IBM i 7.2 Technical Overview with TR1

The long awaited draft of the redbook "IBM i 7.2 Technical Overview with TR1" has been posted to the IBM redbook site.  So if you plan to upgrade to the latest and greatest release of "IBM i" read this fantastic redbook.

Notes client with embedded sametime 9 crashes when launched from eclipse

I often start my Notes client from eclipse to debug our plugins in the client. I have described how to configure eclipse to start notes from eclipse in an older blog post. Yesterday our Admin has installed the sametime 9.0 embedded client in my Notes installation and after that Notes crashes when started from eclipse with the following error in the error log:

Unhandled exception
Type=Segmentation error vmState=0x00040000
J9Generic_Signal_Number=00000004 ExceptionCode=c0000005 ExceptionAddress=94601766 ContextFlags=0001007f
Handler1=001EA730 Handler2=003CC270 InaccessibleAddress=00000000
EDI=94693AC0 ESI=722F4A00 EAX=00000000 EBX=723F90A0
ECX=00000004 EDX=00000020
EIP=94601766 ESP=72D3FCD8 EBP=723F90BC EFLAGS=00010216
GS=002B FS=0053 ES=002B DS=002B
Module=C:\Users\petterr\AppData\Local\workspacenotes\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.pde.core\IBM Notes\org.eclipse.osgi\bundles\1214\1\.cp\os\win32\NativeNetInfo.dll
Module_base_address=94600000 Offset_in_DLL=00001766
Target=2_40_20131231_180656 (Windows 7 6.1 build 7601 Service Pack 1)
CPU=x86 (4 logical CPUs) (0x1f890d000 RAM)
----------- Stack Backtrace -----------
(0x94601766)
(0x94602039)
(0x9460288D)

New "Case of the unexplained" and "Malware hunting" session recordings with Mark Russinovich

If you really want to learn how to solve problems in Windows i really recommend to watch the latest versions of this sessions at TechED of Mark Russinovich the creator of the Sysinternals tools.

In the Cease of the unexplained session Mark shows you how to analyze program crashes, sluggish performance, blue screens and other windows problems.


In the malware hunting session Mark explains how to use the fabulous sysinternals tools to detect and remove malware from your computer.


And the best thing about the sessions with Mark is that they are not only packed with very useful stuff, but are also very funny to watch. I like him to make jokes about Microsoft products although he is a Microsoft employee

Recovering from "database is being taken offline and cannot be opened" on Domino Server

Today in the morning many users cannot access the Domino Server because they get the error message "database is being taken offline and cannot be opened". In the Server tasks we see that the DBMT task hangs on a database. Our Domino admin has restarted the server to solve the problem with no success. The databases which are not accessible have a xxx.tmp file with the exact same size as the nsf file. We have tried to remove the xxx.tmp file, but the databases are still offline. Even the normal procedures to recover from database corruption like "compact, fixup, updall" did not help to solve this problem.

So i dig deeper and found out that there is a C API to bring databases offline and online again. I am not a C expert, but fortunately it is possible to call this API from lotus script. I wrote a small agent in a test database on the server which executes the API on the databases which are not accessible. For example:

Option Public
Option Declare

Declare Private Function NSFBringDatabaseOnline Lib "nnotes" Alias "NSFBringDatabaseOnline" (  ByVal dbPath As String, ByVal Z As Long) As Integer
Sub Initialize
 
 Call NSFBringDatabaseOnline("mail/hugo.nsf",0)
 
 Call NSFBringDatabaseOnline("mail/heinz.nsf",0)
 
 Call NSFBringDatabaseOnline("db/crm.nsf",0)
 
End Sub

Be sure that you have checked the option that the agent is allowed to run restricted operations.

 
 Then run this agent on the server with tell amgr run "agent.nsf" 'agent'. Replace "agent.nsf" and "agent" with the names you have chosen for your agent.

P.S. If you like it please share it on your favorite social network.

Virtual Control Panel in IBM i Access Client solutions

Jesse Gorzinski from IBM has posted a nice article  on developerworks about the many advantages the Virtual Control Panel in IBM i Access Client solutions have over the old on fro IBM i Access for Windows. If you have not already you should really make the switch to the future of IBM i client connection.

How to find the documents which reference a DAOS NLO file.

Yesterday i had the problem that a user who got a new replica of his mail file does not get new mails. Every time he start the replication of his mail file he got the error "File does not exist" in the replicator tab.  The replication log shows that the replica is sending data to the server, but does not get any data from the server.

Nice Partnership betweeen Apple and IBM in mobile business

Hey IBM really a nice partnership between you and Apple in the mobile business. First IOS release after the announcement of the partnership kills the mobile controls of xPages in Domino and IBM needs three weeks to get a technote out of the door that says that they need additional time to solve the problem with a interim fix.

Maybe you should announce a partnership with google in the browser business and a few weeks after that google releases a new Chrome browser which kills your web based products ;-)

 Repeat after me: "Apple will never be a fair partner"

Everything you always wanted to know about PTF handling on IBM i but were afraid to ask

In the moment i prepare the image catalogs for PTF installation on our IBM i. When i have searched for some info's on PTF's i have found a really great presentation about PTF Management on the IBM i. So if you want to know how PTF's on the IBM i work and what to do to keep your system running, i really recommend "Managing your IBM i PTF's" from Larry Bolhuis.