Domino Thoughts

Deploying Blackberry Custom Apps and device.xml

Ted Hardenburgh — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 11:17:41 -0700

We're working with a customer on deploying a custom app to some users' Blackberry devices and everything so far has gone well. One user called to say that they haven't seen the icon on their device yet. Going through the BES policy logs (thankfully, one of the smaller logs), I found that the user was causing the following error to be written to the log:

[20000] (09/15 13:47:13.750):{0xB70} {username@domain.com, PIN=XXXXXXXX, UserId=419}PollForMissingApps: GetHHCodePackages reported: HHCM_DEVICE_NOT_SUPPORTED. Upgrade your copy of device.xml

Device.xml is the "master" list of Blackberry devices. It includes model numbers, networks, and other information. It is something that is copied into software packages by the apploader. If the device isn't listed in the device.xml file, the software doesn't get deployed. Checking the BES, the user had a model 8830m and our device.xml on the server didn't know what that was. So there you go... any devices put out since this client's BES software was installed - and it's not that old, would be excluded from installing software.

To resolve the issue, you need an updated device.xml. Where does one obtain a new version if they aren't ready to install BES 5.0? Why, update your Blackberry Desktop Software, of course. There's a RIM technote that tells the reader to just install the desktop software on the server, but why install Desktop software on a Server, especially when all you need is one file? How about this - update the Desktop software on your Desktop and copy the file you need to the server? The device.xml file is kept in c:\Program Files\Common Files\Research in Motion\AppLoader. You need to replace it in the similar location on the BES server.

Next, on the BES server, go to the :\Program Files\Common Files\Research in Motion\shared\applications folder and in each application you've deployed, delete the PkgDbCache.xml and the specification.pkg file. Also, go to the :\Program Files\Research in Motion\Blackberry Enterprise Server\PackageCace folder and delete all the subfolders in it.

Now you can open up a command prompt and go to :\Program Files\Common Files\Research in Motion\AppLoader and enter the command "loader /reindex" to rebuild all the packages and include the updated device.xml.

If you need to resend the software to the users, you can go into the Blackberry Manager, right-click on the user's name and choose the "Deploy Applications" action to force the policy to be checked. Once this was done, the user's device picked up the software deployment policy and downloaded the application.

So, if your users get new devices quicker than you update the BES software, you'll want to check the device.xml file and update it before you deploy a custom app to them via the BES.

And one other item - what's with the using "you" and "your" for errors that reference the server. Why not make the error "Upgrade the copy of device.xml on the server" - that's much plainer and easily understood. By no means is this the only instance I've seen that type of error, but just thought I'd throw that out there.

SMTP Mail tries to route to A record instead of MX

Ted Hardenburgh — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 08:33:23 -0700

We've seen this at a couple of clients recently running Domino 8.0.x. A user sends an email to a known, valid email address and it gets rejected. The user receives a Delivery Failure Report with a generic "SMTP Permanent Error" message. We get involved and look at the log and notice that the server which the message was sent to was "domain.com". Looking up the MX records, we find that the MX record should be mail.domain.com or sometimes mail.hostingprovider.com. Domino is using the domain's A record to send mail to for some reason. Evidently the cache used by Domino is incorrect. Stopping and starting the router resolves the issue for the near term, but we have seen this come back periodically.

There's a technote that talks about this issue. The workaround is to create a program document that periodically calls the "tell router update config" command which forces the router to clear the cache and try all pending messages again. We normally will set the program to run once an hour to reduce the possibility of a user reporting an issue. There also may be a hotfix for this if you contact IBM Support. The technote refers to Domino 7, 8 and 8.5 as possible releases where this can occur.

For those that may not know how to create a program doc that calls a server console command:

Create a new program document in the Domino directory.

On the Basics tab, the Program field should have "nserver" entered.

In the command field, enter "-c "tell router update config"".

Change the schedule to whatever you're comfortable with.

Save and close the document.

Great Strides 2009 - Finding a cure for Cystic Fibrosis

Ted Hardenburgh — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 05:30:00 -0700

My son Andrew has Cystic Fibrosis, a life-threatening genetic disease. 30,000 children and adults in the US have CF. Even as recently as the 1980's, the average life expectancy of a CF patient was less than 15 years. Today, the average is 37 years. This is due to the remarkable research and the results of that research that is funded in part or in whole by the Cystic Fibrosis foundation. The CF Foundation is now funding pharma companies to help develop treatments for the symptoms that affect CF patients as well as funding research to find a cure for CF.

Andrew is now 14 years old, in eighth grade and looking forward to starting high school next year. He plays on two baseball teams and the school soccer team, as well as running around with friends. He is considered by his doctors as a very healthy CF patient, but still was hospitalized twice in the last 18 months for operations to remove mucus build-up in his sinuses, a side effect of his CF, as well as a CF "tune-up."

This is an exciting time for CF researchers and CF families. One of the drugs funded by the CF Foundation is in Phase 2 trials. This drug treats one of the basic causes of CF, and the results so far are very encouraging.

The Great Strides walk that my family will participate in next month is the major fund-raising effort of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and provides the funds to support the types of research that are yielding fantastic results. Please consider making a donation at my walk page to help us find a cure for Andrew and everyone else that has Cystic Fibrosis. Ninety cents of every dollar donated to CFF goes towards research and other efforts to support CF patients.

Please donate and help Andrew and others with CF. For more information about Andrew and CF, check out the Andrew's Angels website.

Thanks!

Lotusphere Comes To You - LA Version

Ted Hardenburgh — Thu, 9 Apr 2009 11:59:06 -0700

Next Tuesday, April 14 is the Los Angeles area LCTY. The venue has moved due to responses from the IBM El Segundo facility to the Embassy Suites - LAX South. If you haven't RSVP'd yet, you better do it quickly, go to the IBM website and sign-up today.

I will be at the event, so if anyone wants to meet up afterwards for a beverage, add a comment or email me.

PS - If you're in Florida next week Lotus911 is sponsoring LCTY events in Tallahassee and Jacksonville on April 14 and 15, respectively. Go to http://www.lotus911.com/register to sign up.

The Mysterious Disappearing Pickup Truck

Ted Hardenburgh — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:39:54 -0700

Too funny...a driver's truck drives off on its own at a 7-11 store in Laguna Beach.

The story

What Really Happens When You Disable Soft-Deletions in the 8.5 Mail file - An Update

Ted Hardenburgh — Mon, 9 Feb 2009 09:39:01 -0700

This is an "update" to my previous post where I posted the link to the less than helpful "technote" that stated that disabling soft-deletes in the 8.x mail files is no longer supported. A couple of comments on the post, and some other posts asked the question - "so what does this mean?" and I was wondering the same thing, since the "technote" offers no actual technical information aside from a screenshot of the database properties dialog. It would have been nice to include some background information, but since I'm sure the person that knows is busy looking for a job inside IBM or elsewhere, we should cut them some slack.

In my testing of what happens, it appears that the only difference is that the "Delete" toolbar action (the trash can) no longer appears when the soft delete option is disabled. It is replaced with the "X" delete toolbar action item and that the user is prompted that the document(s) will be immediately removed from the mail file. You should be aware that disabling Soft Deletions in an existing database will result in all currently soft-deleted documents being purged from the database once you change the setting, but you'll get a warning reminding you when you change the setting.

With Soft Deletes:

Without Softdeletes:

This cascades to all other views and folders (based on, or upgraded to, the new template design). Now, what this means as to "support" from IBM, I guess they'll tell you to re-enable the Soft Deletion setting if you call them with an issue.

Aside from that, in my rather short review of the issue, I don't see anything critical. For me the bigger issue with regards to soft deletes is, "Why disable them?" With soft deletions, the user has the option to "undelete" something they accidentally deleted, the user isn't interrupted with a dialog when deleting and it just looks, feels and is more elegant and user-friendly. Using hard deletes is a nuisance to the user.

I'll keep my eye on this, but if, say maybe, the author of the original un-technote wants to update the document with useful information so we know better why it's not supported, that wouldn't be a bad thing either.

PS - Kathleen pinged me to say that the technote in question will be updated soon.

Notes 8.x Mail templates no longer support hard deletes

Ted Hardenburgh — Thu, 5 Feb 2009 08:16:47 -0700

Yes, that means that you shouldn't disable the Soft Deletes db property.

The Technote

Question that wasn’t asked at Ask/Beat the Developers...

Ted Hardenburgh — Wed, 4 Feb 2009 14:34:42 -0700

Looking at the Lotus Knowledge Base today, and I realized that there was one question that should have been asked at the Lotusphere Ask the Developers session, and wasn't (that I can recall): When will Internet Site documents be usable with the extended products?

Here's a list of the extended products and how Internet Site docs are supported:

Sametime - not supported currently. I know Sametime 8.5 meetings will run on WAS, but the IM piece still will be a Domino app.
Quickr - only supported when using native Domino authentication (again, not much help)
Document Manager - not supported

It would be nice if an administrator could use one configuration for all Sametime or Quickr servers in the domain in one place instead of setting each one individually and possibly missing a setting. And in some cases, only Internet Sites have the rule document, which is very useful for most websites.

Perhaps next year, I'll remember to ask the question.

Thoughts on Lotusphere 2009

Ted Hardenburgh — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:08:03 -0700

Flying home, I'm thinking about the conference. This year was a slightly different experience for me, since I'm with Lotus911 now and not a corporate attendee. Spending time in the booth talking to attendees about the offerings that we're releasing, how we might help them, scanning badges, along with all the usual stuff that I've done in the past. It was a great experience, I look forward to being back again.

From the Opening General Session with Blue Man Group and Dan Akroyd and the news around the growth of the Lotus brand, new products, re-connecting with friends and excellent sessions, it was an great show. Seeing people standing around the TVs to watch the presidential inauguration, no matter what your political persuasion, was a sight to see. This year's Closing Session was easily the best ever, for the past 3-4 years, they've been getting better and better. Alton Brown last year was fun, but Ben Zander was fun and extremely inspirational. I tell my wife about each conference, but this was the first time I've told her, you should have been there. It may be the first session video I have ever ordered. Singing Happy Birthday to Eric, Ode to Joy in German and everything in between was a great way to finish the conference. I do hope that the video Kristin Loria showed at the CGS does make it out to the world - excellent stories that absolutely must be told to get the "air cover" for the Lotus brand. I'm sure that there are a few more stories in the video they shot that could be produced into other ads.

Yes, there were some "fascinating" things - the wireless access not working as we'd hope (though not unexpected), the warm Florida weather turning nice and frosty for a couple days (though the Sunday night party was the warmest I can remember in the 10 'spheres I've been to. Also, the Certification Test Lab could have/should have been open later on Thursday. The demand, especially on Thursday, far outstripped the available slots, even taking walkups. If they would extend the hours later, or at least allow people to start tests at the last time slot, instead of saying they had to be finished by closing time (12p?) that would have enabled more people (yes, including me) to get a test in. I was able to get my ND8 Admin update done, but wanted a crack at the dev update.

Now its time to clean up the Inbox - thanks Eric.

Updated version of DAOS Estimator available for download

Ted Hardenburgh — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 14:53:21 -0700

While Chris and Paul may have been the first to post about the DAOS estimator, and people may be downloading the files to see how much space they can save, I saw that there has been an updated download made available that if you were one of the early downloaders, you may have been noticing "issues" with the program. If you downloaded the estimator tool before 12:45 AM on January 21, you'll want to download it again from the link below.

Download the Domino Attachment and Object Service Estimator tool

Blue man "bleeds yellow"

Ted Hardenburgh — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 12:10:05 -0700

Sitting so far from the stage on during the Lotusphere OGS, I didn't notice it until someone up close mentioned it later in the day. During the finale of the OGS, the Blue Man Group came back out and evidently, at least one of them "bleeds yellow."

Photo by p_a_h on Flickr

Mac vs PC with Lotus911

Ted Hardenburgh — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:13:00 -0700

I'm sure you'll recognize some familiar faces.

Excellent job - can't wait for the "behind the scenes" feature.

The end of an era on Letterman tonight...

Ted Hardenburgh — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 12:39:34 -0700

"Great Moments in Presidential Speeches" bows out tonight on Letterman - at least for the foreseeable future.

view.AutoUpdate=False is your friend

Ted Hardenburgh — Tue, 9 Dec 2008 08:38:25 -0700

In perusing the recent Knowledge Base articles (yes, I said "perusing"), there have been a couple of posts where the resolution is to set the view.AutoUpdate parameter to "False" in the code. I know that others more "developer-y" than I have said this in Lotusphere sessions, and I'm sure at other conferences as well, but evidently Lotus support wants us to take note.

I think it comes down to this - any time you're going through a set of documents using the GetFirstDocument and/or GetNextDocument methods, don't allow view updates. In some instances, performance will just get dragged, but in others you might get an infinite loop - which also isn't very good for performance from what I hear. When you're all done with your processing, though, don't forget to view.Clear to allow updates to proceed.

Links to the articles:
Slow server performance using GetDocumentByKey
Agent getting stuck in infinite loop after performing a FTsearch and then view.GetFirstDocument()

Lotus "My Learning" Plug-in for Notes 8

Ted Hardenburgh — Wed, 3 Dec 2008 17:26:17 -0700

Available for download immediately from Lotus is a plug-in for the Notes 8 client that has learning material for Notes. This puts reference information and training at the fingertips of your users. This would be a great item to add as a widget that gets added to all user's desktops via your widget catalog and policy.

As you can see (sort of), the plug-in collects training information that Lotus has made available in difference places, and puts it in one place. It contains information for users just upgrading to Notes 8 from older versions, users migrating from Outlook/Exchange, common tasks and information on Symphony as well as information on certification and further training.

Get more information from the article at the Notes Domino Wiki.

Quickr 8.1 FixPack 2 available

Ted Hardenburgh — Wed, 5 Nov 2008 12:21:37 -0700

FixPack 2 for Quickr 8.1 for Domino is available now for download from Fix Central. 40 or so fixes for your Quickr on Domino setup.

One notable "fix" is one that reads "Domino Native Authentication should work with Sametime integration with Quickr" - there should be some happy customers now that don't need to feel the "push" to use LDAP. Even though you really should. :)

OK - off you go now...

Don’t forget to vote!

Ted Hardenburgh — Mon, 3 Nov 2008 17:41:29 -0700

Here's a little entertainment to end the election with...

Time for Some Campaignin' | Funny Jokes at JibJab

The Domino CA Process and bulk processing

Ted Hardenburgh — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:00:00 -0700

Working with a client on a company name change - so we've changed the domain and working on moving users to the new Org. We're using the CA process so we can "enable" lower level helpdesk staff to process offices. We started with a small office last week, and during the processing I noticed that it was taking a long time between users getting processed by the CA - about 42 seconds between each request. Looking at the server, it wasn't breaking a sweat, memory and CPU were fine.

Looking at the logs again today, the timing struck me, because it was exactly 42 seconds between each request. Hmm. Do a "tell ca stat" at the console and out spit 42 certifiers in the CA. Coincidence? Probably not. In the list were about 6 certifiers that could be removed due to the "/" problem I've written about before and then there were some offices that we've already processed and are now "obsolete". So we removed those from the CA process and ran the next batch of users through the process.

The result was a decrease of 6 seconds. Nice, a definite improvement, but still a long time between certificates being processed, especially when you consider we're talking 100-300 per day. That's about 50 minutes/100 users of idle hands. Multiply it by two if you're using the CA process for both the "old" and "new" certifier and you've got some serious down time.

Next, I tried "deactivating" some of the certifiers from the process, but unfortunately, that did nothing to decrease the time between requests being processed.

A further "fix" was to disable the certifiers that we didn't need at all for the week. The client uses a third party tool for user management and it doesn't play with the CA process, so we only need it for the moves. Simply going into each certifier doc in the Domino directory and changing the "process enabled" field on the CA Config tab to "No" fixed that. But wait! you say, isn't that how you remove a certifier from the CA process? Well....yes it is. But if we leave everything else alone (ICL and CFG databases) the rest of the configuration stays in the certifier doc. Now, we can come back and enable the certifier when we're done.

Ahhh - but once you save the change to disable the certifier that CA Configuration tab goes away. A quick little agent that can be run from the menu will fix that. With the CA process stopped, run an agent that contains the code below to toggle certifiers off or on.

@If(CAEnabled = "0" ; @SetField("CAEnabled" ; "1") ; @SetField("CAEnabled" ; "0"))

Start up the CA Process once you've made your change and the certifier is back online (or off) for CA processing. I don't recommend it for "regular" use, but as a workaround to many CAs, it is helpful.

So with the client, we reduced the "active" certifiers to those needed for this week's schedule. That got the time between requests to 8 seconds, or about 20 minutes for the process to complete for today's users. A happy client and consultant!

So what have we learned? The CA process, while very nice and shiny and useful, isn't without some issues. The CA process is single threaded and doesn't queue up requests so they're processed "in batch" but rather appears to check each certifier's queue for a request, processes it and moves on to the next certifier, regardless if that certifier has another request or not. It would be nice if there was some kind of tell command for the CA process that would immediately process all pending requests for a particular certifier, akin to the "tell ca activate" command.

And as always, Your mileage may vary, this should only be done by trained professionals, professional driver on a closed course, do not try this at home....

The Domino CA Process - beware of naming conventions

Ted Hardenburgh — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 14:30:39 -0700

While setting up the CA process at a client, we came across an issue where some OUs weren't "working." We'd submit a change to the user to move from their current OU to a new one, but the name change would never proceed, it would get stuck in the "Approved by RA" state and never get certified. If we registered the user with the ID file it worked just fine.

Doing a "tell ca status" and looking at the resulting output revealed that the OU was listing as "/OU=Branch/O=OrgName" while the certifiers that worked showed as "OU=MyOffice/O=OrgName". See the difference? Apparently the admin that originally created some of the OUs included the "/" in the OU name. And the CA Process does not care for that. You can migrate the cert id to the CA Process, and everything will look fine, but once you try to use it, your requests will just be stuck.

So watch how you name your certifiers.

Thus endeth the lesson.

Reminder: Use the same release admin client as server...

Ted Hardenburgh — Mon, 8 Sep 2008 10:53:02 -0700

Just a friendly reminder that you should always upgrade at least one Admin client to the same release as the Domino server to avoid possible issues. Here's a technote that describes problems working with policy docs if a back-level client is used.

Administering 8.x Server with Pre 8.x Client causes Desktop Policy Fix to not work