One of the very big news in Sametime 12.0.2 FP2 is the new Sametime Chat server (only chat, no meetings) for Windows.
I believe this is useful for the MS die-hard fans, or for those who don’t feel confident with Linux and containers. Though in my personal opinion the standard containerized version is a better choice.
Anyway, I installed it. The procedure is the same as for the old version: you have to install Mongo and create the sametime user and the databases. All this is detailed in the instructions here https://opensource.hcltechsw.com/sametime-doc/v1202/admin/t_configure_mongodb.html, though you have to be aware not to simply copy/paste the script from that page because it contains line breaks, copy it in a text file, make it a single line and then use this one. Then you have to modify the mongod.cfg file and enable replication and restart Mongo. Then the installation of the Sametime server is basically “next,next,…” in the various screens that show up. You have to give the server name, the mongodb connection string, select the LDAP server type and give its details. Nothing new, which is good for those familiar with the previous version setup.
All in all it takes less than 10 minutes if you don’t make any mistake. If you do, in the Sametime installation directory there’s a sub-directory named Trace, that contains the logs. Have a look there to find what’s wrong. The setup will create several services (sounds familiar ?) and the one you need to start to fire up and shut down Sametime is called “ST Community Launch”, which is the only one set to automatic start.
That’s it. Now even if you are not familiar with Linux, there’s no excuse not to have a Sametime Chat server running in your company 🙂
Today HCL releasead Sametime 12.0.2 FP2, so I immediately installed it on one of my test servers.
As I repeatedly said before, the upgrade can’t be much easier than this. Just unzip the new file, run ./install.sh and select to upgrade the existing version.
Though at the moment of this writing there is not yet the fix list available, FP2 solves a bug in the metrics that was introduced in FP1.
In FP1 there were 3 statistics that showed “NO DATA” in the Chat Proxy section. Uptime Start Time Application Start and Ready Time
Apologies to my readers, this is not the usual technical post, but something happened that made me not happy, and I just need to explain to my friend why I have disappeared from Facebook.
It all started 15 days ago, when I received a message on Discord from my good friend Hogne Bo Pettersen, asking me if it was something he said that made me unfriend him.
I was flabbergasted, to say the least, because I did not unfriend him, so I went to log on to FB to check what happened.
I could not log in and I saw this
Well, is pretty obvious that this one is NOT my Instagram account. To me looks like a bot attack. Anyway, it seems that the only way to ask to remove the suspension is log on to IG and file a report.
I did that, using my real IG account, but obviously the savy monkeys that manage Meta security and “compliance to the rules” expect me to log on using that su9…. account, because so far they gave me no answer.
I was already considering since some time to leave Facebook, it has its advantages, I love to be able to see what my friends are doing, their pictures, the little or big things that happen in their life and they want to share; on the other hand it was getting worse everyday, about half of the posts were “advertising” or “sponsored” or “we thing you may find this interesting”, which made it difficult to go to the post that really were interesting for ME and not the Meta advertisers
Now they gave me the reason to do it, they threw me out and I do not have the slightest intention of creating another profile and use that crap again.
What did my supposed IG account do to not follow their rules ? Give a bit of explanation? No, huh ? Imagine you get a fine with the motivation “you broke the law”….
I always thought that the people behind Meta “compliance” were a bunch of brainless invertebrates or even less intelligent beings and this is just a confirmation. What can you expect from a company that censor a post with a statue of Milo’s Venus because” it shows a nipple” and then accept to advertise this ?
So, as I already did with Twitter, my last message to Meta is “fuck off”, learn to better manage your users.
My friends that really want to reach me can find me on Discord, though is a completely different way of interaction, or they have my phone number.
I have been asked to give more details about the .taz file that I mentioned in my previous post.
I hope you have read the excellent posts from Martjin and Daniel, where they explain the structure of the tarball.
In my case it is very simple: create on your machine a domino-bin directory e.g. /home/domino-bin, and put there the ontimegc file.
Then go in the /home directory and issue the command : tar cvzf OnTime15.taz domino-bin/
The content of the file is this: # tar -tvf OnTime15.taz drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2024-10-10 09:02 domino-bin/ -rwxr-xr-x root/root 57352 2024-10-10 09:02 domino-bin/ontimegc
Place the file in the default directory, usually /local/software, and follow the instructions in my previous post.
First of all, a big THANK YOU! to my friend and fellow HCL Ambassador Martijn de Jong . If you don’t know him, he’s one of the gurus for Domino containers, together with Daniel Nashed. Without his invaluable help, my work would not have been possible.
Running Domino in a container is becoming more and more popular in these days. I assume the reader is familiar with the topic, I am not going to explain how to create and run a Domino container. If you want to know more about Domino containers watch the replay of the webinar that Martijn did for OpenNTF and read his presentation
OnTime is included in Domino, starting with Release 14, is a great tool and I encourage my readers to use it, the version included in Domino is free and very powerful. The issue is that Intravision, creates new releases of OnTime faster that HCL creates new releases of Domino, which is obviously understandable. For example the OnTime version included in Domino is 11.1, but the most recent is 11.5. Hence if you want to keep updated your environment, you need to upgrade OnTime.
The upgrade of OnTime is so easy that I am tempted to use the word trivial. Unzip the file you downloaded from their site, and expand it on your local PC where you have Notes installed. Open the installer.nsf database and follow the instructions, i.e. select the language and select if is a first install or an upgrade. That’s it.
On Linux there are a couple of extra steps you have to do 1. Copy the OnTime task for Linux, ‘ontimegc’ from the installation files /ExtraFiles/Tasks to the Domino server program directory. 2. Run as owner or root ‘chmod 755 ontimegc’ (-rwxr-xr-x)
That is OK if you run Domino on Linux native, but what if you run Domino in a container ?
Copying the files in the program directory into the container is easy (again, I assume you are familiar with Docker) and it works, but….. if you stop the container and restart it you will lose the update. Because the updated ontimegc file is not in the base image where you created the container from, so restarting the container will bring you back to 11.1.
There are two ways to solve this, thanks Martijn for pointing me in the right direction, and make the updated file always available in the program directory of Domino:
1) Install the latest version of OnTime as a custom addon when building the image
2) A quick and dirty trick using volumes
Install the latest version of OnTime as a custom addon when building the image
Once you have the taz file you just run this command: ./build.sh -custom-addon=OnTime15.taz#e13658bd364b55cb31196242100db36501724e728eac00fc43aa2d50e4cc7f61 menu In this example OnTime15.taz is the name of the file I created and everything after the # is the SHA256 of the file.
As a result your image will now have the latest version of OnTime and when you run the container it will use it. This way even if you stop and restart the container, it will always use that version.
A quick and dirty trick using volumes
Copy the ontimegc file from the zip file to a location on you machine, e.g. /local/ontime/
I assume that you have used Daniel Nashed startscript to run and configure your server. If this is not the case, then run, clone that repo and use the scripts. One of the scripts is dominoctl, which is used to start and stop Domino and to get to the console. If you run
dominoctl cfg
It will open the config file in edit mode
You should fine something like this inside it : CONTAINER_VOLUMES=”-v /local:/local:z” (it may not have the trailing z:, but that’s only for SELINX so is not a problem is is missing) Change the line to CONTAINER_VOLUMES=”-v /local:/local:z -v /local/ontime/ontimegc:/opt/hcl/notes/lates/linux/ontimegc:z” This means that Domino will use the ontimegc you copied, i.e. the latest version, rather than the one in the original one, the older version.
Save the file and restart the container.
This second method is quicker and has an advantage. When the next release of OnTime becomes available, you just copy the new ontimegc file in the /local/ontime/ directory then restart the container (obviously you will have to use install.nsf to upgrade the databases, but that is not specific to containers)
Initially Sametime 12 supported MongoDB 4.4, so most of the existing installations, at least for my customers, are still running on that version. Now 4.4 is going EOL and is wise to upgrade to the latest version, MongoDB 7.
I have done an upgrade of a production ST 12.0.2 from MongDB 4.4 to 7, without any issues. There are some things you need to be aware of, is not just “next, next, next….” 🙂
First of all MongoDB is NOT like Domino, you can’t upgrade directly from an old version to the latest, you have to go 4.4 -> 5 -> 6 -> 7. Not very nice for us used to Domino, but it is what it is.
7)once updated run the mongod command and pull up the service mongod systemctl start mongod
8)WARNING!
It will fail so stop the service and do the following: systemctl stop mongod rm -rf /tmp/mongodb-27017.sock chown -R mongod:mongod /var/lib/mongo chown -R mongod:mongod /var/log/mongodb chmod R 777 /var/run/mongod systemctl start mongod
For a customer I did the upgrade of Sametime Premium from 12.0.2 to 12.0.2 FP1.
The upgrade itself is uneventful, just run the command ./install and it does everything; as I previously said Sametime is the easiest product to upgrade in the HCL SW portfolio.
But after the upgrade the customer found that he could not access anymore the monitoring dashboard when using the admin console. We found that the upgrade does not keep the existing monitoring.env file but creates a new one, so to log in you have to use the default username and password (admin/admin). Once you log as admin the first time, it will ask you to change the password. Once done that you can edit the file monitoring.env and set the username/password of your choice so you will access the monitoring dashboard without having to manually log in.
The venue – As usual, when you think Theo can’t do better than last time, he surprises you with something wonderful.
This time it was the Handelsbeurs, the old stock exchange. Is a Gothic building, really extraordinary. I did not take pictures, but my good friend Hogne Bo Pettersen did and on the Engage website you will find a link to his great job and pictures taken by others. He told me “it doesn’t happen every day that you can take a picture of a speaker with the background from Game of Thrones”. This should give you an idea of the location we were.
Hogne Bø Pettersen Media
The sessions – As usual great content from the members of the community and HCL people in their sessions, HCL did not make any big announcement in the OGS but pointed to the concept of Community, which fits perfectly with us. As expected, Volt MX Go was mentioned often and there were several sessions on it.
Like every year, the quality of the session is so high that often there are two or three you want to attend, happening at the same time. Unless Engage lasts a week, this is a price you have to pay.
The people – at least 50% of the motivation for me to attend Engage is the chance of meeting with the people I know. Yes, we do chat all year long using the Discord servers for the Ambassadors and from OpenNTF, but seeing your friends face to face is invaluable. And as usual I bring back home good memories. As more than a person said, it feels like family, because in essence that’s what we are. And Theo has shown how much he cares for this family once more, setting up again a wonderful event.
I have only one woe, and this happens every year: the participation from Italian people. This year there were only 7 of us. I understand that in my country customers and partners prefer to speak native language, as in many other countries, but Engage is a really excellent event for those who work with HCL solutions. If you are Italian and are reading this, it means you can understand English well enough, so please join Engage 2025, you will not be disappointed, trust me.
My sessions – Though I did not have a session as a single speaker, I co-hosted the two OpenNTF sessions, where six of us Directors were present. I believe those went well, I was surprised to see 20+ people attending a session on Open Source at 8 a.m.; I was not thinking there would be only the six of us, but attendance was above my expectations.
End of an era and the future – This year was special; it was the last Engage Theo organized all by himself and we were curious to see what was in plan for 2025. The good news is that Engage will continue under the helm of 2 new skippers, two people I know well and appreciate much: Kris De Bisshop and Tom van Aken. I have worked together with them, they were the organizers, together with us of OpenNTF, of the developer contest we did a couple of years ago. Knowing them, I am sure that the legacy is in good hands and that the next Engage will be a success! A tip: if you come to Engage 2025 ask Kris about the dancing frog 😊
Theo – it’s not a surprise that he (and Hilde too) received lot of love from all the participants, and more than a few gifts as a recognition from all he has done for this community in the last 15 years organizing Engage. At the OGS he was presented with several gifts: first Richard Jefts gave him a set of beautiful wine glasses engraved with the location of every Engage, just to let you know how beautiful and precious are those glasses, it took two weeks to custom sketch each venue for the engraving, HCL really put a lot of effort in this
Matteo Cogliati
Then Theo was awarded the C3UG (that’s the Canadian user group in case you don’t know) North Star Award. Immediately after that the Directors of OpenNTF gave him a proclamation, naming him “fellow Emeritus” of OpenNTF.
The most emotional moments were at the end of the CGS. On behalf of the whole HCL Ambassadors community, me and Bill Malchisky went on stage with a surprise for Theo and Hilde.
We worked some months in the community, i.e. all of us Ambassadors except one (thanks Maria Nordin for setting up a “top secret” channel where we worked on this) to find the perfect gift and in the end we came up with two, a small one and a bigger one.
First, I presented them with two “environments” of Lego, custom made by our friend and professional Lego builders Warren and Teresa Elsmore. Now Theo and Hilde can show a Lego figure with their faces and brag about it 😊
Warren and Kitty ElsmoreWarren and Kitty Elsmore
Then Bill stepped up and presented them with the main gift. A long weekend in Tuscany visiting Florence, and a Wine masterclass in Montepulciano.
I was fortunate to be on stage at that moving moment so I could see Theo’s face up close, his expression clearly represented the emotion he felt in receiving the love from all the members of our family. You can see it for yourself in this video. https://youtube.com/watch?v=2vi3fTIT36s&feature=shared
Fun, or not so fun, things – On the train from the airport to Antwerp someone stole from my jacket my credit card holder. He must have been in a hurry and took what he thought was valuable, but thank God, he left me the rest of the stuff I had: the passport, the home keys and the wallet, that contained cash. It was the perfect lose-lose situation: he gained nothing, because even before the train arrived in Antwerp I blocked my cards, and I lost time and a welcomed memory with my friends. Because of the situation, I skipped the Ambassadors drink to spend the late afternoon in a Police station in Antwerp dealing with policemen who did not speak and barely understood English. Plus, the nuisance of having to do the duplicates of my driving license and health insurance card.
Had he taken the wallet both would have been happier. I couldn’t block the cash so he would have gained some money, and I wouldn’t have to go thru the hassle of getting duplicates of everything.
I believe my story became a popular topic at Engage, more than one person I did not tell this tale to directly, asked me about the theft when we talked.
I want to publicly thank my friend Marianna Tomasatti, who basically paid everything for me with her cards. The joy of an almost cashless country… I would have been lost without her. There were some jokes about me being her slave for the week, since she had my life in her hands (or rather in her wallet).
On the first day, my friend Hogne came to me with a gift.
I was completely unaware that the figure represented (is called “la linea”) was popular in Norway. Is a cartoon that was popular in Italy in the 80’s. Hogne told me that every time he came to Italy, he tried to find a t-shirt with that but couldn’t find it; then he found it in his country!!! It was completely unexpected for me and I was really moved by the thought.
And Hogne took this “crazy-cool photo” of me (definition by Devin Olson 😊)
Hogne Bø Pettersen Media
Like every year, I came back home energized and happy for having learned something new and having seen my friends again.
This is not strictly news, though at Engage HCL announced that the product documentation is now Open Source (and many other things, see this presentation)
anyone who used the official documentation for e.g. Sametime has noticed that is on GitHub.
This is great news from various points of view: it confirms the commitment HCL has for Open Source, see the above presentation (and as a Director of OpenNTF this is great for us), and for the first time gives us users the possibility of improving the documentation.
Now, I know that if you are an Admin you may think “not for me, GitHub and the like are developer stuff”, but this is not true. I am an Admin and I made some changes to the Sametime 12.0.2 official documentation! 🙂
Now, the two copies are different, mine contains the corrections and the HCL one doesn’t. What do you do to have the changes posted in the official repository? Just click on the link in the homepage of your fork, here
This will bring you back to the HCL GitHub repo and you can click here
You will see this
Now fill in the form and submit it.
HCL documentation team (the owner of the repository) will review the changes you propose and if they accept them, they will become part of the official documentation
If you open the HCL repository and click on “Pull requests” you can see that I submitted two and they have been accepted, which means that HCL is really listening to suggestions.
Verse 3.2.1 has shipped and one of the new things in this release is DOMI. If you lived under a rock in the last years and do not know what DOMI is, it’s a feature that allows you to dynamically create a link to meetings on the following services – GoToMeeting, Microsoft Teams, WebEx, Zoom, and Sametime when creating an invitation. Until now it was available only in Notes, but now is available on Verse too.
There is an issue, though, when using Sametime 12.0.2: when you create a meeting, the online meeting is not created and you see an error message. I opened a case with HCL Support and they acknowledged that this is a bug and found a solution in a very short time.
1)You have to open a case and they will send you a link where you can download a file “custom-meet.conf”. 2)Place the ‘custom-meet.conf’ into the sametime-config/web/nginx folder 3)Edit the custom.env and update the entries like below. CONTENT_SECURITY_POLICY=frame-ancestors https://*.company.com CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS=https://verse.company.com CORS_ALLOW_HEADERS=Content-Type,Authorization,x-csrf-token 4)Restart Sametime
This additional step is not required from the next release(12.0.2 FP1) onwards.
