing however this was automatically installed. There was also an install of an MQ fix pack downloaded from the fix pack website.

Then Event Broker was installed - quite simple, followed by configuration via ConfigureEB.bat which needed a little editing.

The last installation was for Sametime Advanced which included the underlying WebSphere Application Server.

A little standard configuration was required to setup SSO between WAS and Domino for http and the installation of the eclipse Plugins for Sametime Advanced into the Domino UpdateSite.nsf for and te job was done.
Although that seems like a lot of work, most of it was quite painless and I was impressed overall and felt confident with the result.

Quite good - and took about 5 hours total

VMware - boot from CD

When a WMware machine is starting you can choose to boot from CD, to do an install, rather than hard disk.


The important bit is when you start the VMware image, click on the machine to get focus and press escape to get the menu shown.

Not bad - but there is another problem - SCSI drivers. The installer complained "setup did not find any hard disk drives".



So i went to VMWare who had the appropriate SCSI drivers as a floppy image file (vmscsi-1.2.0.4.flp) - In VMware settings I placed this file as the image for the floppy drive - and was then able to load the drivers by pressing F6 during setup.

In the VMware / vm /settings make sure that the floppy drive is connected :=)

Antarctic solar eclispse

wow

Super User access to Quickr (Domino)

Sometimes it can be useful to have a user who has complete access to information in a system.
These are the instructions on how to set this up for Quickr Services for Domino 8.1

Super User Access

LCTY

That was a busy few days.
Quite a few of my colleagues were involved in presenting and hosting the LCTY events in Wembley and Manchester.

I think the Manchester event was the better one. It was more suited to meeting up with people, rather than Wembley which was a little too large.

Personally - in Manchester I was able to dump the pre-prepared demo's and go with the live demos across the intermittent hotel wireless network. It was fun.

WeFi

WeFi appears to be a really cool way of finding other people on WiFi networks around the country.

I'm not sure if it's simply American focused - however - is it just an updated version of plazes?

Quickr and Sametime together

Here's a pdf from Developerworks explaining a few of the intricacies.

ST + Quickr Integration

Quickr and qptool

After installing Quickr 8.0.0.2 and the fixpack - I ran these commands.
You could too, just make sure you're happy with what they do!

Unlock all the places:
load qptool unlock –a

Upgrade all the databases on the server:
load qptool upgrade -f –server

Upgrade all the places and Placetypes:
load qptool upgrade -f –a

Unregister and re-register all the places with the Place Catalog:
load qptool unregister -a -placecatalog
load qptool register -a -placecatalog

Adding plugins in Notes 8.0.1

I wanted to add the "Quickr plugin" for the Symphony document editors to my notes client after completing a new installation of 8.0.1.

The install instructions are a little sketchy but are included in the comments at that link.
One issue I had was the option "File - Application - Install" was missing from my Notes menu options.

The work around, as provided by developerworks, is to edit the plugin_customization.ini in the /framework/rcp directory.

Add this line to the /framework/rcp/plugin_customization.ini file:


com.ibm.notes.branding/enable.update.ui=true

After you restart the Notes client, you see a new menu option: File - Application - Install.

Obvious really.

Sametime VOIP

I was working with certified genius (and ex-lotus support analyst) Andy Dennis on a problem where a Sametime customer wanted to use VOIP via Sametime.

Inside the corporate firewall this was no problem, however outside the firewall VOIP would not work.

To enable VOIP outside the firewall it was necessary to move the "ST Reflector" service off the Sametime server and onto a separate server (nothing too powerful - a glorified workstation would likely do).

The installation of the ST Reflector is covered in the Sametime Infocenter here in the doc "Using the audio STReflector".

The ST Reflector service on this box gave an error -2147483108 every time it was started - which means the reflector service does not have sufficient privileges to contact the Sametime server.

Working with Andy, we were able to get around this issue.

The instructions had stated that the VPS_HOST parameter was needed in the Sametime.ini on the ST Reflector server, however the -2147483108 error was received every time. The problem was that the parameter had to be placed within the "connectivity" section of the ini file - as shown below...

[CONNECTIVITY]
VPS_HOST=server.com

Once this was done the service started properly.

Intermittently we began receiving error -2147483129 when starting the ST Reflector task. This was due to starting the task before the Sametime services were up and running properly after a server restart - just go make a cup of coffee for a few minutes and try again.

In addition to the above info you need to allow the Sametime server to accept connections from the ST Reflector. Add this to the sametime.ini on the Sametime server...

[Config]
VPS_TRUSTED_IPS=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx being the ST reflector servers IP address.

When doing this in a test environment you could use the following ini parameter on the Sametime server to allow any ST Reflector server to connect from any IP address - but you would not do this in production of course...

[Debug]
VPS_BYPASS_TRUSTED_IPS=1

Big Waves

I was watching the documentary "Riding Giants",and it reminded me of the old National Geographic advert that was shown in the cinemas a few years back.

I managed to track it down



Watch it full screen as it is simply gorgeous

The surfer is Laird Hamilton