Sametime 8.5 frustration

I have done a some 15 sametime installations over the past few month. Most of them to prepare a session for the upcoming AdminCamp in Gelsenkirchen later this year. All installation are on Linux.

I have also setup a productive environment for our company which runs fine except a few issues.

  • During the past 2 weeks our community server ( the only component taht is still running on Windows ) constantly crashes every few hours. It does not really crash but it seems that all of the ST* services are stopped at once and then restart. The services all show a status of “started” after such a “crash” but noone is able to connect to the community server. The only way to get it to work again is to restart the whole server.

There are no clues in the log and nobody is able to explain his very strange behaviour.

  • I tried to uninstall Sametime 8.5 embedded from my 8.5.1 FP3 client using setup.exe /v”EMBEDDED_UNINSTALL=true”

    After I restarted the client sametime 8.5 embedded was still in place. The only way to uninstall Sametime 8.5 and revert back to embedded Sametime 8.0.2 was to completly uninstall Lotus Notes and install the client after restart.

    I have posted this in the Lotus Sametime Forum but no answer. OK there is an answer but not confirmed in any way from IBM side.

No problem if it is a bug. But then pls. confirm.

  • Am I the only one who gets

    org.apache.commons.httpclient.HttpMethodBase getResponseBody
    WARNUNG: Going to buffer response body of large or unknown size. Using getResponseBodyAsStream instead is recommended.

    warning messages on the community server console on Linux. I don’t think so. Also posted this in the Sametime Forum. No answer so far.

No problem if this is not a relevant issue. But then pls. at least give a short feedback.

  • The next one is with group authentication and assign policies to group when using LDAP. Good to know that there is a hotfix available.

    Why is this one not posted on fixcentral?

    And another strange thing about this issue is that the problem does not occur on one of two identically installed machines.

No explaination, no hint where to look into to find a clue.

Another question that I asked in the Sametime Forum is about re-installing a (registered) community server.

No answer so far. The only hint comes from another admin / user / customer. And to be honest. If uninstalling the whole installation including all other components the community server is registered with is the (only) solution , then there must be something wrong with the concept.

There are many more issues I ran into like grayed out icons in the IC ( although the option is checked in the policy ), and “community must be defined as Standard Community” ( although the option is unchecked in the policy ) where I cannot find any hint on how to solve neither in the Knowledge Base nor in the Samtime WiKi or Forum.

At least a short (official) response to my posts would have been great; just to know that someone who is responsible for the product cares about it.

At the moment I am a little bit frustrated. Shall I call a consultant?  Oh, wait better a whole buch of consultants, because “one consultant is no consultant”. What will I tell my boss the next time he asks me if we can start to rollout Sametime in the organization? “Great product, but … “.

I know that it is all my fault that I ran into the problems. And maybe my biggest fault is that I am not a native english speaker and not able to describe my problems with Sametime in a way a first level supporter in Babudistanki / Pamplonistan can understand.

If you never had the described issues, great for you. But if you have seen at least one of the problems and have a solution or workaround, pls. share your knowledge. Any help is appreciated.

6 thoughts on “Sametime 8.5 frustration

  1. Not that I disagree with you but the forums on notes.net have never been official support forums. True, from time to time you will get answers from IBM employees but one should not expect that.
    I have spoken with Lotus Domino support this week (and indeed it was not an exiting experience) but the guy still seems to be based in Ireland (it still required me to speak English). They also always ask me if English is ok but never tried what happen if you answer no.
    Of course I also have a nasty explanation for your Sametime experience. It now is transitioning into real IBM Enterprise software. That means more difficult setups, confusing documentation and an overall more difficult handling. Not enough you now get some bugs at hand that you can resolve by adding some secret ingredient. That is now you can make real money.

  2. >> It now is transitioning into real IBM Enterprise software.
    Aha, so every piece of software before the “transition” was only a toy??

    >>Not that I disagree with you but the forums on notes.net have never been official support forums. True, from time to time you will get answers from IBM employees but one should not expect that.
    OK, I will no longer waste my time asking stupid questions there or provide any help from my side …

    >> but the guy still seems to be based in Ireland.
    That’s second level. But you will not get there before you have explained first level that you have a problem with one of IBM’s toys.
    Because we bought our licenses in the czech republic ( 50% cheaper than in Germany for the same sheet of paper ) my first level support is located in the near or middle east 🙂

    >> That means more difficult setups
    No problem with that.

    >> you can resolve by adding some secret ingredient
    Aha, you need to be Harry Potter, do you? OK, I’m only an old dumbass Lotus Notes Administrator and Developer and do not know nothing about woodoo and stuff.

  3. I don’t like to discourage you to help in the Lotus support forums. You would not punish IBM but the other users that seek for help there.
    It could be that IBM thinks that the old Sametime server was a toy but this does not mean it had no value for its customers.
    The Domino version ran (or still runs) on a very old servlet container just because IBM did not allow it to grow. But the engineers really did a great job keeping it alive.
    Realtime Collaboration really is a hot topic for people like Carl Tyler. He deploys nearly all products in this area and even if some complexity might bring him more business I seem to read some interesting stories about newer Sametime versions (but also that it is making progress).
    In some way I think that IBM will tell you (and others) that if you want a less complicated setup you should use LotusLive. It makes sense, at least for IBM and if it works maybe for you too!?
    I completely understand your frustrations. Maybe you will get some help now. I wish you just that.

  4. I totaly agree as we struggle with the same issues.

    Please could you share more details about the hotfix? We have issues with group resolution as they not available while adding in sametime and meetings.

  5. Hi all,

    I have a problem using the Lotus Notes integrated sametime client.

    When i wan’t to try calling a colleague with a webcam (that I don’t have) the connection will be immidiatly disconnected. Is this a restriction of the integrated sametime client that when one of the 2 users has not one of the features (audio or video) that it won’t work? Is there a work-around for this? Or is there something miss configured?

    I ask this beceause when I use the the Lotus Sametime connect client, this doesn’t seem to make a difference.

    Thanks in advance

    Kind regards,

    Dave

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