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| Bill Malchisky May 1 2012 09:00:00 PMApplications crash. It is a fact of life with administration, as we have to clean-up the mess when they do. In Linux these memory protection situations, CPU violations, or other software bug snafus typically manifest themselves in a core file, when occurring outside of Domino--which uses its own type of crash files. In UNIX or Linux, you may see the occasional core file laying around the / filesystem, or throughout your home directory if you were running the program that crashed. But what if you do not want them to appear there? Perhaps you are tight for space on / and the thought of a 500MB core file appearing at 2am then causing your monitoring tool to trigger a low disk space warning while you are in REM sleep is well, unpalatable. Here are two points to help you when in Linux. 1) Enabling core files to use the process ID when creating First you want to enable the core files to use the PID file, otherwise, you will just get one file entitled core which will be overwritten by each successive core dump, unless you relocate this single file with an automated process to minimize the chance of an overwrite, it can be very ineffective. If you enable the feature with kernels 2.5+, then you have many options. Let's start with the first step: #vi /etc/sysctl.conf Note: make a backup of the file, despite your making a one character change Search for lines containing core: /core
kernel.core_uses_pid is by default set to "0"; change it to "1", sans the quotes You an also enable the setuid to dump core, if it is enabled for the program that is running during the crash. If you want to do this append the following string to the sysctl.conf file
kernel.suid_dumpable = 2
Note: if you have a restricted box, then you can use "1" instead, which is debug mode and dumps all processes when possible; else, the value of two sets the dumped core to readable by root only, which locks-down the file so that regular users are unable to view it; the benefit herein is that any sensitive information about the program or system which might have been in memory is only seen by the administration account; this will help keep the box safe 2) Setting the default directory and filename for core files
#vi /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern This is a one line file. Just set the directory to where you want them to go, and how you want the file name to be constructed. It is also advisable that if you are moving the files off of the root filesystem ( /), that you avoid placing them on a subdirectory that is part of /, otherwise, your disk consumption will remain unchanged on that file system, and you could potentially fill-it unknowingly. If you have ample space on /var or /tmp and they are mounted on a different file system than /, you can create a directory under there and have your core dumps in one place
/tmp/corefiles/core-%e-%p-%t This will provide you a file with a listing something like this, if the process, 'foo' crashed earlier today, when it had the process ID (PID) of 15479; the time is the number of seconds from 1 January 1970.
$ls /tmp/corefiles
core-foo-15479-1335899059 If you want to disable certain non-root users from writing core dumps, then adjust their write access to the corefiles directory so they are unable to do so, then no cores will be written by those accounts. You can accomplish this by either editing the group membership list or removing world read/write privileges, shown below.
$ls -l /tmp/corefiles
drwrwxrwx 2 root root 4096 Apr 30 02:30 corefiles
#chmod 770 /tmp/corefiles #ls -l /tmp/corefiles
drwrwx--- 2 root root 4096 Apr 30 02:30 corefiles 3) Bonus: Testing Your Changes If you want to see if you have everything working properly, here is how you can force a core file:
$kill -s SIGSEGV $$ Note: notice I am suggesting your user account here, versus the root account. This will dump core from your current shell (if you are using ssh to access to the box, you will need to login again). If you performed steps one and two properly, you will find this core file where you designated it. Type an $ls -lh //core* to see your file {e.g. $ls -lh /tmp/corefiles/core*}. Here's hoping you will see very few core files. But if you do see one, you will have a much better way to manage these files, while determining crash frequency, and by whom, in a secure and useful way. Bill Malchisky April 20 2012 09:00:12 PMPlenty of members in the blogger community are discussing this important topic. I am all for aggregating content to make people find information easier for how they use the web. The issue is that most of the blogger content is protected by copyright. That is sacred. Being a published author, this topic is sensitive for me. Very early in my consulting career, I was on a project where a consultant working for a competing firm and from a country that had few protections for the written word, borrowed the training material from a Lotus class paid for by the customer. He then went around to all of the other customers asking who wanted a copy. I declined. He then asked my trainer who was a CLI. She gave him an attitude adjustment and went to the client. Being a man of integrity, the client immediately saw the issue and fixed the problem. The point is that we take our protections of published work seriously here. For someone to disrespect the author's wishes for how their information is to be disseminated is shameful. Another aspect is of the marketing on the site. Do the vendors know that the content on the site is being provided in a manner that is questionable in character? I would guess, and this is conjecture on my part, but most are probably sold on the concept sans seeing the site. If they were involved early on, then most definitely, in my opinion. Curious how the sponsors would respond if they knew their name was appearing adjacent to potentially illegally published content. If the business owner has integrity, I would think the advertising revenue stream would dry-up quickly. But that is a guess on my part, knowing nothing about LotusLearns particular arrangements therein. If the CEO of LotusLearns chooses to publish the works from blog sites, then that is fine, so long as she provides attribution. If the author published the information as copyleft, then there is no issue. In grade school, most domestic children were taught that if you use another resource other than your own in your report, research, review, or other writing, you must provide a bibliography, reference page, or footnote section to properly cite your sources. It is sad to contemplate that school children have more sense of responsibility than some adults. To take --- without permission --- what is not one's and publish as one's own is dishonorable, illegal, and equates to cheating, in my opinion (I state this as such as I am not an attorney, nor do I disseminate legal opinions--just my perspective).
Would it really be that much harder for LotusLearns to append either as a prefix or suffix, a proper cite reference for her content? If you consider all of the community heat that site is going to take with its approach, plus all the time the LotusLearns CEO will spend defending its actions, it would be a better use of her and everyone else's time if she would just put the URL, source article name, and blog title for each post. That builds goodwill, earns respect and would make a potentially useful site an asset in our community. Bill Malchisky January 28 2012 09:12:29 PMDue to a non-cooperative calendar, we are regrettably unable to provide the attention needed for this year's SkiLUG event and thus, I must cancel it at this time. I did speak with several people at Lotusphere about this as well; they understand and gave me their support. I appreciate having good friends in the Lotus Community. Thank you to everyone who expressed interest in attending, speaking, and helping make the event rewarding. Additionally, I want to acknowledge New England Lotus User Group for partnering with us and LotusUserGroup.org for their interest in promoting our event. I also want to thank the team of volunteers who gave of themselves to assist me this year. Having stated that, there exists some good news... We will be back in March of 2013! Yes, that is correct, we are just pausing the event for one year. Look for announcements throughout 2012 regarding exciting updates, the agenda, speakers, dates (of course), and the new location. Also, you can follow us on Twitter with the #SkiLUG hashtag and @skilug account too. SkiLUG 2013 will be a winter LUG unlike any other in North America -- well, at least north of Florida. Thanks for reading and we'll Ski Ya next year! Have a great 2012. --Bill Bill Malchisky January 16 2012 01:00:00 PMToday Lotusphere 2012 started with a new format for the opening session. IBM listened well to the feedback last year, and even handled the transition from guest speaker to next segment with humor. Alistair Rennie (@alistair_rennie) paid tribute to the IBM Champions then had Rob Novak (@LotusRockStar) appear on stage to help decide the $1000 question: "Demo or No Demo"; he chose well. Nice short segments, panels of one this year sprinkled in the OGS and after the demo -- key, plus Ron Sebastian back on stage, rather than taking from the back stage com center was welcomed, Brian Cheng (@quasifu) and Suzanne Livingston (@suzielivingston) did a great job with their demos as well. Saw another Sametime Unified Communications demo (fourth successive year +-).Witnessed a Notes and Domino reference with logos on the screen, then they demoed the Notes browser plug-in with Doc Link capability, so you can get to your internal apps seamlessly. Very cool technology. The nagging question for some was, "The demos are nice, but what is behind it?" I think IBM intentionally left that to the attendees to learn throughout the week. IBM Awards were sprinkled throughout the event, also allowing for short segments which helped to keep the audience engaged. And for those playing at home, yes, they went long once again. Dr. Burns from the Child's Hospital in Boston, MA gave a compelling customer story of collaborating with IBM. Alistair Rennie --- in a brilliant move --- dispelled a huge concern for many frequent attendees and partners: What will Lotusphere be called next year? He provided the name as Lotusphere2013 along with dates. Those that were concerned will get more out of the conference now. Overall, great job, IBM. One bonus point made clear on Sunday, was that IBM is making Traveler HA (High Availability) only available with either DB2 or SQL Server rather than a nice simple Notes DB and native Domino clustering technology. So it appears if you want HA, you need to invoke software complexity for what should be a simple add-on. Takes out smaller shops from having enterprise caliber tools. Few people tweeted --- that I read --- appreciated this approach. Stay tuned for updates as they are known... Bill Malchisky January 16 2012 07:27:50 AMThrilled to be giving the only session on compliance in the Best Practices track. With scores of new regulations coming out of Washington and eDiscovery lawsuits climbing dramatically year-over-year, this session is quite timely. Join me today in the Swan Toucan, at 5:00 PM EST for an entertaining and information session to learn about the current trends and why you should take it seriously, lest your firm end up as a front page story for the wrong reasons. Title: BP204 Smart Plays with Compliance Abstract: Straight from the pages of THE VIEW Journal series on Compliance and the Lotus Admin, comes an enhanced session on the subject for Lotusphere. What is your company’s e-discovery plan? Do you even have one or is it sorely in need of a facelift? Together we will review current trends in compliance and team structuring to achieve success.  Bill Malchisky December 2 2011 02:45:15 PM This week Linux Journal released their best of Linux Readers' Choice Awards 2011. The poll offers a winner and runner-up in 45 categories of products, ranging from various hardware to software segments. Examples include: Best Graphics Chipset, Best New Office Suite, Best Distribution, and Best Desktop Vendor. For the Best Linux Server Vendor -- IBM took the top spot. Having used the runner-up and their support, plus other vendors over the years, I can absolutely testify to the quality hardware that IBM servers provide and the unparalleled hardware support they offer their customers. They honestly make the best quality servers in the industry and fully support Linux on every platform -- for almost ten years. Well done and congratulations. The second award is an indirect but positive acknowledgement
Best IDE -- Eclipse IBM released the first version of Eclipse in 2001 and then help create the Eclipse Foundation as a vendor neutral not-for-profit steward to evolve the product in 2004. IBM is still involved and provides code to the open source project. As such, I felt it fitting to also acknowledge their accomplishments with this product too. Keep up the great work with your Linux support!  The IBM logo is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. Bill Malchisky November 21 2011 05:30:00 AM Linux Today featured an abstract to a full article in the Ostatic blog covering some updated resources on GIMP -- the highly advanced and capable open source image editing tool. It's free and it's fantastic. But, with all of the included features, the learning curve can be quite daunting for many. The open source community responded with some pretty impressive documentation, which is getting better with each release. The original resource comes from the source itself, GIMP GIMP Documentation site and contains tutorials, translated guides, and a FAQ Additional Sources The one-page Ostatic article contains the links to some good information. Don't Have GIMP? Nice and easy... Linux will pull the file and install automatically with one command -- faster than surfing the web. Just open a terminal window, copy/paste the command and you are all set. Ubuntu or Debian: apt-get install gimp OpenSUSE: yast -i gimp or zypper in gimp --> depending on the distribution version. Fedora: yum install gimp Bill Malchisky November 17 2011 02:30:00 AMWell you probably guessed or even knew that the main product sites at Lotus and IBM have been recently updated to handle the new re-branded products. Unfortunately, the execution is missing some URL redirection, which leaves people like you the reader, to find the flaws and report them back to IBM -- for free. I will focus on one aspect of a greater issue for brevity purposes. Know that I have no problem providing substantiated feedback in a professional manner; but there are times when the issues found really insult the intellect of the target audience. These matters are resolved with some very basic testing in most cases. Of course, ibm.com is a massive site with scores of pages, so of course, dead links will appear occasionally. This post highlights a different situation. Ultimately, it leaves the end user to contact their IBM/Lotus BP (if they have one), contact IBM directly (expensive for both parties) or go to a competitor. If they really lack the desire to perform proper internal testing --- and I have zero information that they do, but providing a conjecture based perception here --- then they should hire partners and select customers to perform simple usability testing. Because in the end, the absence simply irks their partners and can deflate their customers' zeal, leaving us in the community, to help the customer find what they need. (But that point commences deviation into matters outside the intended scope of this post.)
Where I am Going With This Post? A long time ago, in an internet far, far away, one could type lotus.com/ and you would get to the product page--quickly and easily. In fact, the main IBM site also did and does this well. Two of my favorite site conventions are ibm.com/servers and ibm.com/linux. As expected, one arrives at the main systems product page with the former, and the IBM Linux portal when using the latter link. With the re-branding of several Lotus products, many of the new expected URL conventions are counter-intuitive, if they work at all. Here is a table of my findings this evening. It is hardly an exhaustive list, but illustrates the point sufficiently.
UPDATE: As per the comments, I added eight more URLs to the table to illustrate their point. Yes, prefacing "www." before some of the URLs does yield different results. | Product | URL Shortcut | Results | | Notes | Lotus.com/notes | Redirects to Lotus.com | | | Ibm.com/notes | Redirects to the Lotus Notes product page on IBM.com | | | Www.lotus.com/notes | Redirects to the Lotus Notes product page on IBM.com | | Domino | Lotus.com/domino | Redirects to Lotus.com | | | Ibm.com/domino | Redirects to the Lotus Domino product page on IBM.com | | Sametime | Lotus.com/sametime | Redirects to Lotus.com | | | Ibm.com/sametime | Redirects to the IBM Sametime product page | | | Www.lotus.com/sametime | Redirects to the IBM Sametime product page | | | Www.ibm.com/sametime | Redirects to the IBM Sametime product page | | Quickr | Lotus.com/quickr | Redirects to Lotus.com | | | Ibm.com/quickr | Our apologies…
The page you requested cannot be displayed | | | Www.lotus.com/quickr | Redirects to the Lotus Quickr product page on IBM.com | | | Www.ibm.com/quickr | Our apologies…
The page you requested cannot be displayed | | Connections | Lotus.com/connections | Redirects to Lotus.com | | | Ibm.com/connections | Our apologies…
The page you requested cannot be displayed | | | Www.lotus.com/connections | Redirects to the IBM Connections product page | | | Www.ibm.com/connections | Our apologies…
The page you requested cannot be displayed | | Traveler | Lotus.com/traveler | Redirects to Lotus.com | | | Ibm.com/traveler | Our apologies…
The page you requested cannot be displayed | | LotusLive | Lotus.com/lotuslive | Redirects to Lotus.com | | | Ibm.com/lotuslive | Our apologies…
The page you requested cannot be displayed | | Support | Lotus.com/support | Redirects to Lotus.com -> click on Support in left pane -> IBM Support | | | Ibm.com/support | Redirects to IBM Support page portal | | | Www.lotus.com/support | Redirects to IBM Support page portal |
Yes, some of the products that were Lotus originally, have been re-branded as IBM now. They are reachable via the IBM URL convention and that is all fine and well. The products that do redirect to Lotus.com are accessible under the Featured Product section in the rightmost column. But is this the correct approach?
Example 1: If a customer uses IBM Connections, seeks the main product page at ibm.com via redirection, they are unable to do so. Two options to solve: (1) they can either hunt for it on the main IBM site, (2) or go to Lotus and find it there. So, the IBM Connections product is accessible via Lotus.com but not via ibm.com. Fascinating.
Example 2: Lotus.com/Notes goes to Lotus, but the same convention on the IBM site takes one to the Notes product page -- which is the expected result, but on the Lotus side. This is a counter-intuitive web experience which creates frustration.
The table really highlights that the URL redirection table is missing some entries. If IBM is in a hybrid state for naming products, then add a few entries to ensure that your sales audience can find what they need easily. Very simple items for the proper administrator to create easily.
Solution
The customer is really not going to know at a moment's notice what product is owned by which division. What was Lotus yesterday may be IBM today or tomorrow. People refer to Lotus Quickr simply as "Quickr". It is surprising to me that when all of its sister products have ibm.com redirects due to re-branding, that Quickr does not. Allowing smarter, web savvy customers or partners an intuitive design with time-saving conventions is important and well, expected in today's market. So if the site user wants a particular product, take them directly to the respective product page. Simple.
I really no longer care what IBM names the products, just as long as they have a future. But whatever they do with this effort, the implementation should be common, complete and consistent. These URL shortcuts are also a feature that IBM has provided successfully previously. The competition understands this too and has done it well for years. Guess where hp.com/drivers takes you? Or how about microsoft.com/exchange? Thanks for reading. Enjoy your day.
Bill Malchisky October 20 2011 11:00:00 PMRecently, I had the privilege to observe a couple of hours of Paul Mooney's mobile management seminar covering Lotus Traveler. Like many people covering such a topic, Paul went through the software requirements, hardware requirements, architecture decisions, plus recent patches and issues--ensuring currency. What I really liked was his emphasis on covering the vast arsenal of customizations that are possible with the product. This facet allows administrators the ability to lock-down and provide security for their environment. The most interesting component is that seemingly the best parts of Traveler are undocumented. Paul's session covers extensively, this facet well. It is quite extraordinary how much of what the Traveler product can do is so lacking any, let alone proper documentation. You would think IBM would provide some information in this regard, to better promote their great product and increase adoption, particularly with development... but I digress. Now keep in-mind his session is not a pro-Traveler or anti-BES session. Quite the opposite. Paul carefully provides what the Traveler server can do well along with opportunities for improvement, and also where Research In Motion's (RIM) Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) excels. For example, one aspect mentioned there exist approximately 500 policies that a BES administrator can set to manage their mobile hardware and over 400 for the express version of their server product. Whereas the Lotus Traveler has only 100+ rules that can be applied. Additionally, BES is optimized for more users on each respective server, due to its longevity--allowing for finely tuned code. However, as most of you know, BES really only works with its own brand of hardware. So, there are points to consider with your mobile strategy and these are articulated with lucidity. Unlike most sessions, Paul ensures that people expand their sphere of knowledge with hands-on configuration experience on mobile devices they typically do not use or know. He brings to the session an assortment of phones worthy of making any border customs agent think twice before letting him pass. One of the fun aspects of being a technical administrator in the modern era. (Fortunately, he passes through every time.) The best part of this session is that you can bring Paul to your place of business and get your team up-to-speed on the deeper particulars of Traveler. He also offered this unique opportunity as the administration component for the IamLUG Tack It On event back in August 2011. Although intended for business, I am almost certain that if you wanted to bring Paul to your home and train your kids on Traveler that could be arranged as well: for a fee, of course. Besides his bag of mobile phones will keep your kids busy for hours. You can contact Paul here or email him for further information on pricing and availability for this worthwhile session. Bill Malchisky October 12 2011 12:15:00 AMWhat I love about the open source community is that they can quickly respond to industry/user demands in a small fraction of the time of their closed source counterparts. Here is a great example. Netbooks are useful devices, slightly less popular now with the advent of the tablet, but they are still selling and have their place. To that point, many of the operating systems that run on them tend to force users to make a decision between two mutually exclusive capabilities: features vs performance. You either lose a significant amount of features or everything seems like it takes eons to complete. How do you handle that? Linux. Enter lubuntu, the Lightweight Ubuntu version running a smaller version of the X Window version 11 environment, or LXDE specifically (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment). Thus, you receive a full feature rich desktop environment with the quickness of a full desktop all on a smaller lighter form factor. The main site has some nice screencasts covering some of the key features. Know that because it uses LXDE you get a desktop environment rather than the simplified netbook Unity variant. Lifehacker did a nice review on lubuntu which has a few tech tips as well. You can find it here. For more information, check out these sites: Lubuntu Desktop Project Wiki LXDE main site Take it for a spin...  |
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