dilftechnical

new blog

2011-03-21T07:59:00.000Z

I have moved my blog to www.socialshazza.com - head over there for all my news and views

Wow - Lotusphere really is as cool as they say

2011-01-30T16:01:00.000Z

Well I am into my 3rd day of being in Orlando and Lotusphere has really kicked off.

I arrived late Friday night - pulled a 25 hours day - so just ate then slept
Saturday was a great day .. after breakfast my friend (who isn't a geek and has come for *the ride*) hit the Magic Kingdom - after 6 hoursof fun I headed back to arrive late for the BALD meet.

I have met up with some great people - old friends ;) and finally got to meet some of the fabulous community guys that put up with my ranting via twitter. I have checked out Kimonos and the jury is still out on saki - def not warm that is just SO wrong !! the ESPN bar is very cool and very busy but the burgers are great ..

I am currently sat in the Dolphin lobby in a hugely oversized chair (i feel about 12 as my feet don't even come close to the floor) and the Lotusphere back pack makes a great footstool :) my *normal* size laptop wont fit in the LS bag so I will have to fall back on the old IBM common rucksack .. there are geeks everywhere - its only missing Dave Hay to be an úbber geek fest :)

the only bummer on the day so far is they are playing James bloody Blunt on the PA system

Changing Websphere Portal context root

2010-10-08T14:04:00.000+01:00

I must remember that when changing the Portal context root to REMOVE THE WINDOWS SERVICE .. if you don't it WILL fail ...

so

Step 1 - REMOVE THE WINDOWS SERVICE

Step 2 - change the context root - Edit wkplc.properties file (in ConfigEngine/properties, change WpsContextRoot from wps to < context of your choice >

Step 3 - run ConfigEngine.bat modify-servlet-path –DPortalAdminPwd=password –DWasPassword=password - where password is the Portal / Was Admin passwords

Step 4 - regen and re prop the WebServer plugin file

Step 5 - re-add the service, restart portal and away you go

This note is mainly for my benefit as I ALWAYS forget to remove the windows service !!!!

Issues with TAM and Connections - SOLVED

2010-10-08T11:02:00.002+01:00

Issues with TAM and Connections

For those of you that follow me on Twitter you will all know that I have had huge issues with Connections and TAM integration.
I am pleased to report that the issue is now resolved - Instructions below:

Created the transparent junctions as per the info center
Created the ACL defs as per the info center
Created default acl – connectionsdefaultacl and attached to junctions as per the info center
Created additional acl – connectionsacl as per the info center

Resources that do not require authentication which should have connectionsacl applied

/activities/images - Information present in the Lotus Connections wiki but not the official IBM Infocenter documentation.
/files/basic/anonymous/atom - Information present in the Lotus Connections wiki but not the official IBM Infocenter documentation.
/files/form/anonymous/atom - Missing from ALL official IBM documentation

Resources that require basic authentication which should have connectionsacl applied

/blogs/blogsapi - Information present in the Lotus Connections wiki but not the official IBM Infocenter documentation.
/blogs/blogsfeed - Information present in the Lotus Connections wiki but not the official IBM Infocenter documentation.
/communities/dsx - Missing from ALL official IBM documentation
/profiles/dsx - Missing from ALL official IBM documentation

Applied the require forms authentication which should have connectionsdefaultacl applied as per the info center
Created dynurl file as per the info center and applied connectionsacl to /blogs/blogsfeed, /blogs/blogsapi
Edited the web seal config added dynurl-allow-large-posts = yes, forms-auth = https or both, use-same-session = yes
Add the filter types as per the info center
Adding FQDN of load balanced TAM server virtual host - web-host-name = tam.your.domain.com
Import the connectionsAdmin user into TAM via the Web Portal Manager or pdadmin - This step is missing from ALL official IBM documentation
Update LC config file
set dynamic host enabled to “true” and the href/ssl_href to FQDN of load balanced TAM server virtual host i.e my.city.ac.uk
Ensure that the static href, static ssl_href and interService URLs for all services are pointing at the WebSEAL cluster i.e my.city.ac.uk
Set cusom authenticator to TAMAuthenticator and check timeout settings as per the info center
Configure the Lotus Connections directory service extensions to point to the Tivoli Access Manager server i.e setting the extension hrefs to:
http://tam.your.domain.com/ communities/dsx/ & http://tam.your.domain.com/profiles/dsx/

Lotus Connections applications will attempt to open server to server communications with other Lotus Connections applications via Tivoli Access Manager. If forms-auth has been set to https in the webseald-.conf file, then the signer certificate for WebSEAL client-side SSL communications should be added to the WebSphere trust stores - Missing from ALL official IBM documentation

Add the log out button to the HTTP server rewrite config / http config (depending on the set up)

Big thanks to Stephen Swann for the assist (@stephenjswann) - It is now deployed live and working as expected

Quickr 8.5 Portlets for Portal 6.1.5

2010-07-01T10:28:00.000+01:00

The new Quickr 8.5 portlets for Websphere Portal version 6.1.5 have been released and is available via the solutions catalog on the Lotus Greenhouse.

It is very straight forward to set up, download and install the portlet and stick it on a page.
Configure the Places Catalog portlet and give it your

placeCenterServerURL - i.e http://your server name:port
favoritesServiceURL - i.e http://your server name:port/favourites

edit the authentication mode to use SSO or forms
1. Single-Sign-On, which is the recommend method. In order to use this method, Single-Sign-On must be pre-configured between the WebSphere Portal and the Lotus Quickr servers.
2. Form-based login. If Single-sign-On is not possible, the portlet allows the end-user to login to the remote Lotus Quickr server with user name & password. These credentiales are stored securely by the portlet for later use.

When using the portlet in the authenticated mode, a single post-installation step is required:

Using the Integrated Solutions Console (Websphere administrative console), find the "PA_Place_Center" enterprise application, and map the security role "All authenticated users" to all authenticated users.

restart and away you go ..

the only issue I have found with the SSO method of auth is that although my SSO is configured correctly between the portal and quickr servers and the portlet works I see these errors in the log :

[01/07/10 08:33:17:250 BST] 00000067 LTPAServerObj E SECJ0373E: Cannot create credential for the user due to failed validation of the LTPA token. The exception is com.ibm.ws.security.registry.UnsupportedEntryTypeException: not USER or GROUP

[01/07/10 08:33:17:281 BST] 000000a5 LTPAServerObj E SECJ0374E: The accessID in the token contains the wrong type. It should be either user or group. The exception is com.ibm.ws.security.registry.UnsupportedEntryTypeException: not USER or GROUP

a google search finds an entry going back to WAS 6 for error SECJ0373E -

SECJ0374E: The accessID in the token contains the wrong type. It should be either user or group. The exception is {0}.
Explanation This exception is unexpected. The cause is not immediately known.

ahh .. nice then :) But it is working and is on our proof on concept / integration environment box, so we can start testing it in anger now ..

Big props to Mr Dave Hay (IBM Legend) for tipping me off that it is available. I will get some screen shots up on the dilftechnical website asap

This week in lotus

2010-06-18T13:35:00.001+01:00

Just finished recorded this weeks "this week in lotus" - it was a very interesting debate this week .. as usual ran out of time .. I hope Stuart and Darren will have me back at as a guest at a later date .. great fun ..

Issues with Oracle with Connections 2.5 RESOLUTION

2010-06-15T12:53:00.000+01:00

as posted by me on the Connections Blog earlier today :

IBM have now released new trigger code to resolve this issue.

The steps are simple

* Stop the application
* Backup the DB
* Run through the code to remove the Trigger
* Recreate the Trigger
* Start the primary server and test
* Assuming all is well start the other App Servers in the clusters

As yet IBM are unsure as to how they are going to release the fix as it falls out of the typical iFix scope.
If you are seeing this specific issue please contact the Lotus Connections Support team who will furnish you with the appropriate code to resolve the issue.
As soon as I have confirmation on how this will be distributed I will add what will hopefully be the final update to this on-going saga.

Big thanks to Kieran Reid at IBM and Andrew Frayling and his team at Cardiff Uni for assistance and support in resolving this issue. Great work all round.

Big maintenance weekend coming up

2010-06-14T14:52:00.000+01:00

This weekend I am really going to Maintenance town on my live connections cluster.

I have the infamous DB issue to fix. Big props to Kieran Reid from IBM for all the help with this. So triggers to delete and re-add .. no bigg just have to have the system down to solve this ..

That got me thinking .. while its down I may get some other things sorted.
I have some LC config changes to make which should hopefully fix some of the issues I am seeing using Connections with TAM. Hopefully these will work straight away which will lend more power to my elbow that some TAM config changes need to take place (long story will blog when I find the solution) ..

And as we have a new shiny fix pack for connections, I am going to take the opporuinity to take the cluster over the whole weekend and get everything on before we potentially turn it lose on students.

I shall be a busy little nerd girl over the weekend but I am really looking forward to it :)

Quickr 8.5 J2EE Beta

2010-06-09T08:59:00.000+01:00

Finally got my hands on a very very very Late copy of the Quickr 8.5 beta for WebSphere Portal

Pros

I am impressed it comes with support for oracle now straight out of the box, so no mucking about with transfering DB's
It is using the one UI so it will be easy to "skin"
It has support for windows 2008 64bit which is always a plus in my book as I have to use my sowftware on windows VMs
It runs on portal 6.1.5 and is patched for was 6.1.0.29 out the box too so no worried about having to patch it as soon as you have installed

Cons
So far I have found some niggly bugs which are driving me nuts

You no longer change the portal / was / quickr admin account in the properties file you run a command to swtich them .. no problem normally EXCEPT if you have spaces in your DN's. The script fails with an error.

I found a technote Wp-change-portal-admin-user task fails if spaces in distinguished name this applies to Portal 6.1 and is a unix/linux/solaris issue (so I am assuming a 64 bit os problem) as this is certainly the case with my windows 2008 64bit. The solution to the problem is to create a properties file and pass the peram into the command line which theoretically should work for windows - alas although it does read the properties file instead of failing as it can't read the full dn, it now fails as it doesn't like the quotes around the DN.

Once I have run this and it fails it breaks the quickr instance!! Although I can log in all the permissions on the places get screwed - so I can see my places but none of the content .. same goes for the admin account. Luckily having all my systems on VM's I can just roll back the snapshot and re run the secure task .. not ideal but better than having to rebuild it from scratch.

So far I haven't found a way around this issue so I am having to use the original quickr admin user for administration - not ideal but fine in this instance .. as this goes gold next week I have a week to work out how to fix it ... no pressure then :)

Issues with Oracle on Solaris with Connections 2.5 UPDATE

2010-06-01T09:57:00.000+01:00

As I posted on the Connections Blog earlier today ...

At last it appears there may be a *real* fix for this .. IBM have changed the trigger code which should hopefully fix the mutating trigger issue we see when deleting files ..

I will be testing this today and if it works rolling it out to my live environment over the next week.

I will attempt to get some confirmation if this code will be fixed in all new fix packs and APARS - watch this space and hopefully some great news

At last ..

2010-05-09T21:21:00.000+01:00

I am finally trying to sort out my website .. too lazy (and mainly lack of time) to be bothered to code up stuff or make it look pretty I have installed joomla, butchered one of the default skins and I am slowly loading it up with geeky goodness. you never know I may actually have a working website in a day or so .. but don't hold me to that .. I am going back to work after a week off sick and have LOADS to catch up on .. but hey I am making a small effort :)

Nerd Geek Dork

2010-04-22T14:39:00.000+01:00

According to the diagram I am a Geek - which is reasuring as I was worried I was a Dork ..

This nerd/dork/geek/dweeb Venn diagram should save you a lot of time and frustration in the future.

this comment summed it up perfectly

The difference between Nerds and Geeks is that Nerds specialise and Geeks like diversity. If a Nerd has a favourite subject, they aim to make themselves the authority in it, whereas Geeks don’t take it that seriously – sure, its more serious than Average Person, but not Nerderious.

image from greatwhitesnark.com

JIRA 4.1 update SSL issues

2010-04-20T10:17:00.000+01:00

after going nuts thinking that I had infact lost my marbles and had been following the instructions wrong I have discovered (thanks to Mr Andrew Frayling) that there is something missing from the Jira server.xml file.

A config changed happened between Tomcat 5.5 and 6 ( JIRA 4.0 uses 5.5, JIRA 4.1 uses 6 ) which means that you must have SSLEnabled="true" in the secure connector port of the JIRA config - this is missing. Add it in and SSL suddenly starts working !!

http://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRA-20963

It was drving me nuts all weekend!!

and now it works .. HURRAH ;)

Issues with Oracle on Solaris with Connections 2.5 - UPDATE

2010-04-20T09:10:00.000+01:00

After some testing with the SPARC version of this fix - which actually did work we were pleased to find out that Oracle had released a version for x86.

We applied this - this morning, and I am sorry to say it doesn't work. If you try to delete a file from the DB directly or through the connections interface, the DB is still throwing the mutating trigger issue.

Plot thickens - time to go back to oracle :)

Issues with Oracle on Solaris with Connections 2.5

2010-03-26T14:51:00.000Z

There is an issue when running Connections with Oracle on Solaris
Symptoms of the problem are you can not delete certain files and / or the files widget from communities

The error in the logs is - table FILES.MEDIA is mutating

08/02/10 00:01:00:569 GMT] 0000005d Library E EJPVJ9166E: Unable to delete the library with id b855660b-d6bc-4b19-891f-2087aa3d9a0c. [UserImpl@26ce26ce id=64377ea3-e571-4323-922a-dc0723fead36 directoryId=2BE4B3FF-4AB4-48FF-9B83-73689537A16A]
java.sql.SQLException: ORA-04091: table FILES.MEDIA is mutating, trigger/function may not see it
ORA-06512: at "FILES.PKG_MED_DOWNLOAD_UPD", line 45
ORA-06512: at "FILES.MED_DOWNLOAD_UPD_S", line 2
ORA-04088: error during execution of trigger 'FILES.MED_DOWNLOAD_UPD_S'

at oracle.jdbc.driver.DatabaseError.throwSqlException(DatabaseError.java:112)

We have since discovered (thanks to Kieran Reid in Connections Support for doing the leg work) that this is an issue with Oracle 10.2.0.4 on Solaris - the triggers have an issue which is fixed in 10.2.0.5 - which is a big no no as far as connections go. There is a fix that you can apply to 10.2.0.4 that will resolve the problem.

From support.oracle.com search the knowledge base for 4574851
You should get three results, select the third match
Click on the link for Patch.4574851
Select the 10.2.0.4 release for the Solaris platform
Download, install and test.

*NOTE* this fix is only available for SPARC not x86

So far this appears to have fixed the issue on the backup of the Prod database (I have put a stand-alone LC25 in front of it to test which involved all sorts of DB hacking to get it to work - not recommended unless you are desperate for a quick test). I am hoping to schedule moving our prod DB from x86 to SPARC applying the patch and then plugging my LC25 cluster into it.

Changing the title on the Connections 2.5 Homepage

2010-03-26T14:16:00.001Z

Changing the title on the homepage is a bit of a pain .. The steps are as follows :

Make a back up copy of the COMPRESSED homepage.ear file from the deployed application config

ND - < was ROOT >\profiles\< profile> \config\cells\< cell Name >\applications\Homepage.ear\Homepage.ear

StandAlone - < was ROOT >\profiles\< profile >\config\cells\< cell Name >\applications\Homepage.ear\Homepage.ear

extract it to a temp folder ie D:\temp\extracted\homepage

find the dboard.common.jar and extract that to a temporary folder i.e D:\temp\extracted\Dashboard

drill down into the extracted file >

> com/ibm/lotus/connections/dashboard/nls/

and find the file jsp_resources.properties

change the jsp.homepage.title = < "your new title" >

change any instances of "IBM Lotus Connections Home Page" in this file to < "your new title" >

save and close the file

do the same for any additional languages that you are supporting

re-compress the dboard.common.jar and copy the newly edited compressed version into the extracted directory of the homepage ear file.

re-crompress the homepage ear file

stop all server instances that are running the homepage application replace the newly edited and compressed homepage.ear file in the deployed application config

you will also need to replace the newly edited dboard.common.jar in the installedApps folder on your primary / standalone server.

< was_root >\profiles\< profile name >\installedApps\< cell name >\Homepage.ear

once the servers are restarted they will use the new title in the homepage app

Futher to the Portal 6.1.5 set up

2010-03-26T14:14:00.000Z

Futher to the Portal 6.1.5 set up - these steps were required from an ORACLE DB point of view to get the DB configured :

Grant create session to community
Create likeminds user
Grant create table to community
Grant create view to jcr
Grant unlimited tablespace to community

and also these

grant select on sys.dba_pending_transactions to public;
grant select on sys.pending_trans$ to public;
grant select on sys.dba_2pc_pending to public;
grant execute on sys.dbms_system to public;

if you don't do this then it just doesn't work :)

Portal won't start ??

2010-03-26T08:49:00.002Z

I have come across a horrible little *feature* that occurs sometimes with WebSphere Portal where the server fails to start and writes absoutely nothing to the log ... Just a tad annoying when you are trying to work out why it didn't start in the first place.

Sometimes this is due to a tranlog problem which is pretty straight forward to resolve:
backup / delete the directory -
< profile root >/tranlog/cellname/nodename/servername

normally this will do the trick and a restart works - if it doesn't do the following
rename the log folders (or delete them)

< profile root >/logs

to fix the issue that I had seen I had to rename the ffdc, nodeagent and portal server log directories

restart the servers in question and as if by magic it starts :)

I have experienced this at Portal 6.1.5 but I have had reports that this also appears to be a problem on 6.1.0.2 as well

Portal 6.1.5 do i love it or hate it ..??

2010-01-07T21:57:00.000Z

Answers on a post card ... first impressions of the installer was Wow that was neat, it installed the vanilla *everything* install fairly quickly and was up and running on it's cloudscape db and basic security very quckly, looks funky, is fast and the new connections style theming is very sexy ...

Now I am trying to do something wild and crazy .... point it at an oracle db ... so far I am losing this battle .. although after a lot of swearing at windows 2008 for being TOO secure and the info centre for not making much sense I feel we may be winning the battle and be well on the way to winning the war, once the oracle piece is sorted it should be a straight forward secure against Active Directory federated LDAP cluster and go ..SHOULD - it was straight forward in Portal 6.1.1 but then so was securing it against an Oracle db ...

Once I have it working I will doc the steps mainly for my reference but you never know some other poor little geek may also have to use Portal with the Oracle / AD solution and I would hate people to go through pain if they don't have to :)

watch this space kiddies you never know I may post something useful :)

Connections 2.5 - WebSphere Tips

2009-12-01T14:35:00.000Z

WebSphere Tip : 1

When clustering Connections you may encounter issues when the wizard attempts to federate the node into your deployment manager. This is a known WAS issue as the JVM suffers out of memory errors (is you delve deep in the add node log file / dmgr log you will find them).

There is a quick work around that can solve this:

Increasing the WAS HEAP size
In order for the add node command to work correctly when running the cluster wizard please do the following:

Connection servers
On each of the connections servers browse to \bin and edit the addNode file (.bat or .sh depending on your OS).

Insert the line set WAS_HEAP=-Xms256M -Xmx1500M at the top of the file to set a variable (for example – under the set CMD variable)

set CMD_NAME_ONLY=%~n0
set WAS_HEAP=-Xms256M -Xmx1024M

at the bottom of the file find the "%JAVA_HOME%\bin\java" line and add the variable

"%JAVA_HOME%\bin\java" -Dcmd.properties.file=%TMPJAVAPROPFILE% %WAS_HEAP% %WAS_DEBUG% %WAS_TRACE% %CONSOLE_ENCODING% "%CLIENTSOAP%" "%JAASSOAP%" "%CLIENTSAS%" "%CLIENTSSL%" %USER_INSTALL_PROP% "-Dwas.install.root=%WAS_HOME%" "-DWAS_HOME=%WAS_HOME%" "com.ibm.wsspi.bootstrap.WSPreLauncher" -nosplash -application "com.ibm.ws.bootstrap.WSLauncher" "com.ibm.ws.runtime.NodeFederationUtility" "%CONFIG_ROOT%" "%WAS_CELL%" "%WAS_NODE%" %*

save the file.

Deployment Manager
On the deployment manager machine.
Open the Administrative Console.
Open System Administration > Deployment Manager > Process Definition > Java Virtual Machine.
Specify 256 for Initial Heap Size and 1500 for Maximum Heap Size.

Save your changes and restart the Deployment Manager.

This should resolve the issue - you may need to increase the Dmgr maximum heap slightly more but I found 1000 was just not enough and 1500 did the trick.

When you run the cluster wizard now it should run as expected :)

WebSphere Tip : 2

A handy tip to note if you are not a huge WebSphere guru.

To enable commands to be run from the command line without the need of the -username and -password arguments configure SOAP security.

Every WebSphere profile has a file called soap.client.props which hold soap connector client information. The path to the files is as follows : /profiles//properties

SOAP connector security is disabled by default.

When enabled with the correct information it is possible to run the standard WAS start , stop and status commands for instance by just running the .bat or .sh command without passing the extra credentials.

### EXAMPLE ###

###############################################################################
#
# JMX SOAP Connector Client Properties File
#
# This file contains properties that are used by the JMX SOAP Connector Client
# of the WebSphere Application Server product. SOAP Connector executes on WebSphere
# java servers and client systems with java applications that access WebSphere servers.
#
# ** Encoding Passwords in this File **
#
# The PropFilePasswordEncoder utility may be used to encode passwords in a
# properties file. To edit an encoded password, replace the whole password
# string (including the encoding tag {...}) with the new password and then
# encode the password with the PropFilePasswordEncoder utility. Refer to
# product documentation for additional information.
#
###############################################################################

#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# SOAP Client Security Enablement
#
# - security enabled status ( false[default], true )
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
com.ibm.SOAP.securityEnabled=true

com.ibm.SOAP.loginUserid=wasadminuser
com.ibm.SOAP.loginPassword=wasadminpassword

#------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Connections 2.5 Clustering - how to avoid some pain

2009-12-01T14:30:00.000Z

All was going exactly to plan when I installed my primary node - federated correctly worked as expected and I even managed to change it fairly easily to point to a different DB and shared content store I was a very happy bunny UNTIL I decided to add node2 - then it all went "pear shaped".

So here is a quick over view of the issue and how I have got around it – but I really want to know how this happened and if I can do anything to fix this for the future - I have a PMR open and IBM are trying to recreate the issue now.

I created node1 using the Connections install wizard to create a primary node – I supplied DB(jdbc:oracle:thin:@ < my Original DB server name >:1521:conn1) and file system info (//< my Original File server name >/LotusConnectionsData/< featureName >) and it clustered successfully and node 1 was fine.

I then moved the DB to another machine and also moved the file system. I edited the data source info at cluster and server level (jdbc:oracle:thin:@< my NEW DB server name >:1521:conn1) and also changed the file system (< my NEW File server name >/portal_collabdata$/< featureName >) in the Websphere variables section of the ICS as per the instructions in the info center. Node 1 has always worked as expected even after moving these.

When I added any subsequent node it configured the server with the original file store information (//< my Original File server name >/LotusConnectionsData/< featureName >)) and defaulting back to the original DB data source (jdbc:oracle:thin:@< my Original DB server name >:1521:conn1).

If I change these manually and resynch and restart the servers they work as expected - the Datasource although it is set at Cluster level .. is also set at server level - I had to change the datasource EVERYWHERE to fix the issue (as I have 4 servers per machine and 4 machines that is a lot of editing).

This has prompted me to ask these questions of IBM:

The WebSphere Variables for the file stores are also picking up the original path – It appears that when Node1 was federated and the config was created that it has made some kind of *template* which it creates further nodes/servers from. As I have changed the config the template is not getting updated (if this is how it is doing it).

Am I doing anything wrong?
If so what?
And if no how to I prevent this from happening in the future?

== IBM's Response ==
I received an email back from IBM regarding the issues that I experienced after changing some settings in my cluster. The bad news is it is a limitation, the good news is they are going to fix it:

The customer is right, this is a limitation in the LC 2.5 install and is being addressed for the next release.

In LC 2.5, variables/datasources/providers/etc are created at the server level, then this is used as a template for additional servers...
the problem is that server level settings like this override higher (node, cluster, cell) level settings, causing the difficulty updating the customer experienced.
ideally, these settings would be at cluster level.

Since the customer has this working, they do not have to change anything, but, if they wish to simplify future changes they can do the following:

1. create cluster level variables, datasources, providers, etc
2. [optional... for testing] create a new node -- this node will have all the server level settings by default
3. only if you did 2... delete the server level settings for the items you created at cluster level in step 1
note: if you don't delete the server level settings for this new node, it would continue to use the server level settings
4. only if you did 2... test that the applications deployed on the new node behave correctly (basically you are verifying the cluster level settings)
5. after verifying (or reviewing) the cluster level settings (variables, datasources, etc), you can delete the server level items corresponding to the new cluster level items
note: if you don't delete the server level settings for this new node, it would continue to use the server level settings
6. now, when you make changes to the cluster level variables thru the deployment manager, you just need to save changes and synchronize nodes
all the nodes and servers that don't have node or server level instances of the same variables will get the cluster level values

Again, the order of precedence for finding variables, datasources, etc is....
first, is it defined for the Server? If yes, the server level item is used
second, is it defined for the Node?
third, is it defined for the Cluster? <--- this is where we suggest creating them
fourth, is it defined for the Cell?

Wow .. This looks awsome

2009-12-01T12:25:00.000Z

today thanks to the lovely Mr Stuart McIntyre for the tip off .. but Mr David Hay IBM consultant and general technical guru and geek has posted a guide to Portal 6.1.5 (with screen shots) .. WOW IBM, you have made the portal interface look as cool as the connection one does :)

I am downloading it now and looking forward to a play

hello world

2009-12-01T06:10:00.001Z

after faffing about for god knows how long on shall i host my own techie blog or wiki I have been lazy and opted for the blogger root like a lot of my fellow connections/portal buddies .. so hello world and welcome to my mind :)

I shall do a *dave hay* and dump the contents of my tiny little mind here - mainly to help me remember all of those little gems that I appear to come across .. and I am sick of writing things down in note books and bits of paper only to lose them :)

so watch this space for mad ramblings of a technical nature :)

shaz