gpoul's Out Of Memory Blog

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I attended a WWERS education yesterday to learn how expense reimbursement will have to be processed starting 1/1. With WWERS we’re now moving to a Java-based system that requires no local installation.

I’ll not miss RKA, our old 16-bit Windows expense reimbursement application. Given that Microsoft operating systems have no 16-bit Windows subsystem support on 64-bit operating systems, this is not only timely in a cross-platform kind of way :-)

I finished this years expertise assessment last week and deferred my PBC results until early next year. At least I like to think so because I haven’t gotten any reminders yet :-)

I like the new structure AIM Software & Support used for this years expertise assessment and I hope it will make resource deployment more automated next year. Think globally integrated enterprise :-)

One hint, which is actually quite sad; I was using a standard e-Client setup with IE6 and had real problems with my skill assessments. Each click on a skill causes some JavaScript to run. This causes IE6 to “think” for about 10 seconds. Let me tell you. This is even less fun than filling out the assessment with a working browser. So save yourself the pain and use Firefox. For whatever reason the standard rollout of Firefox is way faster for this.

Update 12/17: Got a PBC reminder from my manager today. Looks like I’ll have to do this before my vacation :-)

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.

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.

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

Just got a note that the RedbooksWiki is now up on w3. I looked for the WebSphere Application Server Redbooks and sure enough, the WebSphere Application Server V6 Scalability and Performance Redbook is also available for editing.

Not sure yet if I like people editing the chapters instead of describing their changes in a note to the project lead, but it will be great to see how this collaborative process turns out to be working.

I think it would also be interesting to create a V7 Redbook this way and not only edit the already published one. I’m still in favor of doing this in a team effort at the ITSO in Raleigh instead of doing this remotely, but having this on a wiki would definitely give contributors a chance to contribute easily after the residency.

I have also added the link to my publications page.

Need some extra motivation for the new year? Don’t know yet what your plans are for the next few years? Hannah already has an idea about her career motivation for the next few years and it looks like a lot of fun :-)