Daily Archives: July 24, 2014

07.24.14
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Choose Your Installation Manager Carefully….

In both Sametime and Connections builds I have come across customers installing different versions of Installation Manager than that recommended or supplied with the product. The ST and Connections apps are both 32bit so although they will install under a 64bit version of Installation Manager, you will get a warning about it being 64bit.  Don’t ignore that.

There’s no advantage to you choosing 64bit Installation Manager over 32bit on a 64bit platform and worse, since it manages all your installs, if you discover it’s a problem later you can’t fix it because you can’t uninstall it without uninstalling everything it installed itself.  I did a workaround at a customer  I was brought into once where we renamed the IM folder and installed a new 32bit version to make sure ST Media Manager would install but that’s a fudge.

Do yourself a favour, you can’t go wrong with 32bit 🙂

07.24.14
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Hidden Pre-Reqs for Sametime VMCU - Surprise!

Building out another Sametime environment this week and I hit a roadblock. Fortunately because I’m a control freak I always read along with the documentation when I do an install, no matter how many times I’ve done it before.  I do this because it’s always possible IBM have updated their documentation since I last saw it…..and so I found,  buried in the documentation here, on the install page of the VMCU.. under

Deploying -

Deploying Common Component -

Deploying Audio and Video -

Sametime Media Manager on Linux or Windows -

Installing the Sametime Media Manager’s VMCU component -

Installing the Sametime the Sametime Video MCU - Step 9)

I find this

“Download and install the following prerequisite RPMs if they are not already installed.

For the list of RPMs to install, see the IBM Technote, List of RPMs to install on the Sametime Video MCU“

Yes a shiny list of pre-reqs required only by the VMCU and not on the system requirements.  Unfortunately they are all fairly old RPMs and at the current site although the packages are there, they are all newer versions of the ones needed.  The tech note is very specific about that

“Important: Each RPM’s file name includes a version number in the format X.X.X.Y, where X is a mandatory level that cannot be changed, and Y is a minimum level. If your RPM has a higher level for the value in the Y position, you can use it.”

So you may have zlib installed but if you have zlib-1.2.7-0.*.x86_64.rpm but the tech note calls for zlib-1.2.3-106.*.x86_64.rpm then you’re out of luck unless you can revert back to zlib-1.2.3. something

I assume the tech note (which is only a couple of weeks’ old) is a result of support having to deal with VMCU problems and determining those exact packages are needed for the VMCU to work.  It’s not a problem so long as you know about it and make sure those packages are in place before you start.