Since some versions of IBM Connections, it is mandatory to delete temp and wstemp of your Connections node after deployment or updates, or you end up with an old layout/design of Connections GUI.
On a Windows Server System this can be a pain, because within temp/wstemp WebSphere Application Server creates a folder structure with nodename / application server name and so on. In must cases the delete ends with the message “path too long”.
So you can start and rename the folders and try to delete over and over again. A time consuming activity and you need to do several times during an update.
There are several tips around, but most of them need an extra tool installed. I searched for a solution for this for a long time, but never blogged about the way I normally use to avoid this. I remembered during a skype discussion with other Connections guys some days ago, so here is the easiest and fasted way to get rid of long paths:
Path too long? Use Robocopy (thanks Bert van Langen)
Robocopy is a great tool and it is installed by default since Windows Server 2008, I use it during migrations to move the IBM Connections shared data to an other place, but it’s easy to create an empty folder and move it to the temp folder of the WebSphere Application server node.
Here as an example:
mkdir d:\empty
robocopy d:\empty D:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\AppSrv01\temp /purge
But be careful, robocopy is not using the trash, so when you type the wrong path, or forget the , you end up with searching the backup tapes.
