gpoul's Out Of Memory Blog

Even though I’ve tried Windows Vista x64 I also tested the IBM Open Client. I used Linux on the desktop already some time ago before I switched to Mac OS X at home and I must say that I was impressed with what I discovered. I haven’t been able to get the OC V2.2 x86_64 beta to work so I’ve been testing OC V2.1 i386 on my T61p, but I plan on migrating to V2.2 when it becomes available in about two weeks.

The interesting thing to mention is that the PAE kernel seems to be the default, which means that I have the 4GB of memory available without going to a 64-bit kernel.

The following works for me out of the box w/o downloading any software:

• Mozilla Firefox for accessing internal web applications
• 3270 works for RETAIN access
• IBM JRE 1.5.0
• Intranet Labor Claiming
• Lotus Notes 8.0.1 with productivity applications
• Lotus Sametime Connect 7.5.1
• AT&T Network Client
• ITCS 300 compliance including all inventory and security tools

Making it work:

1. Installed Rational Application Developer V7.5 beta, which worked like a charm. I actually used a later beta than the one on Vista. This one not only came with the WAS V6.1 EJB3 Feature Pack, but also with the WAS V7.0 beta.
2. Configured UMTS card

   Sierra Wireless publishes an unsupported Linux guide and you can load the drivers as follows:

   # modprobe usbserial vendor=0x1199 product=0x6813
# modprobe sierra

   To enable the UMTS card just use:

   # echo -e "AT+CFUN=1\r\n" >/dev/ttyUSB0

   To put the card into lower-power mode:

   # echo -e "AT+CFUN=0\r\n" >/dev/ttyUSB0

   And to enter the PIN code for your SIM card after activating the UMTS card you use:

   # echo -e “AT+CPIN=xxxx\r\n” >/dev/ttyUSB0

   After you finished activating the card you use the following settings in gnome-ppp to actually establish the PPP connection:

   Device: /dev/ttyUSB0
   Type: ISDN Modem
   Phone number: DT*99***1#
   Init string: AT+CGDCONT=1,”IP”,”A1.net”
   Username: ppp@A1plus.at
   Password: www

3. Installed VMware workstation and used the Lifeboat installer with the 8303-21 Netvista M42 configuration to install the Windows XP e-client in a VM image – to make it work you also need to remove all references to scsi from your vmx file before starting the installation process because otherwise it will bluescreen.

   I then installed Microsoft Visio, Microsoft Office + Proofing Tools for EMEA, RKA, and Adobe Acrobat in the VMware image. In the current VMware workstation 6.5 beta you can even try out the new Unity feature that has been ported over from VMware Fusion. It still has its flaws, but looks very impressive and I’m sure it will be much more stable in the released version.

4. For Beyond Compare there is currently a V3 in beta that will be available on Linux, although there was a change in the licensing model so we’ll see if the unlimited user license will carry forward. Until then, I’ll use the unlimited user license in the Windows VM.
5. Install and configure Tivoli Storage Manager Client

   Note: Make sure files on the VM are stored in shared filespaces included in the host TSM.

Problems:

• Display not working after standby – probably NVidia driver problem; this is documented as a known issue for OC V2.1 on T61 systems.
• To get decent fonts used in Firefox I had to go into the fonts menu and change the defaults to something readable
• In Lotus Notes 8.0.1 you can change the fonts to your preferred display font, but you won’t be able to change the size to match the DPI of your display. – For this to work appropriately I had to add Display_font_adjustment=2 to my notes.ini file. – This breaks the OGZN application used in Austria and I still need to try to reproduce this problem on Windows to report it as a bug.
• Scrolling with the Trackpoint works pretty well after I figured it out. I used the trackpoint guide on thinkwiki and wasn’t having success in the beginning, but that was due to using the wrong driver. I noticed that the feature I wanted was only included in the “mouse” driver and not in the “synaptics” driver OC V2.1 uses by default. – Not sure though, what features are in “synaptics” that are not in “mouse”, but it seems I’m not using it anyway because I don’t use the touchpad.

  As an added feature scrolling now also works inside VMware machines.

• The configuration of the ThinkPoint sensitivity and speed doesn’t work through the configuration menus so I had to add the following lines to my /etc/rc.local:

  echo -n 110 >/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/sensitivity
echo -n 180 >/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/speed

• There are no decent fonts available for GNU Emacs in X11 so I’m probably stuck with running GNU Emacs in an xterm which has decent rendering, although it’s still no match for Mac OS X – go figure.
• NetworkManager is not working for me correctly with multiple wired network settings with different static IPs right now. I’ll give this another try in OC V2.2 and see if this fixes things before trying to fix it myself.
• NetworkManager doesn’t support modifying browser settings the way ThinkVantage Access Connections does. I’m no huge fan of changing my browser settings at each customer site and switching them back in the hotel so I’m probably going to script this stand-alone before trying to integrate this with NetworkManager in OC V2.2. – The integration using user.js is probably the way to go.

To sum it all up, the state of the Open Client in V2.1 is very promising and I’ll be happy if Open Client V2.2 improves upon that in a few weeks. I’ve already been using the Open Client V2.1 at a client site for a week and haven’t had any issues. The only thing that is a concern long-term is that I’ll need the VMware image to run Microsoft Visio. We’ll migrate away from RKA anyways this year and using Lotus Symphony is a nice replacement for Microsoft Office although I still have Microsoft Office 2003 available in the VMware image to read Microsoft Office 2007 documents, which as far as I know don’t work yet in Lotus Symphony.

Update 6/28: Noticed on June 16th that the Austrian Travel Request DB is not able to create new travel requests on the Open Client, although it works on the c4eb on XP. Based on the problem I found in the LotusScript code I assume this should work fine on Vista, but makes the wrong assumptions on a Unix platform. Not sure if that would work in Notes on Mac OS X. I’ve reported this, but haven’t heard back yet.

Update 6/28: Found that changing the sans serif font to Verdana from Bitsream Vera Sans fixes the problem with OGZN not working correctly when Display_font_adjustment is >1 in Lotus Notes.

Update 7/6: Turns out that NetworkManager seems to work, but I was just too stupid to realize that the profile called “Common” is not just some other profile, but actually is intended to include the common settings. The useability of this stuff sometimes makes the Lenovo tools look like masterpieces of UI design :-)

Update 1/20/09: Verified with Lotus Notes 8.0 and Lotus Notes 8.5 on Open Client that the Austrian Travel Request DB has been successfully fixed on the test server. The fix is not yet available on the production servers.