I installed HCL Connections Docs 2.0.1 on top of an already installed HCL Connections 6.5CR1 with Docs Viewer. Usually a simple task, the installation was smooth, after the mandatory restart the Edit button in the files’ application appeared and all looked good, but when the users clicked on edit a white page was loaded.

Update 2021-12-13 2021-12-15

• Elasticsearch: Apache Log4j2 Remote Code Execution (RCE) Vulnerability - CVE-2021-44228 - ESA-2021-31
• HCL: CVE-2021-44228 : Security Advisory
• IBM: Security Bulletin: Vulnerability in Apache Log4j affects WebSphere Application Server (CVE-2021-44228)
• Security Bulletin: HCL Connections Security Update for Apache Log4j 2 Vulnerability (CVE-2021-44228)
• CVE-2021-45046: It was found that the fix to address CVE-2021-44228 in Apache Log4j 2.15.0 was incomplete in certain non-default configurations.

So there is a fix for kc.war which updates the log4j 2.8 to 2.15, Elasticsearch in Component Pack has log4j 2.8 and 2.11 included but is not vulnerable because of additional security settings.

During troubleshooting of WebSphere Application Server it is necessary to enable traces and see more detailed log messages.

Enabling these traces is very annoying, because you need to follow long click paths within the Integrated Solution Console (ISC).

During the latest automated deployment of the HCL Connections Desktop Plug-ins for Microsoft™ Windows™ , I had issues activating the Password Save Policy. We wanted to disable the option that users can save passwords.

The documentation tells us, that the registry key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\IBM\Social Connectors\Settings\Password Save Policy needs to be set to 1 to achieve this.

Some time ago I got the tip from HCL Support, that the Create Community button will recognize the role community-creator only when the gatekeeper option CATALOG_CARD_UPDATED is set to false.

This is working, but I had to complain, that this option activates some code, which loads fonts from a CDN instead of the local Connections deployment.

Connections 7 creates the Community Highlights page automatically and sets it as the start page for new communities.

That’s configured in the highway service, which is available for administrative users on https://your_connections_url/connections/config/highway.main.gatekeeper.tiles

A long time ago, I wrote about the new implementation of allowlists in HCL Connections and that the documentation on customization and adding new rules was an absolute miracle for me.

In the post Create A Test Environment with Terraform and KVM I created the first three virtual machines, now we configure a DNS server so name resolution works as expected.

Since HCL Connections started to add Kubernetes to the stack, we need to use proper name resolution instead of just editing /etc/hosts. That’s a bit of an effort, but in the end it is way easier than checking several hosts if the hosts file is uptodate.

I create a lot of virtual machines during the week to test deployments, or try to digg into problems of deployments. In the past I used Vmware Workstation, Oracle VirtualBox or MS HyperV on my desktops, but I also used Vmware ESX. I tried to use Vagrant and Packer to prepare images and distribute them, but wasn’t satisfied at all.