Mitch Cohen has a great blog post in which he calls for IBM to be more transparent with the options that are available for configuration in the plugin_customization.ini. I completely agree with his post - we now have a very easy method to push out these properties to our user population, but now we just need to know what they are! And knowing is half the battle! So, I know Mitch was asking a rhetorical question (or was he?), but I would like answer his question and provide you some common settings (along with some commentary) that I would use either in a Notes Client Policy or a packaged Sametime Connect installation kit: com.ibm.collaboration.realtime.community/host=im.bleedyellow.com (this is rather obvious, but make it easy on the users....)
com.ibm.collaboration.realtime.community/port=80 (if you tunnel the traffic, then specify port 80 - this way when someone is at a client they may still be able to use Sametime without reconfiguring their port)
com.ibm.collaboration.realtime.chatwindow/showuserleft=true (lets you know if the person you're chatting with has left the chat)
com.ibm.collaboration.realtime.chatwindow/useTabs=true (please, don't let users have 15 Sametime chat windows open at the same time)
com.ibm.collaboration.realtime.chatwindow/horizontalTabs=true (I have no clue who likes vertical tabs, so I would default it to horizontal)
com.ibm.collaboration.realtime.alertmanager/pref_event_0_option_1=false (First of all, yes this option is VERY easy to figure out!! event zero option one niner! Anyway, this is used to prevent the Sametime window from popping to the foreground with each new chat. And, yes, I know people who actually like this functionality!)
com.ibm.collaboration.realtime.alertmanager/pref_event_0_option_2=true (Yes, another easy one that's easy to figure out. This one will flash the taskbar when you receive a new chat)
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We have a server we host here at GBS that has some pretty good uptime results. I would say that 14 months uptime is not too bad - even for "just" an inbound SMTP server for 700 users!
Care to share some of your uptime (or downtime!) stories?
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With Lotus Connections 2.5, the PEOPLEDB database has an EVENTLOG table that keeps track of each status update, photo update, colleague addition, tagging, wallpost creation, etc... The problem is that none of this is cleaned up over time. And I am unable to find this documented anwhere. The closest I can find is a post aboutsetting up a CRON job for cleaning up Communities. Here at BleedYellow, the PEOPLEDB was slowly growing - up to over 23GB! The EVENTLOG table had over 14 million records!! So, here are the commands that you can run (or schedule) from wsadmin (profilesAdmin.py, of course) to clean up this table: ProfilesService.purgeEventLogs() - purge all of the logs in EVENTLOG table.
ProfilesService.purgeEventLogsByDates("09/24/2009", "10/01/2009") - just put in the start and end date for the cleanup. Depending on the number of records, you may be able to only cleanup a few months at a time.
ProfilesService.purgeEventLogsByEventNameAndDates("profiles.person.selftagged", "11/01/2009", "11/30/2009") - this keys off of the EVENT_NAME column. Possible values include, but are not limited to, profiles.person.selftagged, profiles.updated, profiles.status.updated, profiles.person.photo.updated. While you're looking at this with your PEOPLEDB, check out the other values in that column. Also, you may receive a "SocketTimeoutException: Read timed out" error. If so, you'll need to "increase the timeout value specified by the com.ibm.SOAP.requestTimeout property
in the soap.client.props file".
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For Yellow Day 2010 we have updated the UI here at BleedYellow. We hope you enjoy the new digs. If you have any input please let us know by commenting here or using the Contact email at the top of the page. (You may have to ctrl-f5 to do a full refresh if it does not look different than it has in the past...)
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I'm happy to let you know about a few updates and fixes we've added to the BleedYellow site. First, there were some issues with an older version of the header.html file we were using. This was causing some of the services (like Homepage) to render "unknown user" for the logged in username. And many of the other services would not show the logged in account at all. This has now been resolved. Note to self: always use the new files from the most recent version of the software since enhancements and modifications are made!  Also, you can now choose your default language. Several language options are now available to the left of your login name. Let me know if you see any issues with the "Browser Setting" option or if there are some other languages you would like for choices.
We've also tweaked the main landing page at www.bleedyellow.com slightly.
And while you are here, don't forget to check out the rest of the site besides Blogs! Oh, one final thing, there is apparently still a problem with line breaks in Blogs not rendering properly in Firefox 3.6. This was a bug in 2.5 and was fixed with a hotfix at 2.5.0.1. Now that we have upgraded to 2.5 FP2 (oh yeah, I did that upgrade too onto a new WAS system and the total BleedYellow downtime for the cutover was maybe 5 seconds - or however long it took to restart the IHS apache service!  ), the line break problem still exists. I also have had someone ping me to confirm that they are seeing this problem with a 2.5 FP2 installation as well. At the same time, I did not see this in a customer implementation I did a couple of weeks ago. I guess YMMV...
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Beginning with Domino 8.5.1, a new option was added to the Domino Directory Profile for the Internet Password Options. This option is " Password verification compatible with Notes/Domino release 8.0.1 or greater". Previously, you could only choose "Password verification compatible with Notes/Domino
release 4.6 or greater".
Where can you find information about this? I can only find it in the InfoCenter (and even there, the option's text is not the same text that's in the final build - it states "Password verification compatible with release 8.0.1 and above") and an 8.5.1 Administrator Help Errata technote that lists a correction to some verbiage in the InfoCenter. So this is definitely not something that's being talked about.
Implementing this is the same as it was before. For new accounts to use this setting, you will want to edit the Directory Profile and make this setting change. Please note, you should only implement this if all of the servers used
for Domino (HTTP) authentication are version 8.0.1 or greater.
For existing accounts, you will need to select all of the person documents and then go to Actions > Upgrade to More Secure Internet Password. You will then see the following prompt.
I actually just heard about this new option this week. After some quick verification, last night I selected all 8,700 accounts and ran the update agent against the directory on BleedYellow. There were no issues with either the Sametime server or Lotus Connections using LDAP.
Finally, the technical details are that your previously more secure internet password hash will be changed from something like this: (GXjwcIq8VHJyth4a/jRQ) to something like this: (HXjwcIqBO2jkvPBxJcxBnLZ0Ha30Ha3KHa30HafSeFdviILT4).
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Yesterday, Ed Brill posted an article about a document that Google is using as a Gmail vs. Notes reference guide. His blog post can be found here.
While Ed and several people in comments mention that some of these are false for particular reasons, I would like to go through each of them briefly to see whether there is validity with the assertions Google is making. I believe you will see that if these are the top 10 reasons Google promotes as the "key differences" between Notes and Gmail, then there really is not much reason to choose Gmail over Lotus Notes.
- I'm sorry Gmail, but I can "access mail" from my Notes server every way that I can imagine accessing my Gmail account - plus I can use a fat client that allows me to access Lotus Notes applications. I can use Lotus iNotes for access "via the Internet".
- Again, I'm sorry Gmail, but Lotus Notes 8.0 + has something called "conversations" (as you put it) that can be used from my Inbox or any other folder to show me each message in their context.
- OK, this has been debated a lot by us Lotus people over the years. Lotus Notes had this years ago, but now has gone the route of using folders. I do like the labels option with Gmail. I'm sure I'll get some flack, but really there isn't much of a difference except semantics. I can "folder" messages into multiple folders.
- In Lotus Notes, use View > Search This View (Alt-V-E) - Then click more and you have a ton of search options.
- OK, I really find this hilarious! Why? All of the screenshots in the Gmail document show the Lotus Notes 7.0 client. But in this table above, Gmail cites that Lotus Notes has instant spell checking. Why is this funny? They tout a feature of Notes that wasn't available until version 8.5! Also, Notes can spell check after composing too. Also, if you use a browser other than Internet Explorer, then instant spell checking is native to the browser. I'm using Google Chrome to compose this and have instant spell checking in my browser.
- "Virtually unlimited" space. I'm not sure how much storage users can get with Gmail for domains, but I have seen many mail databases over 50 GB. Can you do this with Gmail? Storage is a commodity now - it all depends on how much your organization wants to give you with Lotus Notes.
- If allowed, Lotus Notes users can also archive to a file on the server as well as to their desktop. Then these messages are all available in "the cloud" per-say.
- Since stars are bigger, does this mean they're better than flags? Just askin...
- I guess it is nice that you can use Notifier or Google Talk to get new mail notifications. Lotus Notes has (and has had for a while) something called "Notes Minder" that does this. One could also probably write a Sametime Bot to notify you of mail via Lotus's IM platform. Also, does anyone find it funny that Gmail states "receive notifications of new chat messages using Google Talk". Yes, I would love for my chat client to be able to notify me that I have a new chat message by alerting me via said chat client. #recursive
- Using Lotus Notes, I can go to my "conversation thread", select the documents in the thread and then forward them. Not really much different except that this isn't a menu option in Lotus Notes.
Also, it's noteworthy that Gmail doesn't provide a directory lookup for your domain. Do you just have to guess that you've spelled the name/email address correctly? |
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You can get the Notes fixes from here.
The Domino fixes are available here.
Now, go get 'em and happy upgrading!
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In response to: A Question About the Server-Based Archiving Bug With 8.5.1 Related to the previous post I made on this topic, I have heard
from Lotus Support that the 8.5.1 FP2 version of this hotfix
conflicts with the 8.5.1
FP2 IF1 that corrects several issues for DAOS. As I mentioned,
though, this hotfix should be included in 8.5.1 FP3 (probably
available by the end of this month) and that should also contain
the DAOS fixes.
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IBM Technote 1430489 (Attachments in e-mail messages can be deleted when archived) reads somewhat confusing:
When users archive e-mail messages to a 8.5.1 or 8.5.1 FP1 or 8.5.2 FP2 (sic - should be 8.5.1 FP2 per "software version" field of the Technote) Lotus Domino server (server-based archiving), any archived e-mails that contain multiple attachments are saved in a state in which only the last attachment is readable....A hotfix is available for Domino 8.5.1 that resolves this problem and once applied, any subsequent e-mails that you archive will be saved correctly. However, the hotfix does not restore any lost content.
I take this to read that this only occurs with user-initiated archiving to an archive database on the server. If this is the case, then it leads me to two other assumptions:
- This is not affected if you are forcing archiving by running compact -a on the server since the problem is "when users archive e-mail messages"
- This is independent of the client version due to the fact that the hotfix is available for the server.
If any IBMers (or others) care to confirm this, that would be great. The technote sounds pretty serious, and if you allow your users to archive to an 8.5.1.x server, then please try to get this hotfix ASAP. |
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I was setting up some Service Integration Bus (SIB) links today on a WAS server (yes, fun, I know!) and I was finally able to determine who the Wizards are behind WAS that make it work...
So great to see that Merlin and Gandalf are helping the system along! As a friend of Gandalf once said: "I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less
than half of you half as well as you deserve." 
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In response to: If you're using "Smart Upgrade Run As" to deploy upgrades - READ THIS! Thanks Marie!! Great to know about the SURunAs vulnerability. I can
think of some people who will stop using this when they find out. I
suppose one option is to re-create the SURunAs installer with
different passwords (or even different/new admin accounts if they
want to create/delete that many accounts) every few days or each
week to at least keep any snoopers at bay. But if they are able to
get the password once then it would still be a mess.
By the way, it won't matter a whole lot going forward as SURunAs doesn't
work on Vista or Windows 7. :( Hoping that a good workaround
comes for this as Windows 7 will be seeing a lot more traction in
corporate environments (as soon as IE6 is dead, that is).
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For a while we've been having some internal issues with Sametime Public Group awareness. (I hope that link works - the technote site appears to be down at the moment). We applied a hotfix that seemed to help some but progressively the issue would return. I actually tweeted earlier today asking if others have been having issues after applying the hotfix. I got a couple of responses, but we were already running the same hotfix. While going through RSS tonight, I noticed the following in the Sametime Tech Support feed: "8.5.0.0-ST-IF-GMOH-83EL74 Fix for broken public group awareness in Sametime 8.5". Yep, today IBM released an Interim Fix that I hope will correct this issue.
By the way, we didn't see this issue pre-Gold 8.5 but after upgrading it started happening for us. This issue is the main reason I haven't upgraded the BleedYellow Sametime server to 8.5. I couldn't have the YellowBleeders group showing up blank, people would worry! Speaking of the YellowBleeders group - we're also having an issue with searching for groups/people to add to your im.bleedyellow.com community. I'm hopeful that some sametime.ini settings I've implemented will help this out.
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Actually, you may want to consider running this on your servers this weekend if you haven't already implemented DAOS. Get it out of the way... :)
load compact mail -c -ZU - While you're at it, throw in the -v -n switches too to enable body and design compression. And make sure that you've enabled these settings in the advanced properties tab of the templates so that the compression options do not get turned back off by the design task.
You should no longer use the -ZU switch at the same time that you use the -daos on switch. This will make sure that all of the attachments are converted to the LZ1 compression algorithm prior to enabling DAOS. IBM has also recently released Technote 1411563 with information on how they also have changed their recommendations. There is a specific SPR DROO7XBS9B that addresses a specific daoscat issue with doing this in 8.5.2.
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This is definitely an age-old recommendation, but it is something that most customers have problems with. OS-level Antivirus. IBM has finally published a technote (1417504) Recommendations for exclusions when running Operation (sic) System Antivirus. This will definitely be handy to be able to show a customer direct instructions from IBM and not "just" recommendations from a third party (who sees this all the time). Also, you need to disable any specific Lotus Notes scanning on your desktop AV software if it's enabled.
First of all, not setting the exclusions will cause performance issues as the AV software has to scan/check the database/application prior to letting Domino use it. Your disk I/O will be abysmal. Trust me. Secondly, it can cause other random problems (see below) or database corruption.
If you are running a Domino server that also has AV for the OS, you need to get this technote to your Security Administrators and make sure they enable these exclusions! And also, don't just get *.nsf excluded. This technote is very timely because I just had a customer today with some exclusions in place who didn't just have the entire data directory excluded. When a 16GB mail db was going through a copy-style compact, the *.tmp file that was created for the compact couldn't get renamed back to the proper *.nsf file because the AV software had a lock on the tmp file. I just searched for this while writing this blog post (so that you could see how compact -c works in general) and there is also a technote from IBM (1102756) on a similar scenario when running AV software for Domino.
In a nutshell, if you are running OS-level AV on your Domino servers, you need to exclude the following from being scanned:
- Domino Data directory
- View rebuild directory
- Transaction Log directory
- DAOS directory
- Directory links
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