Connections by Martijn de Jong 

WebSphere 8.5.5 FP27 & HCL Connections… beware!  

By Martijn de Jong | 5/5/25, 3:49 AM | Infrastructure - Connections | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

HCL Connections 8.0 CR9 currently lists in its system requirements WebSphere 8.5.5 FP26 as its highest supported WebSphere version. However, I suspect that CR10 will try to support FixPack 27, which became available on April 21st. Brave companies might just update their servers with the latest fixpack, and usually that works just fine. This fixpack, however, has introduced changes in outbound TLS certificate hostname validation. What it does is if WebSphere will make a connection to https://example.acme.org, it will check if the certificate that example.acme.org returns contains my server.acme.org in either the hostname or as a subject alternative name (SAN). If it doesn’t, you’ll be greeted with a message:

Creating an IBM HTTP Server key db from a .pfx file   

By Martijn de Jong | 1/7/25, 2:41 AM | Infrastructure - Connections | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

It’s a question that I get quite often. “Can you create a IHS key database for me from this pfx certificate”? Multiple of our customers use IBM HTTP Server. Either for HCL Connections, but also as a reverse proxy for other services. Most of those customers use a wildcard certificate for their IHS server that has to be renewed each year. As I hate this kind of repetitive work, I created a script to do it for me. As it could be of use to others, I decided to create a blog article about it.

Changing the file size limit for a community  

By Martijn de Jong | 11/30/24, 3:27 AM | Infrastructure - Connections | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

By default, a HCL Connections community can contain 500 MB of files in the Files widget. Depending on what kind of content is posted in the community, that might not be enough. It’s possible to change the file limit, both for communities and for personal files.

Installing Huddo Boards on WebSphere-only Connections   

By Martijn de Jong | 6/24/24, 8:21 AM | Infrastructure - Connections | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

Let me clarify what this article is about. Huddo (also known as ISW) is selling 2 versions of their Boards product: Kudos Boards – The Java application that can be installed on WebSphere. Active development has stopped a few years ago Huddo Boards – The product consisting of several containers, which can be installed on Kubernetes or a container engine like Docker. A version with limited functionality is part of the HCL Connections component pack and known as Activities Plus. This product is actively being developed and also available for other platforms. Although the Connections Component pack was introduced in version 6 already, many companies refrained from installing it due to the serious amount of extra infrastructure needed to run these components, which includes a Kubernetes cluster. We call these the WebSphere-only Connections installations, as they only include the WebSphere stack part of Connections. So what if you would like to use the full power of Huddo Boards without having to install a Kubernetes cluster? That’s what this article is about.

Installing wireguard on CentOS Stream 9   

By Martijn de Jong | 1/15/24, 3:37 AM | Infrastructure - Connections | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

As I do a lot of my research on new Domino versions, Connections versions and HCL DX on my own server at home and as I’m often not at home, I figured I needed a VPN tunnel to my server, so I can work as if I am home. Wireguard has become kind of the de facto standard for these kind of situations, so I looked into installing it on my CentOS Stream 9 host.

Huddo Boards & Minio problems – Read before you restart!  

By Martijn de Jong | 11/21/22, 2:06 AM | Infrastructure - Connections | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

Last week I got the unpleasant surprise of a no longer working Huddo Boards for Component pack installation at a customer after I had rebooted my Kubernetes environment. I had to reboot this environment after I updated the Kubernetes certificates. Of course, after a change you immediately think that your problem is related to the change you just made, but in this case the only relation was with the restart, which means that this can happen to everyone running Huddo/Kudos Boards for Component pack or Huddo Boards Docker.

Installing Tivoli/Security Directory Integrator on RHEL 8ì  

By Martijn de Jong | 1/14/22, 11:21 AM | Infrastructure - Connections | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

On a new SDI 7.2 installation (with Java 8 and the latest Connections TDISOL directory for Java 8), I ran into a weird error: CTGDKG023E Error while starting main class.java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException .. Caused by: java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: i4clntjni (Not found in java.library.path) Luckily, Google could help me on this one. This technote shows that if there are missing libraries, SDI doesn’t properly install and you will have to uninstall SDI, install the missing libraries, and reinstall SDI.

Expired certificate on your Kubernetes environment  

By Martijn de Jong | 12/7/21, 2:36 AM | Infrastructure - Connections | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

Normally a Kubernetes environment is well maintained and regularly updated with the most recent versions of Kubernetes. However, with a Kubernetes environment that is just used a an HCL Connections Component pack installation, this might not be on your radar and it’s easy to let it just run attended. If you do that for too long though, like longer than one year, you’ll get into trouble

Installing the HCL Connections Component Pack 6.5 CR1 – Part 6: Configuring the applications  

By Martijn de Jong | 10/2/20, 8:23 AM | Infrastructure - Connections | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

In part 5 I discussed the installation of all components. Now it’s time to configure them. My goal is not to duplicate the HCL documentation on this point, but to highlight where this documentation is ambiguous or incomplete. So by all means, also read that documentation.

Installing the HCL Connections Component Pack 6.5 CR1 – Part 4: Prepare the application environment  

By Martijn de Jong | 6/22/20, 4:25 AM | Infrastructure - Connections | Added by John Oldenburger

If you followed the steps from the previous parts, you have a working Kubernetes cluster and a Docker registry containing all images necessary for installing the Component Pack. In this part I’ll discuss installing all helm charts up to, but not including, the actual components like OrientMe, Elasticsearch etc.

Installing the HCL Connections Component Pack 6.5 CR1 – Part 3: Uploading the images to a Docker registry  

By Martijn de Jong | 5/26/20, 1:32 AM | Infrastructure - Connections | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

As a next step we’ll import the components of the Component pack into a Docker registry. If you have an existing registry in your company which you can use, you can skip right to the step where you upload the images in this repository. If you don’t, you’ll have the create the registry first.

Installing the HCL Connections Component Pack 6.5 CR1 – Part 2: Installing Kubernetes, Calico and Helm  

By Martijn de Jong | 5/19/20, 2:34 AM | Infrastructure - Connections | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

In a series of articles I’m trying to fill the gaps in the HCL documentation regarding the Component Pack. In the first part I covered the installation and configuration of Docker. In this 2nd part I’ll cover the installation of Kubernetes together with Calico and Helm. After this the basic infrastructure is set up and the actual installation of the Component pack can begin. The installation I’m doing is a non-HA Kubernetes platform. One master and 2 worker nodes. If you need to setup a HA Kubernetes platform, you have to do a few extra steps, but using this manual and combining it with the HA documentation from HCL, you should be good.

Installing the HCL Connections Component Pack 6.5 CR1 – Part 1: Installing Docker   

By Martijn de Jong | 5/15/20, 1:17 AM | Infrastructure - Connections | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

As I’m currently installing the HCL Connections 6.5 CR1 component pack at a customer I run into a lot of points where the HCL documentation is simply outdated or very confusing. In a series of articles I plan to write about the caveats in the documentation, to hopefully help you with your installation. In this first part I cover Docker.

Determining why records appear in your employee.error file in the TDI Assemblyline  

By Martijn de Jong | 3/16/20, 2:14 AM | Infrastructure - Connections | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

Your TDI solution directory contains a couple of files which all start with employee. These files tell you which records were added, updated, deleted, skipped or produced an error. The last file is usually the most interesting one. Often employee records give an error because a user was deleted at an earlier stage and recreated with a different GUID. Sometimes users are created with the same login ID as a previous user, which was long deleted and there are more relatively obvious reasons like that why an employee record would create an error. However, sometimes you are just completely in the dark of why a record gives an error. That’s when this little tip helps you to determine the problem.

Decrypting a stash (.sth) file – Martijn's Blog  

By Martijn de Jong | 3/1/20, 6:15 AM | Infrastructure - Connections | Added by Oliver Busse

HCL Domino saves it certificates in a .kyr file. IBM WebSphere saves it certificates in a Java Keystore / .jks format. Both formats allow you to save the password for the keystores in a stash file which has the extension .sth. The stash files allow you to do most actions without entering a password.

Useful SQL Queries for IBM Connections  

By Martijn de Jong | 6/30/18, 7:03 AM | Infrastructure - Connections | Added by Oliver Busse

Over the past year, I’ve created my own set of useful SQL queries to get needed information and I thought I’d share them here. Please realise that my main client uses MS SQL for their backend, so the queries are written for that, though most should be universal or easy to change for DB2 or Oracle.