Wildunknown

I got my first ever IBM Christmas card today.   It was in my email, so I know that I was pulled from a database of people and was automatically sent a card, without anyone knowing who I was. But I'm fine with that. I am a little disappointed that I never heard anything from my IBM client rep though.   But I shouldn't be surprised.   I often don't even hear from her even after I leave her multiple voice mails or emails. But I did speak to 2 great people in IBM support yesterday.   One whose name I remember, Paul Albright, and one I don't, the nice gentleman from St. Johns, New Brunswick who had a laugh and a Merry Christmas for me, even though he was only recording the support request.

A beer company that is close to my heart, the Boston Beer company has made the local news.  Their 'Utopia' beer is rare enough in Canada that the LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) is having a beer lottery to be allowed to purchase one of 70 bottles of Utopia beer. Read more here:  http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2010/12/22/lcbo-sam-adams-beer.html?ref=rss Whenever I travel to the US, I only drink Samual Adams beer.   It's the closest thing I can find to a good Canadian beer.   If you don't agree, come on up to visit me in Canada and I'll prove it to you.

I just got the news.   I've been invited (and I've accepted) to present at iDoSphere. My session will be based on Lotus Domino and securing it for the web.  SSL, SMTP TLS, securing the default install and more. Come see me make my inaugural Lotus presentation.  This is a first for me presenting back to the Lotus community that I joined 4 years ago.   Hopefully I won't make a complete fool of myself.

I'd like to recount you a story.   It occurred tonight. We got mail, from my father-in-law.  Inside were 2 gift cards, one for the birth of our son (the Turtle, which happened 15 months ago) and the other one for Christmas for the two kids.   It was for $100 at Walmart, and that meant they each had $50 to spend. We finished dinner quickly tonight, I'm not sure how, with my two.  Both could be in the title run for world's slowest eater.  We decided to go to Walmart so the Toad (she's 4) could pick out something for herself. On the way over, she was talking about how we had to take our donations over to Toy Mountain.  My wife mentioned that Toy Mountain was looking for toys for 7-9 year-olds at the moment. We walked up and down aisles, throughout the entire toy section at Walmart.  The Toad knew she had $50 that she could buy herself something with.  She picked out 3 things and handed the gift card to the cashier with pride.  She bought bubble bath, Silly Bands and Meccan

Kim Jong Il looking at things.  Simple.  To the point.  Humorous. http://kimjongillookingatthings.tumblr.com

Rather off-topic, but a good read none the less. My dad grew up on a farm not to far from where I write this.  He often tells me stories of growing up, when his father finally got a paying job, having previously been a sustenance farmer.   When my grandfather passed away, they found years worth of paychecks that had never been cashed.   He simply didn't see a need for that much money. A Yuletide Gift of Kindesss  [ Smithsonian ]

Useful tip on how to compact only the databases on your server that aren't up to the ODS level set on the server. In the compact task there is an option that allows you to run an undocumented ODS-run copy-style compaction only to databases that have a version ods less than that specified in the notes.ini of the server (eg Create_R85_Databases = 1) . load compact-ODS Very useful to avoid time-consuming copy-style on everything or having to specify each database. Credits for this tip go to Vincenzo Capponcelli who originally posted them in Italian here:  http://www.zoolotus.org/blog/vcapponcelli.nsf/dx/2311201012.02.48VCAEYC.htm

Sometimes things go wrong.   They just don't work.  For me, it was when someone complained that their emails weren't getting through to a mailbox, from a specific client. Sure enough all I saw in the mail logs was: 11/18/2010 11:00:27 AM SMTP Server: mail.server.com connected 11/18/2010 11:00:28 AM SMTP Server: mail.server.com disconnected. 0 message[s] received Yeah.   Really useful. So, off to find out why.   First step, IBM support site.  And, I found what I was looking for: Domino Router notes.ini debug parameters for SMTP The basic premise is this:  There are 2 debug parameters that will be useful. SMTPDebug - This parameter can be set to enable the capture of inbound SMTP protocol conversations. This is for all messages received by the SMTP listener from all clients and servers via the SMTP protocol. Possible values are: 1. Enable minimal logging of the SMTP listener 2. Enable information logging of data sent and received along with some additional debugging information.

One of my interests, aside from Lotus Domino Administration is security.   I've been thinking about preparing a few submissions to present at various Lotus conferences on exactly that.   Lotus Domino and Security.  All on the Administration side.   Things like forensic investigations, securely configuring your servers, etc.   But, I'm not willing to do all the work if people aren't really interested in attending.  (I'm selfish that way.)   Let me know in the comments if this is something that would interest you.

I realized tonight that I've been missing something. Due to changes at work, home and school, I haven't been as active online as much as I used to.  And I've missed it. I had the opportunity tonight to catch up a bit with and old friend (he can interpret that as he wishes) over Skype tonight, and it kinda hit me. Sure, some of the fault is my own, but at the same time, there have been some restrictions put in place at work as well. Twitter is out, and I'm much more handicapped about what I can blog about.  (Because if I was going to leak sensitive information, I'd do it on MY blog...) I'm going to try and make a bit more of an effort, because I feel like I'm drifting away from the community where I found so much acceptance, even though I am ... Canadian.

A video I spotted got attention on the i-Sight.com Investigation Software blog, and sparked a blog post on social media in the enterprise .   I find it refreshing as I seem to defend social media and its usefulness around the office quite a bit.

Ever had one of those days?   I have this scheduled agent, that is giving me very, very strange error messages.  It runs daily, at 1:00am, on a Lotus Domino 64-bit 8.5.1FP3 server.   Here's the agent code:   @If(MarkforDeletion="Yes";@DeleteDocument;""); SELECT @All   Complicated, eh?    Here's the agent log:   Started running agent 'DeleteMarkedDocs' on 10/12/2010 01:00:33 AM Running on new or modified documents: 17733 total Found 17733 document(s) that match search criteria Error running agent on NoteID 561 - Greek (8859-7)|Greek (Windows-1253)|Cyrillic (KOI8-R)|Cyrillic (8859-5).  Continuing... Error running agent on NoteID 561 - B8:22.  Continuing... Error running agent on NoteID 561 - Server error: Posting not allowed.  Continuing... Error running agent on NoteID 561 - This key could not be written to your smartcard..  Continuing... Error running agent on NoteID 561 - Server error: IsEmbeddedInsideWCT.  Continuing...

From Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - September 03, 2010 : "

If you use Backup Exec, and you receive the following error: Backup Exec 2010 - "Exception from HRESULT: 0x88982F50" You can see conversation about it here: http://www.symantec.com/connect/forums/backup-exec-2010-exception-hresult-0x88982f50 And here is the fix received from the Symantec Technical Support.   The support document listed at the bottom of the link above no longer exists.  The fix is below. Resolution: This issue is resolved by installing the Windows Imaging Components onto the Media Server. The components can be obtained using two different methods: Method 1: Download from Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8e011506-6307-445b-b950-215def45ddd8&displaylang;=en Method 2: The Backup Exec 2010 Installation Media: The Windows Imaging Components can be found on the Backup Exec 2010 installation media in the BEWinNTInstallWIM folder. The Method 2 fix didn't work for me, but the Method 1 fix did.  Best of luck.

I found this in my log this afternoon.   Looks kinda scary.   Makes me wonder what is happening to my DAOS.

Like most other Lotus geeks in the world, I ran out to download Lotus Notes/Domino 8.5.2 this morning. Much to my surprise, it wasn't available to me on the US Download Director site.  Off to Ireland I guess...

I'd like to share something with you.   An error that you'll get if you are trying to use ODBC with Domino 8.5.1 64bit. It starts out with an agent error of Error 217.  The text of the error is "Error creating product object" You can read about it here on the Notes/Domino forum . You can find the solution here as well . I guess I'm now waiting for Domino 8.5.2 for a solution for this.   It would have been nice to have had this in the release notes.  It would have help me greatly.

It's 1:45pm EST in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. We just had an earthquake.  Not strong enough to damage anything, but enough that I watched people run out of buildings. What a fun Wednesday.

A bit of Spam Poetry to start a Monday morning.   Usually, spam has a URL or something like that.   This one had nothing of the sort.   Just poetry. by chinese cabinets, conceived every black'ning church appals; sit in a cage and sing. why thou complainest not when in one hour thou fade away: to my other plain or fair and passes in a tear,-- keeps on playing handel's water music to my other plain or fair

I'm installing Domino 8.5.1 on AIX today. I love the GUI. Installation notes can be found here:  http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/dominowiki.nsf/dx/Installing_Domino_on_AIX_platform

I came across a new error in my Domino server console. HTTP JVM: SEVERE: CFLAD####E: Command: {0} I've opened a PMR with Lotus support because I couldn't find anything on it myself. I'll keep you posted if I find a solution.

Found this on Benoit Dubuc's site.   If you're Canadian, it's worth a read. I repeat what I've heard: DRM is not good, even in Canada. Act now, fellow Canadians! : "Came across this site today: http://www.ccer.ca/ If you are Canadian and you have heard or read somewhere (maybe Germany!) that DRM is bad for you, please take a moment to let our politicians know that DRM is bad for the customers.

Change comes and change goes.   We had a few things change here at work in the past few days, and as a result, I'll be the only one from my company attending the View's Admin2010/Developer2010 conference. It's a shame really, I was looking forward to travelling with my co-worker to this event. As a result, I'm looking for a few people who, like me, hate eating alone while travelling on the road, and might be looking to get together for a few dinners/drinks. Let me know, either here, or on twitter.   You can find me on Twitter as wildunknown .

I recently installed a new Domino server.   Not an upgrade, but a scratch install.   As expected, everything went smoothly. Until I started up the server. Once I started the server, I noticed the following message: HTTP Server: Using Web Configuration View HTTP Server: Unable to read httpd.cnf HTTP Server: Shutdown I hit the web and came up with this IBM technote, "Httpd.cnf deleted during Domino server upgrade." . But I didn't do an upgrade.  It was a fresh install of Domino 8.5.1, but low and behold, that was the issue.  I didn't install "Web Services Data Files" originally, but did in fact need them.   I went back, re-ran the installed and selected it. The HTTP server now starts. Another lesson learned.

Update to the original post found here . An SPR has been created dealing with the date issue encountered when using a French Browser to input an English date. The SPR number is PCHE844SFDG.

Ever seen this in your server console? I've tried just about everything I could think of to fix it. Updall, Fixup, Compact, nUpdall, nFixup, nCompact. In the end, I killed the server and deleted the domlog.nsf. Restarting the Domino service will create a new one. I'll just never get back what I lost... Oh well.

I was running DCT (Domino Configuration Tuner) and it flagged a certain setting as Critical for me. That struck me as odd, so I took a look at it. I had never heard of this setting before, and for good reason.  My Server is a Domino 6.5.6 server running on Windows, and the ini variable is for Domino 5.0 running on AIX. So, who to I let know about this bug?

Just a quick reminder that Domino 6.5.x, Lotus Notes 6.5.x and Lotus Enterprise Integrator 6.5.x support will end on April 30th.   That's only 31 days away. That means no phone support or code fixes. You can find the End of Serivce document here , and the Lotus Product Lifecycle website here for all your other Lotus products. If you are like me, and have older systems to upgrade, the Upgrade Cookbook can be found on the Lotus Notes and Domino Wiki. Oh, and those pretty Notes and Domino 7.x systems?    They end support in 13 months.  April 30th, 2011.

Courtesy of Mr. Brill . Lotusphere Comes to You will also be in Toronto.  (As well as Ottawa and Montreal .) Details here .

I've been exploring a date issue that landed on my desk earlier in the week.   That's one of the joys of being an Administrator that has a handle on how to develop web applications in Lotus Domino. I'll set the scene. The client has a dual language system.  English and French.  They can choose in the application whether a particular user sees the English or French interface. Some users use an English browser, some use a French browser.  It's their choice. The client has a preferred date format.  In the English interface, it is MMM-DD-YYYY.  The MMM could be 'Jan' for January, 'Feb' for February or 'Mar' for March.  In the French interface, it is basically the same, but uses French language abbreviations.  'janv.' for January, 'fev.' for February, 'mars' for March. There are 4 different usage scenarios. English interface, English browser English interface, French browser French interface, French browser French interface, En

When you log into a Lotus Domino web application the normal way, through a web browser using the default login method (ie, not using a custom library or script to create the session yourself), you are rewarded with a session cookie that allows you access to the server. However, you do not seem to be able to specify the security of the session cookie.  It is neither secure, or does it have its access limited to HTTP requests only. You would achieve these two states by adding the 'Secure' flag or the 'HTTPOnly' flags to the cookie.  In the context that I'm working in, those two settings would make some of the people I work with feel a little more warm and fuzzy inside. Anyone come up with a solution for this that does not require me to rebuild the otherwise perfectly fine login functionality?

By way of David Clarke I have info regarding Lotusphere Comes To You (LCTY) events in Ottawa and Montreal. You can see the event details and register via the links below. Ottawa Link Montreal Link

Thanks go to Ed Brill , Erik Brooks , Chad Scott and the IBM support teams for getting us a fix for this issue . What are you waiting for?   Call support and get your fix(es). Of course, why I can't just download my fixes is a mystery to me, but... ** Update** Erik has released a great synopsis of what this fix actually accomplishes.  You can find it here .

One of my favorite error messages:  "Server not responding" Looks like someone over at the Lotus Notes  and Domino Wiki had the same frustration as me and wrote a nifty article on it. Thank you to them.   I'll pass that on to my new admin.

I don't know about you, but based on Erik Brook's post , I'm gonna be keeping an eye out to see when fixes are released for the GetDocumentsByKey error in 8.5.1 (and other versions). Not sure what I'm talking about?   Read up here  and here . I was hoping to have heard something by now so that I could test this weekend and maybe roll something out by early next week, but so far nothing... I've identified that I need fixes for the following versions in my environment: Lotus Domino Server 8.5 FP1 on Win32 Lotus Domino Server 8.5.1 on Win32 Lotus Domino Server 8.5.1 FP1 on Win32 Lotus Domino Server 8.5.1 FP1 IF1 on Win32 Lotus Domino Server 8.5.1 FP1 IF1 on Win64 Lotus Notes 8.5.1 Client on Win32 Lotus Notes 8.5.1 FP1 Client on Win32

What good timing...   I noticed that Notes from Lotus Support published an article on installing Domino 8.5 on AIX. I'm in luck, as I happen to have a server capable of running AIX sitting at my disposal. You can find the article here on the Lotus Notes and Domino Wiki .

I've got a co-worker who handles more of the physical infrastructure/desktop support in our company.   We've had a trainer in to give him an overview of how Notes and Domino work, but it's a lot of information to take in in such a short amount of time.  We also don't have the luxury of a lot of spare time to have him setup and play with a test environment to learn Domino administration. I did come across an IBM publication this morning about administering Lotus Domino servers for Beginners. Just what I needed.   Thanks IBM. You can find the technote here . And the PDF document here .

It seems that I get called upon frequently to add certificates to the Lotus Domino JVM cacerts keystore.   I think the developers are using it for some sort of web service request. I thought I'd post it here in case there are other people like me who need to do this occasionally, and can never find the default password, or forget the syntax to install a new ssl certificate. Fig. 1 - Navigate to the Domino JVM security directory Step 1 - Navigate to the Domino JVM security directory.   For me, that's c:/lotus/domino/jvm/lib/security.  For simplicity sake, I put the .cer certificate file in the security folder.  It let's me quickly know which certificates I have installed in the cacerts on that server. Fig. 2 - Install the certificate in the cacerts keystore Step 2 - Enter the command to install the certificate in the keystore.   The tool to use is called keytool, and it's located in the jvm/bin directory. The command line to install the certificate looks like this: keyto

So, Domino 8.5.1 FP1 IF1 has been released. It solves some DAOS issues with 8.5.1 FP1.   Which is great, but I have an issue with the GetDocumentsByKey problem that Erik Brooks mentioned here:  http://www.bleedyellow.com/blogs/erik/entry/8_5_1_fail_your_code_may_just_break19?page=1〈=en_us Looks like I now need to call the support tech back and ask for yet another version of fix for that issue, as I'll be running Domino32 8.5.1 FP1 on a Win32 system, and Domino64 on a Win64 system soon enough. That means that I'll need the following versions of the GetDocumentsByKey fix: Domino32 8.5.1 on Win32 Domino64 8.5.1 on Win64 Domino32 8.5.1 FP1 on Win32 Domino32 8.5.1 FP1 IF1 on Win32 Domino64 8.5.1 FP1 IF1 on Win64

I found this through a call to IBM Support. NAMELookup cache enhancement: NLCACHE_VERSION=4 is now the default in Domino 8.5.x. To revert back to previous behavior, you may use NLCACHE_VERSION=2 which is the default on Domino 6x, Domino 7x and Domino 8.0.x. Debug_Enable_Update_Fix=32767 setting has become standard/default. Default and Maximum values for Debug_Enable_Update_Fix Version               Default      Max ========================================= 6.5.5 FP2 - 6.5.6         0         8191 7.0 - 7.0.2               0         8191 7.0.3                     0         8191 7.0.4                     0        32767 8.0 - 8.0.1           16383        16383 8.0.2, 8.5            16383        32767 8.5.1                 32767        32767 Found on this technote: Are there any Domino Server notes.ini settings used in previous Lotus Domino server releases that should be removed when installing/running Domino 8.5.x or higher?

We've recently started using Symantec's Backup Exec here at work to backup our Domino Server.   I've wanted to do incremental backups for quite some time, and wasn't able to as the server I was using for my backups needed to be running DAOS (large nsf files with many, many attachments; over 65GB).  I've been waiting for Symantec to support Domino 8.5.1 ever since installing it.  I knew it was coming out this quarter, but could never get anyone to tell me a date. Imagine my surprise when I found it on Darren Duke 's Blog this morning that Domino 8.5.1 is officially supported for Backup Exec. Here's the link to Symantec's site:   http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/339930.htm You'd think that since Symantec knows I own a license for Backup Exec, and a license for the Backup Exec Agent for Lotus Domino, that they would at least send me an email.   I get lots of other email from them...

I found this while looking for some books.   Its on sale for 96% off.  With the free shipping for orders over $39, it may actually be cheaper than buying a cord of firewood. Or to look at it another way, they would lose money in shipping if I bought 13 of them. Odd thought.

We had a database that we kept getting complaints about, it kept getting slower and slower to do a specific task. I tracked it down to this code. Can you spot this issue with this code? Sub assignAclToSubRecord( viewName, docID )     Dim counter As Integer     Set vwSub = db.GetView( viewName )     Set subDoc = vwSub.GetDocumentByKey( docID )     Do While Not ( subDoc Is Nothing )         subDoc.Authors_Variable_SpecificTI  = currentDoc.Authors_Variable_SpecificTI         subDoc.AuthorsVariable = currentDoc.AuthorsVariable         Call subDoc.Save(True,True)         Set subDoc = vwSub.GetNextDocument( subDoc )     Loop    End Sub