Recently we wanted to duplicate an existing Quickr test server from one machine to another without going through the entire process of installing Quickr, configuring security, configuring an external web server, installing a fixpack and efixes, installing our custom applications, and preserving all the test Quickr teamplaces and content. We got this to work pretty cleanly by restoring a file system backup of Quickr and a backup of the Quickr DB2 database. We did this for one of our test servers, but ran into an exception when we tried to duplicate another test server.

[7/14/08 10:29:36:953 CDT] 0000003b JCRCFLLoggerI E com.ibm.icm.ts.tss.JCRCFLLoggerImpl com.ibm.icm.ts.tss.ls.LibraryServerImpl.removeExpiredTableClaims [java.lang.ThreadGroup[name=icmciWorkManager: icmjcrear,maxpri=10]]: Error creating new search result table: {0}. com.ibm.db2.jcc.a.SqlException: DB2 SQL error: SQLCODE: -601, SQLSTATE: 42710, SQLERRMC: JCR.TSSTBL_1;TABLE

            at com.ibm.db2.jcc.a.lg.e(lg.java:1600)

            at com.ibm.db2.jcc.a.lg.b(lg.java:1164)

            at com.ibm.db2.jcc.b.gb.h(gb.java:217)

            at com.ibm.db2.jcc.b.gb.b(gb.java:46)

            at com.ibm.db2.jcc.b.w.b(w.java:40)

            at com.ibm.db2.jcc.b.vb.e(vb.java:118)

            at com.ibm.db2.jcc.a.lg.m(lg.java:1159)

            at com.ibm.db2.jcc.a.lg.a(lg.java:1874)

            at com.ibm.db2.jcc.a.lg.c(lg.java:520)

            at com.ibm.db2.jcc.a.lg.executeUpdate(lg.java:504)

            at com.ibm.ws.rsadapter.jdbc.WSJdbcStatement.pmiExecuteUpdate(WSJdbcStatement.java:1235)

            at com.ibm.ws.rsadapter.jdbc.WSJdbcStatement.executeUpdate(WSJdbcStatement.java:738)

            at com.ibm.icm.ts.tss.ls.BaseDBImpl.executeUpdate(BaseDBImpl.java:248)

            at com.ibm.icm.ts.tss.ls.BaseDBImpl.createTable(BaseDBImpl.java:306)

            at com.ibm.icm.ts.tss.ls.LibraryServerImpl.removeExpiredTableClaims(LibraryServerImpl.java:450)

            at com.ibm.icm.ts.tss.ls.LibraryServerImpl.state(LibraryServerImpl.java:53)

            at com.ibm.icm.ts.tss.app.Janitor.cleanupLibraryServer(Janitor.java:43)

            at com.ibm.icm.ts.tss.app.JanitorService.cleanupLibraryServer(JanitorService.java:66)

            at com.ibm.icm.ts.tss.app.JanitorService.access$000(JanitorService.java:22)

            at com.ibm.icm.ts.tss.app.JanitorService$Notifiee.onEvent(JanitorService.java:110)

            at com.ibm.icm.ts.act.ActivityImpl$ManagerImpl$ActivityRunner.runActivity(ActivityImpl.java:333)

            at com.ibm.icm.ts.act.ActivityImpl$ManagerImpl$ActivityRunner.run(ActivityImpl.java:303)

            at com.ibm.hrl.workmanager.RunnableWrapper.run(RunnableWrapper.java:44)

            at com.ibm.hrl.workmanager.impl.was.WasWork.run(WasWork.java:75)

            at com.ibm.ws.asynchbeans.J2EEContext$RunProxy.run(J2EEContext.java:258)

            at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged1(Native Method)

            at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(AccessController.java(Compiled Code))

            at javax.security.auth.Subject.doAs(Subject.java:477)

            at com.ibm.websphere.security.auth.WSSubject.doAs(WSSubject.java:118)

            at com.ibm.ws.asynchbeans.J2EEContext$DoAsProxy.run(J2EEContext.java:325)

            at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged1(Native Method)

            at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(AccessController.java:351)

            at com.ibm.ws.asynchbeans.J2EEContext.run(J2EEContext.java:709)

            at com.ibm.ws.asynchbeans.WorkWithExecutionContextImpl.go(WorkWithExecutionContextImpl.java:218)

            at com.ibm.ws.asynchbeans.ABWorkItemImpl.run(ABWorkItemImpl.java:154)

            at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:570)

[7/14/08 10:29:36:969 CDT] 0000003b JCRCFLLoggerI E com.ibm.icm.ts.tss.JCRCFLLoggerImpl com.ibm.icm.ts.tss.app.Janitor.cleanupLibraryServer [java.lang.ThreadGroup[name=icmciWorkManager: icmjcrear,maxpri=10]]: Error getting the library server. com.ibm.icm.ts.tss.ls.DatabaseException: com.ibm.db2.jcc.a.SqlException: DB2 SQL error: SQLCODE: -601, SQLSTATE: 42710, SQLERRMC: JCR.TSSTBL_1;TABLE

            at com.ibm.icm.ts.tss.ls.LibraryServerImpl.removeExpiredTableClaims(LibraryServerImpl.java:455)

            at com.ibm.icm.ts.tss.ls.LibraryServerImpl.state(LibraryServerImpl.java:53)

            at com.ibm.icm.ts.tss.app.Janitor.cleanupLibraryServer(Janitor.java:43)

            at com.ibm.icm.ts.tss.app.JanitorService.cleanupLibraryServer(JanitorService.java:66)

            at com.ibm.icm.ts.tss.app.JanitorService.access$000(JanitorService.java:22)

            at com.ibm.icm.ts.tss.app.JanitorService$Notifiee.onEvent(JanitorService.java:110)

            at com.ibm.icm.ts.act.ActivityImpl$ManagerImpl$ActivityRunner.runActivity(ActivityImpl.java:333)

            at com.ibm.icm.ts.act.ActivityImpl$ManagerImpl$ActivityRunner.run(ActivityImpl.java:303)

            at com.ibm.hrl.workmanager.RunnableWrapper.run(RunnableWrapper.java:44)

            at com.ibm.hrl.workmanager.impl.was.WasWork.run(WasWork.java:75)

            at com.ibm.ws.asynchbeans.J2EEContext$RunProxy.run(J2EEContext.java:258)

            at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged1(Native Method)

            at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(AccessController.java(Compiled Code))

            at javax.security.auth.Subject.doAs(Subject.java:477)

            at com.ibm.websphere.security.auth.WSSubject.doAs(WSSubject.java:118)

            at com.ibm.ws.asynchbeans.J2EEContext$DoAsProxy.run(J2EEContext.java:325)

            at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged1(Native Method)

            at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(AccessController.java:351)

            at com.ibm.ws.asynchbeans.J2EEContext.run(J2EEContext.java:709)

            at com.ibm.ws.asynchbeans.WorkWithExecutionContextImpl.go(WorkWithExecutionContextImpl.java:218)

            at com.ibm.ws.asynchbeans.ABWorkItemImpl.run(ABWorkItemImpl.java:154)

            at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:570)

Caused by: com.ibm.db2.jcc.a.SqlException: DB2 SQL error: SQLCODE: -601, SQLSTATE: 42710, SQLERRMC: JCR.TSSTBL_1;TABLE

            at com.ibm.db2.jcc.a.lg.e(lg.java:1600)

            at com.ibm.db2.jcc.a.lg.b(lg.java:1164)

            at com.ibm.db2.jcc.b.gb.h(gb.java:217)

            at com.ibm.db2.jcc.b.gb.b(gb.java:46)

            at com.ibm.db2.jcc.b.w.b(w.java:40)

            at com.ibm.db2.jcc.b.vb.e(vb.java:118)

            at com.ibm.db2.jcc.a.lg.m(lg.java:1159)

            at com.ibm.db2.jcc.a.lg.a(lg.java:1874)

            at com.ibm.db2.jcc.a.lg.c(lg.java:520)

            at com.ibm.db2.jcc.a.lg.executeUpdate(lg.java:504)

            at com.ibm.ws.rsadapter.jdbc.WSJdbcStatement.pmiExecuteUpdate(WSJdbcStatement.java:1235)

            at com.ibm.ws.rsadapter.jdbc.WSJdbcStatement.executeUpdate(WSJdbcStatement.java:738)

            at com.ibm.icm.ts.tss.ls.BaseDBImpl.executeUpdate(BaseDBImpl.java:248)

            at com.ibm.icm.ts.tss.ls.BaseDBImpl.createTable(BaseDBImpl.java:306)

            at com.ibm.icm.ts.tss.ls.LibraryServerImpl.removeExpiredTableClaims(LibraryServerImpl.java:450)

            ... 21 more

From the stacktrace, it was clear that the issue was related to Quickr trying to create a table named TSSTBL_1 that already existed. From one of the IBM performance tuning notes, I knew that on the very first search, the system creates twenty database tables named TSSTBL_1, TSSTBL_2 … TSSTBL_20 in the JCR database for search information. That note also talked about the fact that the system can dynamically generate more TSSTBLs. From our earlier investigations of JCR replication, I knew about the table named ICMSTJCRTSTABLES that tracks what TSSTBLs exist. On looking into the Quickr DB2 database I could see that there were the 20 TSSTBLs and there were 20 rows in ICMSTJCRTSTABLES – one for each of them. Given that Quickr (or WebSphere Portal) automatically creates the TSSTBLs on the first search, I figured that if I deleted the TSSTBLs and the 20 rows in ICMSTJCRTSTABLES, I could get Portal to recreate the tables and things ought to work right without this extraneous exception cluttering up the log. Well, that is what I did (drop the TSSTBL tables and deleting all the rows from ICMSTJCRTSTABLES using the DB2 command editor – first time that I ever used that), restarted Portal (actually Quickr), performed a search, and sure enough the TSSTBL tables got recreated and the exception was gone. I was pretty pleased with myself for figuring out this solution in about a hour – now did I ever claim to be modest?!

This is an issue that flummoxes Quickr newbies, and I had a couple of new team members run into it today. Figured that others run into this issue as well. Essentially, the natural expectation for most people is that as a Quickr administrator, they would be able to add portlets/components to any place irrespective of whether they created it themselves or whether somebody else created it. While you don’t have to be the owner of a team place, you do need to be member of the team “managers” role. If you are not in the manager role and you are not the team place owner, then you cannot add a portlet!

IBM does have a technote about this – Error displays when the Administrator tries to add a portlet to a new page. Essentially, when you run into this issue as a Quickr administrator, you can resolve it by simply following these steps -

• Access the Quickr place you want to modify
• Click on “Customize Place”
• Click on “Users” in the div that appears
• Click on the “Managers” tab
• Add the Quickr administrators user group to the “Managers” role
• Add the portlet/page that you were attempting to add earlier. IT SHOULD WORK NOW!

Recently, I installed Quickr v8.1 in a VMWare instance and wanted to share the VM with my co-workers. For this to work, I gave my original VM a generic hostname (quickr) and intended that once co-workers copied the VM over to their VMWare Server, they would end up renaming the hostname to avoid name conflicts on the network. However, I quickly realized that once I renamed the hostname from quickr to vivek-quickr, on the reboot, the DB2 instance failed to start up with this error – “db2start : SQL1022C There is not enough memory available to process the command.”. I did some quick googling to see if I could find the solution, but the results were not obvious to a DB2 newbie like me. I had installed quickr on Win2k3 R2 and I did not see anything obvious to help me – hence this note as it is actually very easy to get the DB2 instance to work after the rename.

What worked for me is as follows -

• Add Windows hosts files entries so that the old hostname can be resolved if needed

  127.0.0.1 quickr
  127.0.0.1 quickr.ausnq.com

• Find db2nodes.cfg in the instance folder which in my case was ${Quickr_Home}\db2\WPDB2INS.
• Open up db2nodes.cfg in a text editor and change from the old host name to the new host name – in my case I changed “0 quickr QUICKR 0″ to “0 vivek-quickr 0″. Yes, I got rid of the extra QUICKR.
• Next I launched the Windows registry editor “regedit”
• I navigated to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\IBM\DB2\GLOBAL_PROFILE”
• I changed DB2_ADMINGROUP from “QUICKR\DB2ADMINS” to “VIVEK-QUICKR\DB2ADMINS”
• I changed DB2_USERSGROUP from “QUICKR\DB2USERS” to “VIVEK-QUICKR\DB2USERS”
• I changed DB2SYSTEM from “QUICKR” to “VIVEK-QUICKR”
• Next, I rebooted the virtual machine and voila the DB2 instance started up with no more issues. And Quickr was functional again on my renamed VM.

Just a quick blurb to say that I/Xtivia are headed to Lotusphere 2008 in Orlando, Florida on January 20-24, 2008. I have been to several IBM conferences over the years, but this will be my first Lotusphere. We decided to sign up as an exhibitor at Lotusphere and showcase our extensive capabilities with IBM WebSphere Portal, Lotus Quickr, Sametime, and Connections. We have various service offerings ranging from assessments to full-blown implementations that leverage these products in an effective manner and enable you to realize true value from your IBM Lotus and WebSphere investments. In addition to spreading the Xtivia message, I am hopeful that there will be compelling content for us to ingest, and that the conference will be a success all around. We have a major customer attending the conference as our guests – so I will be busy with them, but do hope to spend as much time as I can manage at our pedestal in the Lotusphere 2008 Product Showcase. If you are at Lotusphere, be sure to check out the Xtivia booth and say hello to me and the rest of the Xtivia team! If you are launching a new initiative around any of the highlighted products or are just in need of seasoned consultants, I hope you will give Xtivia a chance to be your trusted partner. Yes – a total salesy entry – forgive me for that!

In WebSphere Portal v6.0 and Quickr Services for WebSphere Portal v8.0, the ability to set a Portal page column width is not enabled by default. I remember looking at it when WPv6 was released and was shocked that IBM had removed this capability. On looking at it further, I had realized that they had just not enabled it by default. I ran into it again with Quickr since it is based on WPv6 and having to recall what I had done to resolve the issue.

Well, I decided to write about it just so that I don’t have to re-discover it the next time I run into it. Essentially, the “Edit Layout” portlet that you use to edit a Portal page by default does not have the “Show Layout Tools” option enabled by default. To enable this option:

• Navigate to “Site Administration”
• Navigate to “Manage Portlets” page
• Edit the “Edit Layout” portlet
• Navigate to page 2 of the portlet parameters
• Edit the “showAdvancedOption” value to “Yes” as shown below.

Once you enable this option, then you should be able to set the column width of the Quickr/WebSphere Portal page that you desire. You open up the relevant page layout in the “Edit Page Layout” portlet as shown below.

Click on “Show layout tools” to get the view below where you can set the column width as you desire.

That should do it!

After my last entry, I went ahead and filed PMRs with IBM Partnerworld Technical Support about the limitations I had supposedly discovered. Today, I am writing about standing corrected on one of those limitations – the ability to add a component to the component catalog available to the team place manager. I was corrected by a co-worker (Derek) as well as by IBM support.

Just to make clear what I wanted to do is to customize the list of components that are available to a team place manager when the manager chooses to customize a Quickr place. The figure below shows a manager having the option of adding a custom component called “photo book” to the place.

Essentially the component picker is defined by a JSP inside the Quickr theme – /IBM/Quickr/wp_profile/installedApps/xxxx/wps.ear/wps.war/themes/html/QPG/pageHeaderContent.jsp. To add a new component, search for the div with an id of customizePage2. and add a list item with information for the new component -

As I had mentioned in one of my earlier entries, I have recently become interested in IBM Lotus Quickr 8.0 Services for WebSphere Portal. It looks like a great team collaboration software with a very appealing Web 2.0 UI, ease of use for end-users, team site managers, and administrators, connectors for several popular business applications enabling access to Quickr content without a user having to switch from their current application, and team site templates enabling users to create new team sites in a few simple steps. However, today I discovered a rather basic Quickr limitation with respect to the customization you can do while creating templates.

Quickr Services for WebSphere Portal comes with a set of OOTB components – library, blog, wiki, announcements, project tasks, feed reader, and contacts. A team place manager can use these components to customize a place. I was looking through the Quickr documentation to find the procedure for adding a new component (for example, a custom list component such as faqs) to the component catalog available to the team place manager. However, suffice it to say that I was disappointed – I did not find any such documentation. It seems to be a fundamental limitation of Quickr as far as I can tell that you cannot customize Quickr by adding customer-built components. Not only that, on searching for component on the Quickr support site, I found this technote – Templates based on place components that use a customized presentation template. The gist of this technote is that if you create a template based on a place that contains a component using a customized presentation template, the customized presentation template is not used by any places based on this template. The default presentation template is used instead. Supposedly this is a known limitation of Quickr. I find this far from acceptable given the goal of making “place creation using a template” easy. If anybody from the Quickr team is listening, then both these limitations (customer created place components and templates that can use customized presentation templates) need some fixin’!

Hey, my persistence finally paid off and I managed to resolve my failed Quickr 8.0 services for WebSphere Portal install! I could not go to sleep with this issue bugging the heck out of me. I started to dig deeper into the failure and found that during the install, it was trying to connect to the database at jdbc:db2://kingfisher-adam.ausnq.com:50000/wpsdb. And suddenly it dawned on me that maybe my issue was a potential port conflict at port 50000. Now I had gotten lazy when installing Quickr – I had decided to install it on a VMWare image where I had earlier installed Microsoft Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM). I had created two ADAM instances – the first used the standard LDAP port of 389, while the second one was set up with a port that I could not remember but 50000 sounded suspiciously familiar. I tried telnet localhost 50000 and sure enough the connection succeeded. Then it did not take me long to verify that the second ADAM instance was actually listening on 50000. Shutting down the two adam instances and re-trying the install has got me well past the failure point (action-create-db-mp) and I suspect the install will now succeed.

However, this brings forth the issue that it would have been nice if the Quickr installer could check whether the ports that it intended to use were actually available of if there was a conflict. Even if it could not dynamically change the ports used by Quickr, if the installation error was more specific that would have avoided the pain I went through. It certainly would be doable for the installer to perform the port check and I think a worthwhile enhancement! Now off to dreamland and playing tennis in the morning!

PS: WordPress.com which has been extremely reliable went down when I tried to post this at 1am in the morning! I am finally up from dreamland and so is WordPress. BTW, a quickr update that the Quickr install did complete successfully. Whew! Now onto playing with it on my own install instead of on Lotus Greenhouse (another blog entry merited).

No, I have not yet solved my failed install issue! I thought I was onto something with resolving the issue when I read the IBM technote titled Restrictions on ID that is used to install Lotus Quickr. The technote is about a scenario where the install fails during the database create step and this is precisely where my install seems to fail, though I did not see the exact error message mentioned in that technote. Anyways, I figured it was worth a shot – so instead of installing with a Windows user named admin, I tried with another Windows user named LocalQuickr but had the exact same failure yet again -

(Aug 24, 2007 9:29:59 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdOut: action-create-database:

(Aug 24, 2007 9:29:59 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdOut: Fri Aug 24 21:29:59 CDT 2007

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:00 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdOut:

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:00 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdOut: check-db2-driver-type:

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:00 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdOut: Fri Aug 24 21:30:00 CDT 2007

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:00 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdOut:      [echo] isDb2DriverType4 = true

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:00 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdOut:

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:00 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdOut: action-create-db-mp:

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:00 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdOut: Fri Aug 24 21:30:00 CDT 2007

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:00 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdOut:      [echo] Trying to create database for dbdomain 'release' on 'db2'

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:00 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdOut:

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:00 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdOut:

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:00 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdOut:   [sqlproc] action: exist-database

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:00 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdOut:   [sqlproc] _________________________________________________________

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:00 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdOut:   [sqlproc] DbDomain: release

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] Could not connect to database

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] com.ibm.db2.jcc.a.DisconnectException: [ibm][db2][jcc][t4][2030][11211] A communication error has been detected. Communication protocol being used: TCP/IP.

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] Communication API being used: SOCKETS.  Location where the error was detected: Reply.fill().

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] Communication function detecting the error: InputStream.read().  Protocol specific error codes Insufficient data, * , 0.  Message: null

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at com.ibm.db2.jcc.b.a.a(a.java:362)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at com.ibm.db2.jcc.DB2Driver.connect(DB2Driver.java:163)

...

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at com.ibm.wps.config.SqlProcessor.process(SqlProcessor.java:212)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at com.ibm.wps.config.SqlProcessor.process(SqlProcessor.java:146)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at com.ibm.wps.config.SqlProcessorTask.validateDbExist(SqlProcessorTask.java:730)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at com.ibm.wps.config.SqlProcessorTask.execute(SqlProcessorTask.java:333)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at org.apache.tools.ant.Task.perform(Task.java:341)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.Sequential.execute(Sequential.java:117)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at com.ibm.wps.config.If.execute(If.java:75)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at org.apache.tools.ant.Task.perform(Task.java:341)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at org.apache.tools.ant.Target.execute(Target.java:309)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at org.apache.tools.ant.Target.performTasks(Target.java:336)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at org.apache.tools.ant.Project.executeTarget(Project.java:1339)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.Ant.execute(Ant.java:397)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.CallTarget.execute(CallTarget.java:143)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdOut:   [sqlproc] _________________________________________________________

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at org.apache.tools.ant.Task.perform(Task.java:341)

...

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.Ant.execute(Ant.java:397)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.CallTarget.execute(CallTarget.java:143)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at org.apache.tools.ant.Project.executeTargets(Project.java:1255)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at org.apache.tools.ant.Main.runBuild(Main.java:609)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at org.apache.tools.ant.Main.start(Main.java:196)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at com.ibm.wps.config.WpsConfigMain.process(WpsConfigMain.java:739)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at com.ibm.wps.config.WpsConfigMain.main(WpsConfigMain.java:207)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:85)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:58)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:60)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:391)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at com.ibm.ws.bootstrap.WSLauncher.run(WSLauncher.java:219)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] 	at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:570)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:   [sqlproc] (ErrCode=-4499, SqlState=null)

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr:

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr: BUILD FAILED

(Aug 24, 2007 9:30:02 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr: file:../config/actions/db_cfg.xml:140: ERROR: Error while checking database existance...

Looks like I might be filing a PMR after all!

I remember a time when installing IBM WebSphere Portal was quite a challenge requiring the right alignment of all trhe stars for you to get a successful install – this was back in the v2.1, v4.1, v4.2 days. You had to have the LDAP and the database properly configured and specify a ton of settings during the WebSphere Portal install , and you could easily mess up one thing or the other to end up with a failed install. With newer versions of WebSphere Portal, IBM switched to an archived install that did not require configuring an external LDAP/database, and as a result you always ended up with a successful Portal install. Along comes Lotus Quickr v8.0 Services for WebSphere Portal, and here I am again in failed install land!

I was trying to perform the simple Departmental/Express installation that supposedly enables you to install a single server running IBM^® Lotus^® Quickr™ in the shortest amount of time (per the InfoCenter). There has been nothing quick with this so far. I have installed twice on a VMWare instance running Windows XP SP2, with the install failing each time at the same point -

(Aug 24, 2007 3:16:35 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr: BUILD FAILED
(Aug 24, 2007 3:16:35 PM), Quickr.install, com.ibm.wps.install.ExternalCommandAction$OutputWatcher, msg2, StdErr: file:../config/actions/db_cfg.xml:140: ERROR: Error while checking database existance…

Essentially it seems to fail to create the release database in DB2 and then fails to verify its existence, and the Quickr install fails! Bummer!

I have checked the install instructions in the InfoCenter and do not see anything obvious that I am doing wrong. There isn’t much to the install to begin with – I have verified that my OS does meet the requirements, that my user ID has the right privileges, there is enough disk space … I have searched the forums and don’t see anything there either. Given the repeatability of my failed installs, I would have expected others to have run into it. I have looked through the IBM Quickr support site as well but not seen anything yet – need to look more thoroughly though.

I just hope we are not regressing to the dark ages again in terms of installs! The fact that the Quickr install relies on a bundled DB2 install does worry me as that is where the point of failure is in my case. Will be back with an update once I figure this out – hope it is quick as in quickr!