This may not be an issue for organisations that do have the Domino data directory in the default location (e.g. <Domino Program Directory>\data).

If however you want to run the stnamechange task on a server with an alternative data directory, you must add the following parameter to the [Config] section of the sametime.ini

NC_DB_PATH=G:\Datadir

I recently upgraded our Sametime environment to version 8.5.1 from version 7.5.1. Since we also wanted to transfer to new server hardware I figured it would be easiest to do a new installation and just migrate the vpuserinfo.nsf and stconf.nsf. Since no configuration settings are being migrated this was a good opportunity to start afresh.

This here is a quick note (from own experience) that the design of the vpuserinfo.nsf is important for the successful run of Sametime.

Since the vpuserinfo.nsf got copied to the new server after the set-up it didn’t receive any design updates. This causes the Sametime community server to not accept any new client connections. Obviously since neither the user’s contact list nor privacy settings can be found. Thanks to IBM support for hinting into that direction. I spend about two hours on the phone with the support checking all sorts of logs and config settings. Until we were left with none but one possibility: ‘a corrupt vpuserinfo’.

When compact, fixup and updall didn’t yield any success I got suspicious and took a closer look at the design of the database. While I refreshed the design of the databases from the stuserinfo.nsf template I did not realise that LocalDomainAdmins do not have access to the template itself. This effectively removes all design elements from the vpuserinfo.nsf, resulting in the issue as described above: no users are able to connect to the Sametime Community server. Once I refreshed the design of the database on the server console instead of the admin client my users where happily connecting to their new Sametime server.

If you have followed IBM’s instructions on replacing the Domino Directory with an LDAP directory you might notice the user notification below after running the stnamechange command against the vpuserinfo.nsf:

I can not think of any valid reason why a user should be bothered that his ‘contact list has been updated to reflect recent administration changes to contact names’. In my experience it would just puzzle people, especially since there is no true information relayed or any action required.

Fortunately we have given the possibility to to suppress the prompt for the user either using a managed setting in the plugin_customization.ini or a desktop policy.

Plug-in: com.ibm.collaboration.realtime.imhub
Preference: showExternalModificationDialog
Value: false

While I was working on the upgrade of our existing Sametime environment to Sametime 8.5.1 (soon 8.5.2) I have run across an interesting question that I considered worth sharing: Will I use Domino LDAP or connect to Active Directory.

There are good and not so good reasons for either option: Read the rest of this entry »

New technote from IBM.