HCL Ambassador again :-)

I couldn’t say it better, so I will make mine the words of my friend and fellow Ambassador Cormac McCarthy, https://dominopeople.ie/im-a-hcl-ambassador-again-for-2023/

Solved – Problems displaying images in Sametime when allowing users to upload their picture in Verse

After digging a bit into the issue I reported in my previous post, I found out that this is not a bug of Sametime.
The problem lies in my customer network topology. As in many other customers I work with, they have some servers on the intranet, and some others on the internet, in this specific case the Domino server that is the LDAP server is on an internal domain ( .lan ) while the Sametime server is on a public domain ( .it ).

This is not a problem for Sametime, all you need to do is use some “extra_host” settings in docker-compose.yml and it works

The problem is that the URL generated by Verse when people upload their pictures is https:// pointing to the Domino server and the Sametime proxy does not like self signed certificates. In fact if I manually change it to use http:// rather than https:// in the person document, then the user picture is displayed correctly

I do not believe I can have the Verse development team change the way they generate the URL and use http:// so with this kind of network topology I have to find a workaround, else the problem will remain.

Thanks to my friend Erik Schwalb from HCL, who got in touch with me and told me that in his setup, where all the servers are in public domains using proper certificates this works fine.

How to make Sametime 12 Meetings work on Android

With the customer where I installed Sametime 12 we had an issue with Meetings using an Android device. From a Android phone a user could not join a meeting or create a new one. With iOS devices, this problem did not happen. We tested on Sametime 12.0.FP1 and Sametime 12.0.1

We opened a Case and in the end HCL Support found the solution, you have to add to the file .env this line

STCONF_TOKENDOMAIN=yoursametimeserver.yourdomain.com

Problems displaying images in Sametime when allowing users to upload their picture in Verse

I have installed Sametime 12.0.1 integrated with Verse. The users now upload their pictures from the Verse UI but this breaks the display of images in Sametime.

The reason is simple: In the Sametime 12 documentation is clearly written that when using images from a web server the file type MUST be jpg or gif https://help.hcltechsw.com/sametime/1201/admin/admin_st_buscard.html

Business card photos must meet the following requirements:
Photos must be less than 45K in size. Photos 10K or less are recommended.
Photo file types .jpg and .gif are supported.
Photos to be used in business card for mobile or web clients they must be in the format of a URL, such as hosted from a web server or HCL Connections Profiles server.

So the users for which I manually define the Photo URL field everything works fine

But for users who upload the picture from Verse the Photo URL is something like this

This type of URL cannot be read correctly by Sametime as an image and the result is that user’s picture are not displayed in Sametime, both in the clients and in the meetings

The only workaround I can think of is to disable the possibility for the users to change the image from Verse and use a proper URL that points to a web server ( I use the same Domino server that does LDAP ). This will cause probably some dissatisfaction for the users and some work for the Admins who have to collect the pictures and put them in a single place, but is the only way to avoid this problem as far as I know.

Sametime 12.0.1 – CPU requirements for MongoDB 6.0

I have installed ST 12.0.1 for a customer using Docker, and initially I wanted to use MongoDB 6.0; installation was fine but MongoDB would not start.

The error thrown was this: Job for mongod.service failed because a fatal signal was delivered to the control process. See “systemctl status mongod.service” and “journalctl -xe” for details.

A quick search on the web gave me the reason of this:

MongoDB requires the following minimum x86_64 microarchitectures:

• For Intel x86_64 , MongoDB requires one of:
• a Sandy Bridge or later Core processor, or
• a Tiger Lake or later Celeron or Pentium processor.
• For AMD x86_64 , MongoDB requires:
• a Bulldozer or later processor.

My customer server had a Xeon Gold 5120 which is below the required specs for Mongodb, and that was causing the error.

The only thing I could do was uninstall MongoDB 6.0 and install MongoDB 4.4, which starts without any issue.

So if you plan to use MongoDB 6.0 pay attention to the CPU type you have .

P.S. I never had this before, I run my test servers on a AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12-Core Processor machine, which is more than enough 🙂

Do you have any suggestions for OpenNTF ?

AS probably you know OpenNTF has a Discord server, that everyone can join, where there are several “channels” (I know that the term is not correct) in which people can talk about specific topics.

We have just added one, “#suggestion-box” where everyone is encouraged to go if they have any idea on what OpenNTF should do; as my colleague Jesse Gallagher writes “we’d like to use it to take suggestions for improvements to our organization: our procedures, activities, infrastructure, and so forth”

My sessions at CollabSphere 2022

I had two sessions at CollabSphere 2022
The first one “Useful Hacks for Domino Admins” together with my friend and partner-in-crime Marianna Tomasatti. The slides are here

You can find the video of our session on the CollabSphere website here

The second “Installing Sametime 12 and integrating with Verse and iNotes” was mostly a live demo. you can find the video on the CollabSphere website here

I will be speaking (twice) at CollabSphere 2022

Two sessions I proposed for CollabSphere 2022 have been accepted. This is a great honor for me.

https://collabsphere.org/ug/cs2022.nsf/calendar.html

I will speak with my friend Marianna Tomasatti, October 19 at 4 pm (GMT +2). Our session is INF 107 “Useful Hacks for Domino Admins”.

Then I will speak October 20 at 9 pm (GMT +2). My session is INF 103 “Installing Sametime 12 Fp1 and integrating with Verse and iNotes”

I will also participate in the session COL107 “OpenNTF Roundtable: Have Your Say” October 20 at 6 pm (GMT +2)

Updating Sametime 12 to FP1. Not all customizations are kept

Upon suggestion from my friend Erik Schwalb of HCL, I upgraded to FP1 a Sametime12 server where I made some branding customization.

Contrary to what I wrote in my previous post not ALL customizations are kept.

If you made some branding, you will lose it. The directory /sametime-config will be deleted and replaced by a new one, so all the custom branding files in /sametime-config/web/branding will be gone.

Also, not all the settings in custom.env will be kept. If you applied branding adding, e.g.
REACT_APP_PRODUCT_NAME=RoB ST Server
REACT_APP_PRODUCT_LOGO=/images/branding/logo.jpg
those settings will not be kept.

To check which settings are kept, look in install.sh, you will see that the upgrade maintains the default ones, e.g SAMETIME_PROXY_HOST=st.company.com.

If you enabled Let’s Encrypt support in .env you will lose it as well, since the Let’s Encrypt TLS cert in /sametime-config/web/acme-certs/ will be gone.

Again, check install.sh to see which settings are maintained in .env

So, the suggestion I have is to copy the sametime installation directory (you read my previous post, right?) and then after the upgrade copy back the /sametime-config directory and check the files custom.env .env and docker-compose.yml

Thanks a lot to Eric Schwalb for pointing me in this direction, since I didn’t applied customizations at my customer site, I did not notice that some settings are not kept.

Updating Sametime 12 to FP1. A note about integration with email

I have upgraded my customer server to Sametime 12 FP1.

The process is as easy as 1-2-3 🙂 Just unzip Sametime_Premium_12.0_FP1.zip into the existing sametime directory (make a copy before, just in case). Run ./install.sh, it will ask you if you want to upgrade; answer Y and that’s all.
All the customization done in .env and custom.env will be maintained.

There’s a but; if you customized docker-compose.yml, the changes will not be kept, it will be overwritten by a new file.

Since integration with mail require a change in docker-compose.yml, you have either to copy that file from your previous installation (you copied it, right?), or edit it and add again
SAMETIME_EXTERNAL_WARINTEGRATION=true