Searching For The Elusive 5.2.0-P8CE-WIN.EXE

In this month’s adventures of Connections installs I offer you my search for a required Filenet installer.  If you’re installing CCM there are 4 files you need to have in a directory for the Connections install to complete - from the install instructions here and shown below .  I’ve done this lots of times and you basically put the executables together in one directory you can point to during the Connections install.

However with CR2 came a requirement to update the installers see here and below

Notice the difference?  CR2 doesn’t list the 5.2.0-P8CE-WIN (LINUX, AIX , ZLINUX) file at all as a required update.  That means that all the other files are in Fixcentral but not that one.  So I want the latest file and I don’t know if there’s a newer one.  I go to Fix Central and search for 5.2.0-P8CE and get offered the 5.2.0.3-P8CP8 files.  I try to search for a download list for IBM Connections Content Manager but it doesn’t exist (I like the download lists because they often have the latest part numbers).  There is one for IBM Connections but that doesn’t include any of the FileNet components.

Off I go to Partnerworld where I type in IBM Connections Content Manager and I get an eAssembly to go through including the file FN_CE_5.2.1_WINDOWS_ML which sounded hopeful but I already had that and it contains the following. Note 5.2.1-P8CPE-WIN not P8CE.  The 5.2.0 files were no longer showing on Partnerworld under Connections Content Manager

 

Luckily I’m a paranoid control freak and have backups of all the installers myself and there I found the original FN_CE_5.2_WINDOWS_ML file which, when download and extracted had the correct 5.2.0-P8CE-WIN file in it.  The one the Connections installer wanted and refused to progress without.

 

The sizes of the zip files should have made me suspicious.  It does look like the 5.2.1 zip file in partnerworld has the wrong content (possibly because there isn’t a 5.2.1 for P8CE only for P8CPE) and i’m not the only one who goes cross eyed staring at P8CE vs P8CPE.   Or maybe I’ve been staring at this too long. Either way thanks to my backup I’m sorted now.

Adventures With CCM and Libraries

Recently I’ve run into all sorts of problems deploying CCM for a customer who is running multiple servers.  In this case two of the biggest problems were down to the Filenet application server being different from the Connections application server so I’ll write them up here in case anyone else runs into the same thing.

Problem No.1 CreateObjectStore batch file fails with

“CC0050E CONTENT_FCA_ROOT_DOES_NOT_EXIST the root folder does not exist d:\ibm\connections\data\shared\ccm”

After much checking that the folder was there and did exist and the account running the CreateObjectStore did have rights I realised that it wasn’t looking on the Deployment Manager server (where the Filenet files are installed and where the batch files are run from) but on the WebSphere Application Server designed to run the CCM Application.  That server, which was a completely separate machine,  didn’t even have a D drive. It had an E drive.  Once I was able to create d:\ibm\connections\data\shared\ccm on that second server, the setup completed.

Problem No.2 Principal Name not found when running CreateGCD

This failed multiple times no matter what account we used although we had a specific account set up for CCM called ccm_administrator that had a valid email address and was in LDAP, this kept failing.  I could see the account in LDAP (Domino) , through an LDAP browser and could validate the password but CCM didn’t like it.  In the end we discovered that the site had a filter for LDAP users in Connections that required a certain attribute to be complete, that account didn’t have that attribute set so even though it was a valid LDAP account it wasn’t authorised as a Connections account.  Once that attribute was set the CreateGCD ran perfectly.

Problem No.3.  Mobile app doesn’t display library contents

This is actually a bug which is due to be fixed in a new version of the Connections mobile application (est. end April).  If the CCM application is on a server with a different hostname than the Mobile application, you can see Libraries in the Mobile application and even go into them but you can’t see library contents.  Using a browser on a mobile device works fine.

So that’s it.  A few CCM things that have stalled me or tripped me up in the past few months that I hope you can avoid 🙂

Sametime Launch - Backing Out Of The Race

Today is the launch day for Sametime 9 which means the gold code should be available to download and install.  Usually on gold release day I see a rush on blogs and twitter to download the software get it installed and start talking about it which always makes me feel under pressure.  Added to that is that i’m currently at the airport heading to Florida to do some presentations on Connections Content Management, Quickr migration and Filenet so the chances of me getting a) time and b) decent enough internet to download 15+GB of files is slim.

Once I do get everything downloaded this is the plan

1. Build a new VM with DB2 10 and the System Console on Windows 2008 (because I find DB2 management on Windows easier but that’s just me and it’s changed since we no longer have a control center

2. Build a second VM to install Meetings, ST Advanced code, ST Proxy on RedHat

3.  Build a third VM to install the Media components including the new Video Managers

That should take 2 days from starting download to completing install if all goes well, then I will go back a step, clone my 8.5.2 environment and start testing migration.

I probably won’t blog about my upgrade and migration experiences until the week after next.  Meanwhile I’m focussing in on my Content Management presentations, I’ve learnt a huge amount about Filenet itself as a part of learning CCM in the past few months and I’m excited to be presenting something new (and I hope interesting).  Bring on the 97 degree heat / 90% humidity!