This post is in response to a question asked on my previous post by Gili Nachum.

When re-installing the Sametime Gateway to convert it from a Single Server to a Network Deployment you are obviously faced with the task to re-configure the system, which definitely includes the SSL configuration. There might possibly be a way to transfer most of the configuration using Websphere scripts. In absence of any experience in this area I am going to describe the manual steps here.

Very important: create a backup of your Websphere directory before removing the old installation of the Gateway. I am assuming here that you have followed IBM’s instructionsfor the SSL setup of the single server and didn’t create a custom keystore. In this case you’ll find a key.p12 file within the profile config, which is the NodeDefaultKeyStore and a trust.p12 file, reflecting the NodeDefaultTrustStore.

On setting up the new Sametime Gateway server using network deployment you will be creating a new key store. Instead of creating a certificate request though you are going to import the existing certificate.

1. Select Personal Certificates under Additional properties and choose Import.
2. Choose Key store file and type the path to you key.p12 file.
3. Leave Type set to PKCS12.
4. Enter the Key file password. The default key store password, if you haven’t changed it, is WebAS .
5. Hit the ‘Get Key File Aliases’ button and select the alias to import in the drop down below.
6. Define the alias name for the import and hit okay.

Repeat above steps for all trust certificates using the trust.p12 file of the old installation and the CellDefaultTrustStore of the new installation. You can now continue with the SSL configuration for the cluster, the SIP and XMPP proxy.

As a side note to above: it is strongly recommended to change the password for your DefaultKeyStores. Otherwise an attacker might possibly be able to steal and misuse your identity.

Today I had the need to re-install our Lotus Sametime Gateway to change it around from Standalone to Network Deployment. While the de-installation following IBM’s procedure seemed to be alright, I still wasn’t able to re-install the server, ending up with an error message:

“Unable to locate a Sametime Gateway server at [oldinstalllocation]“

Figuring out what was going on kept me busy for quite a while. I got my final hint from the installlog.txt claiming:

“com.ibm.rtc.gateway.install.CheckVPDRegistry, msg1, An existing Sametime Gateway version 8.5.0.0 was detected.”

This pointed me to the final solution on the web. Apparently there can be an issue with Install Shield’s Vital Product Database (VPD), which is still containing an entry for Sametime where there isn’t a valid installation any more. Removing the Gen2 folder from the \Program Files\Common Files\InstallShield\Universal\common directory as described in the linked document above finally allowed me to re-run the set-up. Also note that the Gen2 folder should be backed up before removing as it also holds information for other products that may be installed on the same server. More details on this can also be found in the linked document.

Some weeks ago I tried to enable my Lotus Sametime/Domino environment to allow scheduling of Sametime online meetings from within the Lotus Notes calendar. Sounds straightforward. Doesn’t it? So thought I.

While everything was working fine until the processing of the meeting invitation on the Sametime server I started following IBM’s step-by-step guide while double and triple checking that all the settings made had been all right.

After debugging the configuration, again following IBM instructions, it appeared that the Java service manager is having issues parsing the time format of the meeting invitation as shown below.

exception msg:Unparseable date: "01/08/2008 08:30:00 p.m."
01/09/08 9:22:56.117 [Trace ] [ CalendarServiceHandler ] [ com.lotus.sametime.meetingmanagement.meetingservices
.notes.NotesDateTime

Funnily this seems to be caused by the a.m./p.m. time format being used in some English spoken countries as New Zealand, where I currently live and work. Changing the time format to either military time (24 hours) or AM/PM (capital letters) extension let this problem disappear. Some instructions on how to change the time format for the systems account in MS Windows are documented here.

When I submitted this issue as PMR to IBM it appeared that no one else in this world has had this issue before. I can only see two reasons: Either anyone else has proper time formatting and, being German, I consider a 24 hour clock as a proper format or they are not using Sametime at all. Let’s see if I missed anything.

Having recently done an upgrade from Sametime 3.1 to Sametime 7.5.1 I have to admit that I am a bit disappointed with the way IBM choose to implemented the maintenance of names for this product. I expected some closer integration into the Lotus Notes/Domino product range. To make things worse the Administration Guide reveals misleading information.

But let’s start from the beginning. (more…)

As of today IBM has made Lotus Notes and Domino 7.0.3 available in English for the download from the Passport Advantage site. Version 7.0.3 now officially supports Microsoft Windows Vista on the client. Further information can be found at the Notes from Lotus Support site.

Update 19/10/07: Important information for all organisations running Sametime 7.5.x on Domino 7 is that the regression that got introduced in Domino 7.0.2 where changes in the JVM are causing crashes of the nHTTP task are fixed in version 7.0.3 of Domino.