I haven’t touched the Connections scripts for a long time, but I recently made some minor updates to fix compatibility issues with newer versions and added small scripts to speed up configuration. I also got the documentation script running from the menu.

Most of the LDAP connections from IBM WebSphere Application Server are configured with TLS. So you need to have the root certificate in the WebSphere truststore to connect.

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).

This week I installed IBM Connections 5.5CR1 on a Windows Server. I used WebSphere Application Server 8.5.5.9 and everything ran pretty smooth, but the Connections install itself ended in an error after all applications were successfully installed.

Last week I wrote a post about Using Docker and ELK to Analyze WebSphere Application Server SystemOut.log , but i wasn’t happy with my date filter and how the websphere response code is analyzed. The main problem was, that the WAS response code is not always on the beginning of a log message, or do not end with “:” all the time.

I often get SystemOut.log files from customers or friends to help them analyzing a problem. Often it is complicated to find the right server and application which generates the real error, because most WebSphere Applications (like IBM Connections or Sametime) are installed on different Application Servers and Nodes. So you need to open multiple large files in your editor, scroll each to the needed timestamps and check the lines before for possible error messages.

Within the fixlist of the new released CR3 of IBM Connections 5 there are several new configuration options mentioned. One of the interesting ones for me is the mobile update parameter AllowRemoveAccount. The default value is “false” and your Connections environment still works before, but what’s changed when you set this to true?

The official documentation is already uptodate and shows us:

When you set this option to true, accounts can be removed from a mobile device without requiring the user to login and without any authorization check. The user is asked to confirm the deletion of an account before it is removed.

Missing command history on Linux is a little problem when using command line utilities like wsadmin, db2, sqlplus and so on.

I found a solution for this today.

You can use rlwrap to get command history for all applications on the console and it is possible to recall and edit the commands. Rlwrap uses readline.

Installation on CentOS:

yum install readline-static gcc make
tar -xvzf rlwrap-0.41.tar.gz
cd rlwrap-0.41
./configure
make
make install

Call rlwrap with wsadmin:

rlwrap -r /opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/profiles/Dmgr01/bin/wsadmin.sh -lang jython -username wasadmin -password password

rlwrap and db2

rlwrap -r db2

Use rlwrap everytime with alias

vim ~/.bash_profile
export WAS_HOME=/opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer
export DMGR=Dmgr01
alias db2='rlwrap -r db2'
alias wsadmin='cd $WAS_HOME/profiles/$DMGR/bin;rlwrap -r ./wsadmin.sh -lang jython'

I started a new project on OpenNTF for the collection of scripts we created to speed up and simplify WebSphere and Connections Administration.

Link to this project: Administration Scripts for WebSphere

In the moment most of documentation is only as comment in these scripts. Descriptions can be found in Github and Scripting101 .

Highlights

• J2EE Security Role Backup and Restore

• Set initial Security Roles for Connections Applications (Author: Klaus Bild )

Documentation

When you want to start with this collection, copy the jython script to your Deployment Manager bin-folder ($WAS_HOME/profiles/Dmgr01/bin) and call the scripts with wsadmin.sh -f scriptname

I’m really impressed of the WAS 8 installation. Install Manager can handle multiple repositories, so you can install the core package and updates in one step. That’s lots faster than installing WAS 7, Update Installer and the fixes.

Yes i know Ubuntu is unsupported for WebSphere Application Server, but i like the simple install and update process. So i use it on about 80 % of my linux testsystems and i have no problems when installing IBM Domino, WebSphere, DB2 or Connections.

Additional software for Ubuntu

I added the following packages to Ubuntu and use x-forward for installing IM and WAS.

I read today the requirements for IBM Connections 4.5 , which will be released on 29th of march. On point there is WebSphere Application Server V8.0.0.5 for Network Deployment.

WebSphere Application Server V8 must be installed through Install Manager, so you have to download 4 packages for the server core and 4 packages for supplements. After this the fixes for 8.0.0.5, what do you think you many data will it be?

You will download more than 10 GB of Software only for WebSphere Installation! 6.x GB for V8 and about 5 GB for fixes.

Here the Software (with some DB2 stuff):

Because i had several issues with automated renewed ssl and ltpa keys on my websphere servers, i found this article on the blog of Mitch Cohen : http://www.curiousmitch.com/2009/06/disabling-automatic-ltpa-key-generation-in-was-or-how-to-stopsso-between-was-and-domino-from-breaking/

Perhaps this is interesting for more people.