STOP! Collaborate and Listen
As promised by IBM we have got it in November (so thanks Connections Team ) …
The full Fix list can be found in this technote here – IBM Fix List for Connections CR1
You can download it from Fix Central here – IBM Connections 6 CR1 download
Included in CR1 are all the day 1 fixes and the fixpacks from June – along with a bunch of other fixes, enhancements and preperations for Connections Pink
Current Status – Patching Dev 🙂 will let you know if i see any issues.
We have spotted a lovely issue with patching Connections 4 to CR2 and above when using a < connections path > /data/shared folder on anything other than a single WAS node.
For example in a standard one node connections install the < connections path > /data/shared folder is on the same machine as the connections instance .. in a multi-node instance the shared data folder is normally on a san / network share.
In my instance the shared data was on a RHEL nfs share that was mapped to the node machines as a filesystem, we had seen no issue with this at all, until we attempted to update the Connections version 4.0 instance to CR4Â – the CR4 updates installed correctly but on starting the connections servers up, the news feed and a lot of the widget data was not displaying correctly – throwing a javascript error!! I was stumped, I had seen this before, this particular instance is owned and run by a non root user, when the instances are started as root the permissions are not set correctly and it throws an error.
This was not the case here. The non root user owned all the files and had started the Connections servers, so it should work. There appeared to be no obvious errors in the SystemOut logs for the servers.
Flummoxed by this – I rolled the patches off, at Connections 4.0 again restarted the servers and it worked correctly.
Convinced there may be an issue in CR4 I decided to attempt CR2, so later on in the week had another attempt at patching. Stuart was also doing some maintenance on another customer machine at the same time so we worked through it together. Once the CR2 patches were installed correctly we saw the same issue. So with Stuart checking the errors thrown and I checking the logs and a fiddler trace we managed to deduce that when the fix packs were applying , the wrong webresources directory was being updated.
Under < connections path > /data/shared/provision/webresources on the local machine – all the files had been updated with the new fix pack files NOT the actual shared data folder on the network share. The WebSphere variable for the instance has the correct folder mapped and all the other files from the /data/shared folder are being served correctly.
The quick resolution to this was to delete all the files under the networked share folder /provision/webresources and copy the files from the local machine /data/shared/provision/webresources – restart the servers and as if by magic it works.
IBM have acknowledged that this is an issue and hopefully we wont see this issue again .. but IF you see something similar and you have a shared folder that is not on your connections machine – check to ensure the correct set of files has been updated.
Yet another one of those *fun* fixes – hope it helps someone else save some pain
At last Connections fix pack 3.0.1.1 is now available to download and fixes lots of little issues, including the firefox feature with files and wikis and the issue chrome has with files.
I installed it on my test system yesterday and it went very smoothly.
The fix pack can be downloaded from Fix Central. Fix ID is: ​3.0.1.0-LC-Multi-FP001​
The Fixpack is installed using the IBM installation manger (IM).
It was very straight forward – basic steps are as follows
Download the fixpack zip file
Stop the Connections WAS servers, but leave the Deployment manager and Nodeagent servers running
Start the IBM installation manager
From the installer manager menu , click File -> Preferences
Add a repository (if you have used eclipse or RAD (Rational Application Developer)Â / WSAD (WebSphere Application Developer) in the past you will be familiar with these steps)
Point the repository path to the full path of the fixpack zip file and click ok
If there is an issue connecting to the repository the IM will let you know at this point.
Click update and follow to the guide to install the fix pack – ensure all applications are selected and enter a valid wasadmin user name and password.
Review the summary information. Click Back to change the information or click Update to install the selected fix packs.​
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When the installation is complete, synchronize all the nodes and restart all the clusters
As ever please review the full technote / read me which can be found here
IBM are making these fixes easier and easier for people without a huge amount of WebSphere / Connections knowledge to install – good on them.
I am very impressed with all the improvements I have seen over the past 3 or 4 years around fixes and fix packs – IBM has come along way since I first started “mucking about with WebSphere” 11 years ago.