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Domino does not shutdown cleanly when Windows is rebooted or shutdown 
By Daniel Nashed | 9/11/24 6:23 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
When stopping the Domino service manually, the Windows service control manager (SCM) waits sufficient time to shutdown Domino cleanly.
But it turns out a Windows shutdown or reboot does not wait sufficient time for service termination.
This is critical because it would kill running Domino processes without notice. Even with transaction log enabled, this isn't a desirable situation.
How to find out what is eating my disk space on Linux?
By Daniel Nashed | 9/11/24 6:22 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
If you don't know the Linux tool ncdu, this will make your day.
The tool by default scans from where you are or any directory you specify.
Specially when running on WSL you might want to use excludes.
On top there is a delete option, which can be quite helpful when you find large files you don't need.
I am using it for years and it did safe my IT life more than once. And it is very fast...
Recent Open-Source Project Updates
By Jesse Gallagher | 9/7/24 10:01 AM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
I've released a spate of open-source project updates recently, and I figured it'd be good to round up what's new. Most of them are utilitarian in nature - mostly fixes for things that crop up with Domino 14 and Java > 8 - but the first one is larger.
Radomly removed JAR resources: the reason
By Oliver Busse | 9/6/24 6:50 AM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
Remember my last post about Domino Designer just randomly removing JAR resources from the NSF? I first thought it was something with the ODP and Git but I was wrong.
It turned out that you don't even have to work with an ODP or even Git to run into this problem. The real cause of this is still unclear, I add this to the various hiccups of Domino Designer that we all got used to.
There's a solution....
You don't have to overwrite your Command when pasting into the Domino Console
By Cormac McCarthy | 8/31/24 3:35 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
While having a look at the HCL Domino Portal ideas portal the other week I came across something I was going to vote for, namely
Paste (using CTRL+V) in the Server Console “Domino Command” input field should not remove existing content in that input field.
Just as I was about to hit the vote button, I read the comments. Someone had helpfully put in the solution
Issue with old Domino JAVA agent
By Patrick Kwinten | 8/29/24 11:37 AM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Oliver Busse
I got the request to extend the summary report in the email message that a scheduled Domino agent is sending out. In the report some lists of missing data in the database needs to be added so users can work more efficient. So what do we do?
Notes client LTPA authentication issue after Sametime 12.0.2FP1 upgrade
By Vladislav Tatarincev | 8/27/24 10:00 AM | Infrastructure - Sametime | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
We use LTPA Token authentication inside company for HCL Sametime 12.0.2. It was working fine.
When Sametime 12.0.2FP1 arrived we upgraded our Sametime and Notes 14 clients were unable to login with LTPA. Only regular password login was working.
Sametime Authentication container logs brought us the following:
error: Error decoding LtpaToken2: "error:1C800064:Provider routines::bad decrypt". Trying as v1: false
[2024/08/23 13:39:41] info: ::ffff:172.22.0.8 - -
We opened case and support mentioned that: in HCL Sametime 12.0.2 FP1 we disabled LTPA V1 token support by default - in favor of LTPA V2 which is more secure.
The Embedded clients, especially the 'older' ones still present only the LTPA V1 tokens.
In Domino SSO document, our configuration was LtpaToken and LTPAToken2.
We changed format of token to "LTPAToken2 only" and did restart of Domino and this has resolved issue.
Silent HCL Notes 32 bit to 64 bit upgrade changes - Domino People
By Cormac McCarthy | 8/27/24 9:59 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
HCL have recently published one of the “gotchas” around upgrading from 32 bit to 64 bit Notes.
I came across this again and thought it worth sharing. When upgrading Notes 32 bit to 64 bit via command line/scripting/third party install tool (basically anywhere you’re running silently) the syntax for PROGDIR and DATADIR changes to PROGDIRW64 and DATADIRW64.
Problem when uploading ID file to Vault with Admin Client 14.x to Domino 12.0.1.x
By Rainer Brandl | 8/27/24 9:57 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
Today I had the problem that a customer complained about the problem of uploading the ID of a new registered user to an existing vault. I could see the following entries in the local log.nsf:27.08.2024 11:03:00 ID 'C:\HCL\Notes\Data\user\testuser1.id' failed to upload to vault 'O=customer_vault' on server 'CN=SERVER01/O=SRV'. 'Test User1' made request. Error: Remote system no longer responding
After opening a case I received the link to a TechNote where a problem with Admin Client V14.x and HCL Domino 12.0.1.x is documented. I afterwards modified the setting in the NOTES.INI of the client and now the upload of the ID for the newly registered user is working fine !!!
Be aware to put the setting “TCPIP=TCP,0,15,16000” only in the NOTES.INI of a V14 client !!! If you set this value in a NOTES.INI of V12, the client will not startup and will cause serious troubles !!!
XPages to Web App Redux: 2
By Paul Withers | 8/21/24 6:45 AM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
XPages to Web App Redux: Part Two - Dev Tools
Many Domino developers may not have used anything other than Domino Designer. We’re stepping into a different world of development here. So we’ll be using different tools. Plural.
Does TOTP Work for users in a Secondary Directory via DA
By Keith Brooks | 8/21/24 6:43 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
Like many of our customers, a customer has a large external user community relying on their applications.
We have about 7,000 external customers. Some are undoubtedly old customers, but 7,000 is a lot of people.
Previously, I wrote about how to bulk add these people into your ID Vault, and that was all fine and good where we have only one names.nsf for everyone and everything. We may have had 2-3 servers in that org.
Now, the 7,000 are in a secondary external names.nsf via DA (Directory Assistance).
The Problem
1) How do you register and maintain the people in a secondary Directory?
2) Does the DA even work with TOTP?
XPages to Web App Revisited: Part One - Introduction
By Paul Withers | 8/19/24 7:47 AM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
Many years ago I wrote a series of blog posts on the topic of XPages to web app. At the time my target technology was Vaadin running in an OSGi plugin on Domino HTTP server (initially) and then CrossWorlds - Daniele Vistalli’s innovative approach to use Domino data via OpenNTF Domino API on a Websphere Liberty server running as a sidecar to Domino. My experience of developing with Vaadin lagged behind the technology, because it quickly evolved not only to Java 8 (and undoubtedly beyond) but used annotations which required Servlet 3.0.
Today there are a variety of options for web application. Adjacent to Domino is Jesse Gallagher’s JakartaEE approach. Domino REST API can host applications as well. Frameworks like Angular and React have gained prominence. JSP is still seen in some places, but seems to have slipped from prominence. But after my session at Engage with Stephan Wissel, and particularly the rapid evolution of browser support over the last few years, my target is traditional web, hosted in Domino REST API’s server.
HCL Domino TOTP & Passkey authentication
By Rainer Brandl | 8/19/24 7:45 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
In a customer environment I have enabled the great working TOTP authentication. After migration the environment to Domino V14 I also enabled the Passkey authentication in the same Internet Site document.Afterwards neither TOTP authentication nor Passkey Authentication worked. A clarification of the HCL Support delivered the following information: You cannot enable both authentication types for the same internet site document !!
Route HCL Traveler mail to your internal scanner
By Remco Angioni | 8/8/24 7:28 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
Companies normally scan mail only on the first Domino SMTP server, not on all servers. For HCL Traveler server, this could be a problem because your external and mobile device can be infected with ransom-ware or a virus. This way it can harm you organization. How to check all mails coming from HCL Traveler servers using your already running and active scanner?
Domino REST API Proxy Problems
By Paul Withers | 8/1/24 6:36 AM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
Earlier this week I was working with Domino REST API for a personal project and encountered what appeared to be a bug. It was a very strange issue, but one that had a simple cause that was ultimately easy to verify.
In this case, Domino REST API’s `/lists/{name}’ endpoint was resulting in unexpected results. For certain views on the server I was using, e.g. a view with a name “vwFoo” was returning expected results. But for hidden views, e.g. “(luKeys)” I was getting a 405 “Method Not ALlowed” error when accessing via Postman.
Domino RESTAPI Bug and WorkAround
By Keith Brooks | 7/31/24 6:47 AM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
This is not my usual line of thought as an Admin, but sometimes, AdminOps is better than DevOps because troubleshooting is not an exact science.
While customers over the last year or so have been asking about the HCL Domino REST API, my reply is usually something like, I can install it, but you are on your own afterward, or I point them to a Developer friend.
To be fair, HCL will help them/me with getting started or "where is/How do I" questions. But this is about the bug my client and I discovered and how to work around it.
Domino One Touch Setup (OTS) advanced examples and helpers
By Daniel Nashed | 7/29/24 3:22 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
OTS is a very powerful and flexible feature of Domino 12+ which has been extended in each dot release since then.
I am OTS a lot in the container world. But it also works on Windows.
It perfectly fits into the container world. And we added a couple of integration points into the container image.
Because I got a couple of questions I wrote up some examples, related information and also an Lotus Script agent to extend the functionality.
The agent is intended to be an example how to wrote own integrations and also to leverage and extend the existing agent for own needs.
Pretty-Printing JSON in the (Desktop) Notes Client and Domino
By Jesse Gallagher | 7/29/24 3:21 AM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
In the OpenNTF Discord (join if you haven't!), Daniel Nashed brought up a task he was facing: in the Notes client, writing pretty-printed JSON. LotusScript has its NotesJSON* classes that can process JSON in their stark way, but the stringify output is meant for machine reading and doesn't include whitespace and line breaks, making it ill-suited for things like configuration files or other things a human might read or edit.
Since the goal is to get it working in the full Notes client and not Nomad, Java is on the table, but Java - for dumb historical reasons - has no proper built-in JSON library. However, as of 12.something HCL shunted IBM Commons down to the global classpath in order to support the "share Java design elements between XPages and agents" feature. Among many other things, IBM Commons includes a JSON library that can suit.
I wrote a post almost a decade ago talking about this library and its limited nature, but it's nonetheless less limited than the LotusScript classes, and it's up to the task. There are a couple ways to go about this, depending on your needs, but for now I'll just cover the basic case here of "I have a string of JSON and want to format it".
Pretty-Printing JSON in Notes Client and Domino
By Daniel Nashed | 7/29/24 3:20 AM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
The Lotus Script class for reading and writing JSON is that easy. There are not many examples and some functionality is missing.
JSON can be either condensed without any new lines and indentation.
That's great when you use it for back-end processing or REST services.
Why is pretty printing important
But in some cases you need pretty formatted JSON. Specially when you want to maintain it manually and extend it. For example for Domino OTS JSON files :-)
When you use JSON based configuration pretty printed JSON is very helpful.
Condensed JSON is also difficult to check into Git.
Everything looks modified when it is a single line.
Developing for Research
By Paul Withers | 7/25/24 1:30 AM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
It’s been nearly five years since I joined HCL Labs, progressing currently to Associate Director - Research. In that time I’ve been involved in:
setting up HCL’s Open Source Project Office
researching the state of rich text editing on the web (as I covered in a session at Collabsphere in 2020)
leading the modernisation of language, extensions and tooling of LotusScript as VoltScript
integrating VoltScript into Volt MX Foundry as a first-class language adapter
web components
and a variety of other projects
This has covered some degree of coding in a variety of languages and frameworks.
But there are significant differences between traditional product-focused development and development for research. And it’s useful to highlight those differences, because it takes a certain mind-set and skill-set.
HCL Nomad server 1.0.12 IF1 shipped with same file name than 1.0.12
By Daniel Nashed | 7/22/24 6:13 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
Nomad 1.0.12 has been replaced with a 1.0.2 IF1 version.
MHS has only the new version. The old version can't be downloaded any more.
But they left the file names the same. So you can't distinct the files by name once you downloaded them.
So you have to delete the old file and re-download it.
The same file name with a different content (resulting in a different hash and size), breaks automation.
For example it broke the Domino container build automation.
Mindoo - Demo application for Domino JNA Views to play with
By Karsten Lehmann | 7/18/24 11:42 AM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Serdar Basegmez
Today I attended the "Developer Variety Hour" webinar of OpenNTF and did a demo of the new Virtual View API of Domino JNA.
I built a small web application that combines a Sunburst diagram (taken from the D3 website, enhanced by a training session with Anthropics Claude AI chat :-) ) with a categorized view, built on top of a Bootstrap 5 table.
Mindoo - Domino JNA Virtual Views: The Next Step in Domino Data Retrieval
By Karsten Lehmann | 7/14/24 7:09 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Serdar Basegmez
In the previous two articles, "The pain of reading data as a Domino developer - and solutions" and "Overview of Domino Data Retrieval: Exploring NSF Search, DQL, Domino Views, and the QueryResultsProcessor", we explored the challenges and solutions for efficiently accessing and processing data in Domino.
Mindoo - Overview of Domino Data Retrieval: Exploring NSF search, DQL, Domino Views and the QueryResultsProcessor
By Karsten Lehmann | 7/14/24 7:08 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Serdar Basegmez
As you read in the previous article "The pain of reading data as a Domino developer - and solutions", looking up data on Domino is not as easy as it seems - especially compared to other platforms like SQL. Let's explore the available options.
HCL Leap: running a LotusScript agent
By Fabio Di Paola | 7/9/24 11:44 AM | Development - Leap / Volt | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
HCL Domino Leap is undoubtedly a tool with interesting potential that expands the capabilities of Notes and Domino but why not supplement it with additional functionality using for example some LotusScript code ?
I made this consideration while developing an application where it would have been much better to have an agent manipulating a document for me to achieve the desired result. Checking the documentation I saw that indeed among the service options there is the option to run an agent inside the database and so I tried it.
Running Domino Windows container image on Windows 2022
By Daniel Nashed | 7/8/24 1:43 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
Two years ago I have been looking into Domino in a Windows container already.
The main purpose was to understand the technology and if this makes sense to be used in general.
IMHO container technology is mainly helpful on Linux. Containers on Linux use core OS level functionality, which is part of the Linux kernel.
Only Linux makes sense for production use for me.
But a Windows container can be a great test environment for automation testing and other test use cases.
I revisited my container build on Windows this weekend and first updated it to Domino 14 and also updated all involved tooling like 7Zip.
In addition I looked into how I could leverage a Windows container image for testing.
New Nomad Server features -- ACME HTTP-01 challenge support & HTTP redirects via port 9080
By Daniel Nashed | 7/8/24 1:42 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
There are two new features in the latest Nomad Server versions, introduced to Nomad Server without big notice.
I just got the question from a partner why Nomad Server now binds port 9080 in addition to port 9443 and the internal communication port (only loop back).
The port might be used by other applications like the IBM Spectrum Protect (TDP) -- which was the problem in this customer case.
It turns out the TDP Java based restore GUI and does not work in combination without changing or disabling the port.
An Admin Present You Didn't Know You Needed
By Keith Brooks | 7/4/24 7:41 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
About 2 weeks ago, I gave an impromptu webinar for Openntf.org as a last-minute fill-in.
Openntf, for those that don't know, is the Notes/Domino+ community, where devs, admins, business people, HCL, and others share code and ideas, templates, and projects for the benefit of the greater worldwide community.
I wanted to inform people that monitoring Tasks in the Administrator client has some changes.
Why is this important? Because unless you are a 1 server company, you have a lot of information to remember, such as:
How do you know if DBMT ran?
How do you know which server Certmgr runs on?
Which web server do you run the Domino REST API on?
Which server handles your Backups and Restores, presuming you leverage the v14 options?
Is NOMAD running?
Is your DirSync working?
Are you sure the awesome OnTime Group calendar is running?
Have you enabled Aautoupdate yet? One look and you know.
Intriguing questions, right?
End of Life for CentOS 7 AND CentOS 8 Stream
By Martijn de Jong | 7/2/24 6:54 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
CentOS 7 was released on the 7th of July 2014. For many years, it has been the operating system for millions of servers. Last Sunday (30th of June) was the day when, after almost 10 years, CentOS 7 became end-of-life. This means that no (security) updates for CentOS 7 will be released any more, and that servers running CentOS 7 are at risk.
I personally know of quite a few servers that are still running on CentOS 7. Even though the EOL date of CentOS 7 has been known for a very long time, many companies waited till the very last moment to phase out these systems and then missed their target. This is a bad situation to be in. I expect that it won’t be long before vulnerabilities in these systems become public, which then can no longer be patched. Migrating these systems to a new operating system should be top priority for these companies!
How deep do you authenticate?
By Stephan Wissel | 6/24/24 8:26 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
How deep do you authenticate? - Accessing applications usually entails some kind of identity. Some part(s) of your application provide identity (called IdP), while other's consume it (paraphrased from Captain Obvious). Identity could be provided from a record or document in your or another database, an LDAP directory, an OICD or a 3d party like your eMail provider or social account, or with some hoops and loops Webauthn (a.k.a passkey).
The question is: how deep does it go ?