BlackBerry Resolution Status = Happy

I received this email update from BlackBerry support today.  Now I've seen tickets flagged as closed or resolved but never happy.

The thing is I was feeling pretty good this afternoon.  I was happy.  How did they know?  Uncanny.  : )

Lotus Notes 8.5: How to reset forgotten user id password

I am by no stretch of the imagination a Lotus Notes expert but I do have to support it on occasion as part of my system admin duties.  The other day one my users said he couldn’t log on to his Lotus Notes client.  Usually my first inclination is to assume the person forgot his password and to reset the user id password.  No big deal.  The thing is we had recently upgraded to Lotus Notes/Domino 8.5.1 from 8.0 and when I went to look for the familiar options in Lotus Domino something had changed.

I started reading the documentation and from what I gathered Lotus Notes 8.5 gives you two main methods to manage your user passwords.  The new method introduced in version 8.5 is the Notes ID Vault which is supposed to make managing user IDs much easier.  Since I didn’t have this option configured I had to do it ‘old school’.  But like I said earlier - something changed in Domino 8.5 (I hate it when IBM does that).  Again the documentation does explain how to do it but it was not as step-by-step as I would have liked.  Anyway, the following worked for me.

First, the Lotus Administrator has to:

• Run Lotus Domino Administrator
• Click Configuration tab, Extract Recovery Password

 

• Enter your admin password

• Select the user’s ID file

•   Lotus will generate a recovery password. Make note of password.

 

Second, the user has to:

• Run Lotus Notes
• Click Exit (Not very intuitive is it?).  (Author’s note: from what I read in the documentation if you enter the wrong password then click the ‘Log In’ button it is supposed to give you the ‘forgot password’ option but that does not work for the majority of my users)

• Select ‘Try to recover your password’ then click OK

• Enter the recovery password generated earlier in Lotus Admin

• Select the user’s ID file

• The user will be prompted to enter a new password

That’s it… if successful the user will be able to log in to Lotus Notes.

 

Blogspot Tags: Lotus Notes, howto, tips, tricks

Why and how to verify a file's checksum value

Over the last two or three years I've notice that many software vendors like Vmware are now including with the files they make available for download their corresponding checksum value. 

Website example with checksum values

So what's the big deal about that?  The checksum is a great tool and is used to verify whether or not the file you just downloaded is the exact copy the vendor intended you to have.  As organisations get stricter with what files are allowed to be installed, checking a file's checksum is becoming just as important as scanning the file with an antivirus program.

So, I searched around the internet and tried to find a cheap and easy way to view a file's checksum value.  There's a lot of info about this topic but I couldn't find anyone to put it all together in an easy to use and cost effective manner (ie: free).  So this is what I came up with for my Windows XP workstation:

Step 1: Download Microsoft File Checksum Integrity Verifier
Download and install Microsoft's free File Checksum Integrity Verifier program.  Last time I checked you could find it here.  This is a command line tool which is fine but I wanted to make this tool even easier and faster to use.

Step 2: Create batch file
First I created the subfoler C:\batch\checksum.  Then in this folder I created the following batch file.

@echo off
fciv.exe %1 -both
pause

Save the file.  I called mine checksumFileCheck.bat

Step 3: Add an item to the Send To menu
In Windows Explorer go to C:\Documents and Settings
Go to your user profile folder (ex: jdoe) then go to the SendTo folder
Click File menu, New, Shortcut
Click Browse and select the new batch file created earlier in step 2
Click Next
Enter a shortcut name.  I called mine View Checksum
You should now see a new shortcut in your SendTo folder




Step 4: The big test
(Author's note: If you've never seen a checksum value next to a file download before and you'd like to see one, go to http://www.iometer.org and go to the Downloads section.  You can download a file and continue on to the next step)

Ok, now we're ready to see the whole point of this exercises.  In Windows Explorer, find the file of which you'd like to view the checksum.  Right-click the file, choose Sent To and click View Checksum.  It should show you a nice command prompt windows with the file's MD5 and SHA-1 checksum.  Pretty cool, eh?  Compare that to the value provided on the software vendor's website and if they match you're good.

New 'View Checksum' Send To menu option

Upgrading BlackBerry BES to version 5.0.2

I’ve done two BlackBerry BES upgrades over the last few months and I’ve got to admit that each time I crack open the upgrade guides I feel a little intimidated.  Now you have to give BlackBerry credit for being thorough.  They list every detail from preupgrade tasks to post upgrade tasks to doing in-place upgrades vs.doing a cutover upgrade.  The number of choices presented can (for me anyway) be a little stressful. And many of the details only fit if you’re doing a brand new installation.  What if I only want to upgrade an existing install?

My environment was relatively simple: Windows 2003 server running BES 5.0.1, Lotus Domino 8.5 FP2 and Microsoft MSDE running on the same box.  I could afford about an hour’s worth of downtime as long as the upgrade was done after my organization’s main business hours.

I called BlackBerry’s competent (I’ve worked with many different support centers and believe me competent is a big compliment) support line and asked the technician to list the basic upgrade steps for my environment.

Here they are:

• Stop all BES services in this order: Controller, Dispatcher, Router… (the other BES services can be stopped in any order).
• Backup the BESMgmt database.  I created a small batch file with the following line (run the batch file and the result is nice export of your database to a .bak file.):

BlackBerryDbBackup.exe -d BESMgmt -f c:\backup –E

• Run the besn_upgrader_5.0.2.exe installation
• After about 25 minutes the installer prompted me to reboot the server.  After the reboot, I logged in and the installation/setup process continued.  At the end of the setup, all BES services were started automatically.

In conclusion, the upgrade was a positive experience.  We have about 70 BlackBerry users and the entire upgrade process took about 45 minutes.

I took some screenshots of the install process for those who would like to see some of the screens before they do the upgrade themselves: