In my previous blogs I discussed installing Sametime 10. My installs all ran perfectly except for one point – when I tried to install MongoDB as a service it installed but then wouldn’t start with the service error “1053”, reported as “service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion”.
I thought I had fixed the problem by using another method to install Mongo. From my previous blog:
This is what the documentation said to use (sc is found in c:\windows\system32 if your path can’t find it) sc.exe create MongoDB binPath=”\”C:\Program Files\MongoDB\Server\3.6\bin\mongod.exe\” –service — config=\”C:\Program Files\MongoDb\Server\3.6\mongod.cfg”” DisplayName= “MongoDB” start= “auto”
I ended up removing that service since it wouldn’t start (sc delete MongoDB) and adding it using a different syntax from the Mongo bin directory itself
Turns out I should have stuck with the documentation and using “sc” but the 1053 error was caused by two problems – the first was a misprint in the documentation as you can see above, there are two “” after mongod.cfg instead of one so that line should read (with added escape character)
the second problem was in the mongod.cfg file so when Mongo tried to start and read it, it failed.
I had copied the contents of the Mongod.cfg from the documentation into a text file so I didn’t consider that would be an issue but the pasted content removed the spaces and tabs at the beginning of each line in the documentation and that meant my mongod.cfg file wouldn’t work. This is what it should look like, spaces and tabs included.
Once that was complete everything worked perfectly. allowing the service to start in the way Sametime wanted and allowed me to run the command “rs.initiate()” from the Mongo console.
Thank you to Tony Payne @ HCL for working with me on this last week.
The Sametime Proxy Server is needed if you have a Community server you want people to login to using either a web or mobile client, this includes having Sametime awareness for other products such as Verse or Connections. Since I had already installed a Community Server without using a System Console I now wanted to add a Sametime Proxy Server with as minimal additional software as possible.
The Sametime Proxy server uses a DB2 database for iOS push notifications. If you don’t create that database the server will work in every other way but you won’t have working push notifications to iOS devices. You can create the database on any DB2 10.x or 11.x server but if you don’t have DB2 your Sametime license includes entitlement to a limited for Sametime only use license of DB2 10.5 (at least that’s what is in the download).
To start we need to install Installation Manager. Installation Manager is a package management software that will be used to install WebSphere and the Sametime Proxy Server on top of it. The Sametime download comes with version 1.6.2 but you are going to want to upgrade that to at least 1.8.6 before installing anything. Once Installation Manager is installed we need to install WebSphere 8.5.5 fixpack 14. Don’t worry about the fixpack download for now, if you have internet access during the install that can be done automatically so you will want to start by extracting each of the three WebSphere installers to a directory on your file system. It doesn’t matter which one. I extracted mine to C:\Software\WAS855. This is just the install directory so you don’t need to keep it once the install is complete.
Now we need to add a repository under Installation Manager so it can find the installer for WebSphere. The installer file is always repository.config so I added a respository (File – Preferences) and pointed to c:\software\was855\repository.config
Once the repository is added I can choose “Install” from the main Installation Manager menu and I will be presented with the option to install WebSphere 8.5.5. As you can see it has automatically checked Version 8.5.5.0 and I have checked “Show all versions” so I can install Fixpack 14 directly during this one install step.
The installer finds 15 fixpacks and automatically selects the newest. Instead I uncheck that and choose 8.5.5.14 which is what we want for this installWe accept all the recommended fixes that are part of 8.5.5.14The installer warns us that there is a missing required fix so we uncheck “show recommended only” and search for the missing fix “ph01621” and select that to install along with WebSphere 8.5.5.14Choose the shared resource directory that Installation Manager will use. This can’t be changed later without uninstalling everything so make sure4 you have roomThe WebSphere install directory wil lbe where the profiles and program files will be created. All WebSphere servers will be installed under this pathThis is the confirmation of what we want to installOnce the WebSphere install is complete go ahead and close Installation Manager without creating a profile (choose “None”). The Sametime Proxy Server will create its own profile as a standalone node so you don’t need to manually create one here.
Now the WebSphere install is complete we can proceed to installing the Sametime Proxy Server. In my design it’s a standalone server so has no deployment manager or System Console. The instructions to do this require us to perform a silent install which means using a response file specifying the configuration that is accessed from outside the Installation Manager GUI.
The extracted installer for the Sametime Proxy Server contains a response file we can edit for our own install. My response file was in
C:\Software\SametimeProxyServer\responseFiles and was called ip.rsp.
I took a copy of that file and made my own changes – see the bottom of this blog for my ip.rsp file but one very important consideration is that in the sample ip.rsp the default password of “wasadmin” is set. If you run the install without changing that you will end up with a login of wasadmin and a password of wasadmin.
zN39fpCc9SqIryGJM7+02A== is the encoded value of “wasadmin”, you must enter the encoded value of the password you want to set in the response file. To generate the encoded value before adding it to the response file you use the “generateEncodedPassword” utility which can be found in your Sametime Proxy Server extracted install e.g.
From the IBM Installaton Manager install directory (C:\IBM\Installation Manager for me) I ran
C:\Software\SametimeProxyServer\GeneratedEncodedPassword\GenerateEncodedPassword.bat gabpass >pw.txt – which generates the encoded value for “gabpass” and writes it to the pw.txt text file as “rNFGfQ/sPi082+AaXFMNxA==. I write the value to a text file so I can have it recorded whilst I complete the next step.
I can then modify the value of <data key=’user.com.ibm.lotus.sametime.proxyserver.was.password’ value=’rNFGfQ/sPi082+AaXFMNxA==’/>
Important note; do not try and use special characters in your WebSphere passwords especially @ and !.
Now we are ready to run the silent install from the eclipse directory where Installation Manager is installed e.g c:\IBM\Installation Manager\eclipse using the command
With the install completed successfully we can sign onto the node via https://hostname:9043/ibm/console using the credentials we set in our rsp install file and see the Sametime Proxy Server in place. The community server that the Sametime Proxy connects to was specified in my response file when I did the install.
In my environment I wanted to have the Sametime Proxy Server on port 443 securely and to install my own SSL certificate. To modify the ports for the Samtime Proxy Server click on the server name and choose “ports” under “Communication” then edit the value for “wc_defaulthost_secure”.
Once this step is complete you should be able to connect to Sametime through a mobile client or through the web using the new web client on https://hostname:port/chat
Once the server is installed any changes to the configuration such as which Community server or cluster it should connect to should be changed by directly editing the stproxyconfig.xml file.
I could do that but then I hit a problem in that anyone accessing Sametime via the Proxy Server could send but not receive messages or see any they sent. My next blog “Issues With MongoDB During Sametime Install” explains what happened and how HCL helped me identify and fix it.
For the official install instructions from HCL please see this PDF
My ip.rsp file is shown below as an example. You will need to modify it for your own install.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!--The "acceptLicense" attribute has been deprecated. Use "-acceptLicense" command line option to accept license agreements.-->
<!-- When the repository location is specified as a relative path, the path is interpreted relative to the location of this response file -->
<repository location='../STProxy'/>
</server>
<!--
This installLocation attribute is directory in which you would like to install the Sametime Servers
e.g. on Windows this might be C:/Program Files/IBM/WebSphere
This directory must be empty before you begin the install unless this is an upgrade.
By convention all of the installed files will be installed into sub-directories of this path,
but this is not necessary (see further directory choices below).
Unless you specify to place other content in sub-directories the only files placed in this
directory will be some message files related to the install/uninstall utilities
The id attribute should not be altered or the installer won't work.
In the profile name the ® character is represented by ®
This representation is safer if the file is edited with a tool which does not support Unicode properly
-->
<profile installLocation='C:/IBM/SametimeServer' id='IBM® Sametime® Server Platform'>
<!--
The files which are installed in the directory specified by the value of the
user.installlocation relate to WAS installer code.
If the specified directory exists prior to running the installer it must be empty.
Therefore, if you are installing upon an existing copy of WebSphere,
you will probably need to change it from the default value.
-->
<data key='user.installlocation' value='C:/IBM/SametimeServer'/> <!-- This attribute specifies where WebSphere Application Server is already installed. -->
The following two XML elements specify the host and port of the Sametime community server that
you wish to connect to with this Proxy server. You will need to alter it. The host name needs to be the FQDN of the CS The default port to use is 1516, because this is the default port for Virtual Places
server to server communication (1533 is the default for client to server communication_
If you specified that you wish to install a WAS secondary node profile,
you must edit these attributes to match the host name and soap port of the Deployment manager you wish to have your WAS profile managed by If this secondary node is a standalone node, then edit these attributes to match the secondary node's hostname and soap port values.
Uncomment this attribute if you wish the WAS profile to use a hostname other than the default for this machine
if you do specify a hostname it should be the fully qualified domain name (e.g. "servername.domain.com" not "servername") <data key='user.com.ibm.lotus.sametime.proxyserver.hostname' value='HOSTNAME'/>
-->
<!--
The WAS profiles created by the installer will be protected by File based security
for the System Console. The following two XML elements specify the username & password
that can be used to login to the WAS System Console.It is not allowed to omit these elements.
For security reasons you do not store the password in plain text. Instead you can use
the generateEncodedPassword utility contained in the kit to generated an encoded form of the password
For example 'zN39fpCc9SqIryGJM7+02A==' is equivalent to a password of 'wasadmin' It is not possible to choose LDAP security during install, but this can be
The default is to name the WAS cell <HOSTSHORTNAME>ProxyCell
and to name the WAS node <HOSTSHORTNAME>ProxyNode
but you can over-ride the defaults by un-commenting the following parameters <data key='user.com.ibm.lotus.sametime.proxyserver.cellname' value='HOSTNAMEProxyCell'/>
A slight delay on this blog, which I promised to write last week, but I have a good excuse. My original plan was to do an in-place upgrade as Sametime 10 is still 32bit-only enabling it to be upgraded on top of your existing Community Server so long as the underlying Domino install is at least 9.0.1 FP10 32bit. However the system requirements support Windows 2012 and Windows 2016 servers, but not Windows 2008 which was what the server I planned to upgrade was installed on. Yeah, it’s been a while since we had a major Sametime upgrade 🙂
Change of plan. I decided to start over first by building a standalone Community server and then adding the Proxy Server all without a System Console.
I built a new Windows 2016 Standard server and installed a new Domino 32 bit 9.0.1 FP10 server on it. IBM Fix Central still has FP10 accessible on it so you can still get it from there.
Windows 2016 is a supported server operating system for Domino 9.0.1, so I went with that as it will also support future upgrades.
We know that the next major Sametime version is meant to be 64bit-only, so we’re not going to be able to upgrade over 32 bit Domino without uninstalling and re-installing but at least I won’t have to rebuild the entire machine. However, for a customer I’d probably do a side-by-side upgrade so I could have a fallback to the existing Community Server.
I like to install Sametime in its own domain as Sametime uses LDAP for authentication and even if that LDAP is a Domino Directory you can’t point to the Directory running the Sametime server.
Having the Sametime Community server in its own domain means I can upgrade Domino and upgrade Sametime without touching anything else such as my mail or application domain.
My Domino server then is built as an Enterprise server (which doesn’t need to be licensed separately if you’re only using it for Sametime) in its own domain and with minimal services (remove things like Calendar, Scheduler, RNRMgr from starting up) but leave HTTP.
Installing MongoDB
MongoDB is new to the Sametime requirements and also temporary. It is needed for storing of chat history, but HCL have said they will be changing the DB platform from Mongo in v11 to something else and providing tools to move the data to the new database store at that point. You don’t need to be a MongoDB expert for this step.
First we need to download the right version of MongoDB and separately the Compass add-on.
The supported MongoDB version is 3.6.5 and fixpacks specifically. Once downloaded we run the installer, make sure you uncheck the box to install “Compass” during the MongoDB install or the install will fail.
Choose “Complete” on this screen
Un-Check this box which is checked by default or the install will fail.
Once completed we then run the Compass installer separately
Now we’re almost ready to start and configure MongoDB. When the server starts it will expect to find the data and log directories so these need to be created in advance or the start will fail. The default locations for those are c:\data\db and c:\program files\mongodb\logs\log.txt (I don’t use these in general but created them purely for the first server start).
Run the mongod.exe first from the install directory which by default is
C:\Program Files\MongoDB\Server\3.6\bin
from a command window run “mongod.exe” which will start the server instance and end up listening on port 27017. Do not shut the server window if running in the foreground at this point!
Now we want to issue commands to the server via the Mongo command line tool which we run using “mongo.exe” from the same directory.
Out of interest at this point if you type the following in a command window you should see both the server listening and command window established connections:
netstat -an |find /i “27017”
Checking The Schema
We now need to make sure the schema version for MongoDB is set correctly to support Sametime’s requirements. From the mongo command window type
use admin db.system.users.remove({}) db.system.version.find()
my request returned “{“_id”: “featureCompatibilityVersion”, “version”: “3.6”}” so I used the command below to set it correctly then restarted the Mongodb server.
The documentation now wants us to add MongoDB as a service using the following instructions however I had problems with it as although it installed as a service it then refused to start returning a 1053 error. After a couple of hours trying to fix that which seems to be Windows related I went another way to get a working service.
This is what the documentation said to use (sc is found in c:\windows\system32 if your path can’t find it) sc.exe create MongoDB binPath=”\”C:\Program Files\MongoDB\Server\3.6\bin\mongod.exe\” –service — config=\”C:\Program Files\MongoDb\Server\3.6\mongod.cfg”” DisplayName= “MongoDB” start= “auto”
I ended up removing that service since it wouldn’t start (sc delete MongoDB) and adding it using a different syntax from the Mongo bin directory itself
That installed the service which started with no problems, including writing to the log file in the new directory I configured on the command line (again the directories have to exist first).
So now Mongodb is installed and running, let us move onto configuration.
Configuring MongoDB
Launch the Mongo Compass Community from your Windows start menu and connect to your locally-running server.
I don’t need to change any of these settings – just press “Connect”Once connected I am shown a list of existing databases. These are all system databases so don’t delete any of them!
Now we need to create a new database for chatlogging and collections within that new database. Click the “Create Database” button and complete the dialog as shown below. Keep the naming and capitalisation identical to what is shown here, Database Name “chatlogging”, Collection Name “SESSIONS” . If you don’t you will need to modify the sametime.ini later.
Once the database is created we can click on it for further configuration
The documentation wants us to create an additional Collection called “EVENTS”, so we click on “Create Collection” and do that.
Having created the new chatlogging db we need to set up a Mongo user account and give that admin access. We do all this from the Mongodb console again which is accessed by running mongo.exe.
The documentation specifies using the user name “sametimeUser” and the password “sametime”. If you use a values you will need to edit the MongoDB settings in Sametime.ini once you complete the Sametime configuration steps.
The command below not only creates the user but also gives that new user admin rights to the chatlogging database.
With Domino shut down we can now install the Sametime Community Server. We don’t need a System Console in place before doing this.
Configuring Chat Logging
There are three components to configuring chat logging on the Sametime server:
Enable Chat Logging through stconfig.nsf so the server knows to support it.
Configure the policy files to enable chat logging.
Point the Sametime chat logging to the MongoDB.
Open STConfig.nsf on the server and find the communityservices document then edit that and change the Chat Logging parameter to “relax”
Now we need to modify the XML files that control the policies. We can find those in the Domino program directory and can open them with a text editor.
In policies.server.xml set the “current-value” of offlinemsgs.community.enabled to “1” instead of “0”
In ‘OfflineMessages.xml’ set the ‘current-value’ of offlinemsgs.community.enabled to “1” instead of “0”
In ‘policies.users.xml’ file set the ‘current-value’ of im.enableOfflineMessages to “1”. There will be multiple instances of that value, one for the default and one for the anonymous policies that are available on a standard install.
I will be talking more about manually setting and creating policies in a later blog. The documentation provides a reference URL to detailed policy settings but that URL now returns a 404 so I’m checking with HCL for an updated link.
In addition, whilst you have policies.users.xml open you can enable the persistent chat feature by setting im.persistentChatEnabled to “1”.
Our last step in this configuration is making sure Sametime knows how to reach MongoDB and your new chatlogging database. If you used the default settings in the documentation and as I’ve documented here and MongoDB is installed locally to the Sametime server then you should not need to change any values, but for reference, and in case you do, the default settings in Sametime.ini are as follows:
Now give everything a restart and confirm that it all works!
In my next blog I’ll be looking at installing the Sametime Proxy Server again without using the System Console so that I can get access to the new web client and the mobile cilents which are part of the Limited Use entitlement.
I’m delighted to finally see the completion of the HCL deal to acquire all of the previous IBM Collaboration products including Notes, Domino, Sametime and Connections. This means that as of today IBM no longer has any ownership of these products and any current and future licenses and support have been transitioned to HCL.
As you can imagine this has been a huge undertaking (well I can barely imagine much of it) and so I expect a few bumps before everything settles in but HCL have already been working hard to get everything (and most everybody) moved over and let’s all give then a chance. They believe in the products and are committed to them in a way we haven’t seen in many years and it’s great news that some of the most well known names in the industry are moving over to HCL to join their Domino and Sametime colleagues including Maureen Leland, Mat Newman, Wes Morgan, Adam Gartenberg and Dave Kern. There are plenty of other people I could mention but since they haven’t personally gone public I don’t want to do so.
I’ve been working with the HCL teams for over a year and I can’t say enough good things about their approach, it is something very refreshing to those of us who have been jaded by the past few years.
The Turtle Partnership Blog 