gpoul's Out Of Memory Blog

The druids take over the Diana building. Beware of magic potions placed between the other drinks during lunch. You never know!

Update 11/10: Turns out the deal hub teamed up with the druids to hatch some eggs.

We got a Wii now :-)

I just spent 15 minutes to find this again. The tool is called Team Analytics and allows you to paste a list of contacts and see their reporting lines, division, timezones, and many other stats. If you’re on another call with many invitees, this is a great tool to use! – This is also on bluepedia and TAP, but I’ve finally found it through w3search.

There are now company groups on Dopplr and I just joined the IBM group.

If any IBMers haven’t joined yet, you should consider doing so. Great feature!

Interesting post over on Irving Wladawsky-Berger’s blog about the troubles in Atlanta and how the IOC relationship came to an end.

This all happened long before I joined IBM and the only time I heard about the Olympics in Atlanta 1996 was in the PMF course where most of our scenarios and exercises were based on the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

I’m sure this was quite an interesting project to work on and it’s interesting to see that we already started using the Apache HTTP Server with custom extensions 12 years ago :-)

I found time to upgrade to Open Client V2.2 now and a few things have changed and I’ve learned a few others while using the Open Client for a few weeks since I installed the Open Client V2.1 on my T61p.

Sound seems to behave very strange. Sometimes Sametime or Notes seems to lock the sound device and all other apps are blocked. This seems to be a known issue. Not sure if we actually have the SPR already rolled out to have this fixed.

The flash screensavers don’t work for some reason because there is some incompatibility between two open source components, but you can find more info about this on the open client forum.

Suspend still doesn’t work out of the box on the T61p with nvidia, but there is a workaround and I’ve filed bug #99186 for this problem.

I finally found time to migrate to Lotus Notes 8.0.1 with the IBM Mail Template 8V2 today and I have to say I like it. Some people won’t agree with me on that, but I kind of like how Lotus Notes works with replication and all and that it works on Mac and Linux. But hey, it’s interesting that companies whose e-mail is a business critical application move to Outlook :-) [via Ed Brill]

btw: I have to use Outlook sometimes at client sites and I also had to use the web client several times for “stability reasons”.

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.

To install Windows Vista x64 I used Keith Combs’ post on how to install Windows Vista x64 on a T61p as a basis because it was very detailed and worked very well.

We also have a list on w3ki of what works and what doesn’t on Vista.

Important: Make sure not to install any IBM Software to C:\Program Files as it is not compatible with it! – I installed to paths like C:\Notes and C:\IBM\WAS61.

The steps I performed to install what I need on Vista x64:

1. Install as described on Keith Combs’ post + some additional drivers that I wanted from the Lenovo site.
2. Install Sierra Card driver
3. Right Click on Desktop > Personalize > Adjust font size (DPI) > Larger Scale (120 DPI)
4. Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Change System Sounds > Sounds > Sound Scheme: No sounds
5. Install Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.13 as it works much more reliably with internal applications than IE7.
6. To make sure software downloads and other IBM sites are more compatible with IE7 security settings I needed to configure the following:

   IE > Tools > Internet Options > Security > Local intranet > Sites > Advanced > add “*.ibm.com” as trusted site.

   Although this will make w3.java.ibm.com work, XL software downloads will not work reliably even with these settings.

7. For download director to work install IBM 32-bit SDK for Java 2 V5.0 as the system SDK and enable it as the SDK for Firefox and IE.
8. Install Intranet Labor Claiming 1.3.2 – Switches color scheme back to Windows Vista Basic, but otherwise seems to work.
9. Install Lotus Notes 8.0.1 (C19U1EN) including productivity tools and deploy your ID file and configure Notes

   If you don’t want to use the integrated Sametime client you can also use Lotus Sametime Connect 7.5.1 Blue

10. Install Rational Application Developer V7.5 Beta – Hangs on install unless you set all locales to en-US. – Given that Vista x64 is not supported in the beta, I was happy that it worked at all.
11. Install WebSphere Application Server V6.1.0.15
12. Install AT&T Network Client
13. Install Personal Communications (C90WHML) and configure VAMP zSeries 3270 telnet for RETAIN access – Personal Communications is supported on Vista x64
14. Install Vodafone Mobile Connect from A1
15. Install Beyond Compare 2
16. Install PuTTY
17. Install WinSCP
18. Install some IBM Screensaver
19. Install VMware Workstation 6 for 64-bit Windows

Optional Security Software:

• SAV 10.2

Things I haven’t tested:

• Microsoft Office Standard 2003 w/o Outlook
• Microsoft Office Standard 2003 Proofing Tools EMEA
• Microsoft Visio 2007
• Adobe Acrobat 8 – Refer to the guide from Adobe on how to make Adobe Acrobat 8.1 work on Vista x64
• ITCS 300 compliance
• Tivoli Storage Manager client

Not working:

• Global Print doesn’t work at all and printing from Vista is not supported
• RKA is not working as the binary is not compatible with Vista x64

As some of you might now I’m now the proud not-yet-user of a T61p. I usually don’t like to switch or reinstall my ThinkPad because it’s always a lot of work. This time it’s no different.

I noticed that the list of applications I use for my day-to-day work actually shrunk when I moved to SWG, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. This time technology became a problem because I’m not giving up the GB of RAM between 3 and 4 GB without a fight ;-)

Considering this it was easy for me to decide not to install a standard Windows XP e-client because that would mean losing a GB of RAM and using fonts that are way too tiny on a 1920×1200 screen.

The only two options left seem to be Windows Vista x64 and Linux.

With this I made a list of what applications I really need based on what I currently have on my T41:

• Internet Explorer or Firefox for accessing w3 and various applications I need. I’m currently not using any applications that require Internet Explorer as far as I know, so I should be fine either way.
• Intranet Labor Claiming
• Lotus Notes
• Lotus Sametime
• 3270 emulator for RETAIN access – there is a web frontend, but who uses that if you can use 3270? ;-)
• Rational Application Developer
• VMware workstation
• Tivoli Storage Manager client for backups
• Global Storage Architecture (GSA) client capability
• Global Print client capability
• RKA for travel reimbursements
• Office suite in the form of Microsoft Office or Lotus Symphony
• Microsoft Visio
• AT&T Network Client or Lotus Mobile Connect for remote access to the corporate network
• UMTS connectiivty when I’m on the road. – This will be interesting because my T61p has an integrated WWAN adapter from Sierra Wireless that would be nice if it worked because I could stop using the PC card I currently have and wouldn’t need to constantly plug something into the card slot. :-)
• SSH and SFTP client
• File comparison tool like Beyond Compare