GroupWise@Home - Project is alive and well!

Since our end-users have been accustomed to being given the GW client to use at home, we've been looking at alternative solutions given the looming February 1 date for needing maintennance to access patches, et.al.  We are not legally allowed to redistrubute the Novell software out of our network environment (something that seemd to be overlooked prior to my arrival).   And apparently WebAccess won't be "good enough".

While sorting through ngwlist posts I had run across a question regarding GroupWise@Home, something that began in Howard Tayler's days as PM of GW.  I'm happy to say it's alive and well and I'll be playing with the client on my personal machines as I test out some potential options (besides the M$ option).

You can get more details on GroupWise@Home at www.mygwmail.net.  The download is free of charge, you just have to go through a wonderfully short registration page and agree to the T's & C's.

One word of caution: pay close attention to the following caveat from their page:

PLEASE NOTE: GroupWise @ Home can NOT be installed on a computer on which a copy of any other GroupWise version is already installed. Make sure to completely un-install any previous version of GroupWise. Please be aware that in the GroupWise @ Home version certain features for corporate usage have been disabled - therefore it can NOT be used to connect to a corporate GroupWise environment.

I'll keep you all posted (whoever you all are) as I play with this new client. I've seen it before at GWAVACon but had forgotten all about it.  You can also download Thunderbird from this site.

Big sponsors of GroupWise@Home include many of my favorites, including GWAVA, MessagingArchitects, BlackBerry, Novell, Omni, SkyPro, and GroupLink.  (I have no idea who TDP is at this point, but the rest I know fairly well).

I've enjoyed ThunderBird for a few years now, but am looking forward to seeing what I can do with GroupWise@Home.  Maybe I can even get my mom moved to it; poor Mom, hates computers and all of her kids are in the industry.  We love her though...she makes the BEST quilts.

February 1st is coming!

For those of you as yet unaware, February 1st marks the date that Novell begins locking users out of accessing patches and updates for current product lines.  That is, or course, unless you have Maintenance on your agreement.

ALA customers, like my employer, are not affected (as far as we know).  At least we managed to keep the TIDs open.

For me, this means that our end-users can no longer go home and download the GroupWise client to use on their home machines (woo-hoo!!).  And, due to our license agreement, we cannot distribute the client in any way outside of our own network.  So, if I get my way, end users will be relegated to using WebAccess (which rocks!) or hauling their work-supplied laptops home if they "really, really, really" need the full client.

But really, who in their right mind needs a full working client of any email client to keep up with work email?  Perhaps I should qualify that a bit - that is anyone who's smart enough to keep their work email for work and have a separate account (such as gmail or ymail or Yahoo!) for their personal stuff.  Because our users DO and are ENCOURAGED to use their work accounts for everything, they want the full client and there will be some backlash, but I don't care.  I don't have to support them!  (BWAhahahaha)

Puzzling Password Issues Affecting Migration Tools

I was so hoping for a cooler acryonym, but couldn't think of any.

So, here's the scoop:  we have a PITA of a password policy.  Due in part to PCI regulations, but due mostly to the fact that our users can't "be bothered" to change their passwords beyond once a year.  (Until 2 years ago they NEVER had to change their password - EVER!) 

New policy:  15 characters, at least 2 character sets.
New problem:  The Server Migration Utility and the GroupWise Migration Utility can't handle our root passwords

Symptoms:  Works great in a testbed - where of course I use a much simpler password.  In production the tools will validate the root user account and password just fine.  But when it comes to SSH/Putty processes it fails, with a fairly generic "Failed to Authenticate" error.  When it comes to the Server Migration Utility, it's an eDir/LUM authentication failure, but for GW Migration, it's a root account authentication on the Linux box that fails.

Solution:  Make your root password less than 8 characters, no spaces, no punctuation marks - just alphanumeric characters.  It will work like a charm.  You can change it back after the migration and things will work just fine.

There is no TID on this (I've requested one be made) and you'll only find 1 forum reference (at this time) if you do a Google search on the error message listed in the log files.

Important Links

Figured I'd dump a list of URLs here for any of you looking for resources.  And nope, I don't get any money from any of them, but GWAVA and Novell have both been very good to me in the past.  :)

NUI-related (somehow)
www.novell.com/communities/nui
http://www.facebook.com/pages/One-Community-Inc/101378441337
www.nugi.org

GroupWise related:
www.gwcheck.com
www.gwava.com
www.ngwlist.com
www.novell.com/communities/blogs/dlythgoe  (Dean Lythgoe's blog)

All Things Novell:

Publish Post

www.novell.com
www.novell.com/coolsolutions
www.novell.com/support - to gain access to one of THE best knowledgebases around

The odd things that trip me up in my daily work

I just got done patching our GroupWise system - now all on Linux boxes - with the hot patch for GW 8.0.1. I love the new process! Way easier than in the past and the helpful installer even tells you what else needs to be patched. Way cool!

So, for those of you who haven't done it yet, here's a brief step-by-step - this is for Linux installs only (doesn't matter if it's OES2-Linux or plain old SLES as we have both and it worked the same).

1. Down all your agents just to be on the safe side (and it's fun to give users downtime)

2. Extract the files from the tar file you downloaded

3. Open a terminal window, change to the folder where you just extracted everything to

4. Launch the installer - ./install

5. Do the primary domain first, so click on the "Create or update a GroupWise System". You don't "have" to do it this way, but at least you know you'll be updating your SDD properly. Do the same for any secondary domains you may have that also host a SDD. Otherwise, you can simply update the secondary domains similar to the any secondary POAs.

6. If, like us, you have more than one POA and they're running on separate servers, go to each POA, extract the files from the tar or use a CD where you've done that already, run the installer and select Install Products | Install Agents. If you have a C1 install, it will automatically note that you need the Adminstration files updated and do it for you. Pretty cool!

7. To update your WebAccess agent, unpack the tar, launch the installer select Install Products | Install WebAccess. It picks up that you need both the agent and the application updated, as well as any Administration or agent (i.e. MTA) files that you may need.

8. Restart all your domains and POAs.

9. Use the web consoles to verify that you are at build 8.0.1HP89145. (For POA's it's port 7181, MTAs port 7100, GWIAs port 7125, WebAccess 7211 - if you're usin the defaults).

Hope this helps some!