Upgrading Quickr (Portal) 8.0x to 8.1

In this technote you find a description of what steps needs to be done for upgrading Quickr (Portal) from 8.0x to 8.1.

Below I have described some steps in more detail.

Please be aware of two things:

1. My sample installation has been installed to “C:\IBM\Quickr” so all path names are related to that base directory. You should adapt the path names according your installation.
2. My sample installation was a very simple configuration (one server containing both Quickr, DB2 and IBM HTTP server). In more complex environments you may have to do some more steps

First of all backup your Quickr DB2 database.

This step is optional. I did it to make sure I have all data available if something will go wrong later.

You have to perform the following steps to create a backup:

• Open DB2 control center

• Select the database WPSDB and click right mouse button. Select “Backup” from contect menu

• Click “Next” and select the backup target. E.g. use “File System” to make a backup to your file system

• Click “Add” and select a folder where you want you backup to be stored.

• Click “Next”

• Choose then what type of backup you want to perform (e.g. “Full” and “Offline”)

• Click “Next”. You can use the default options for “Performance Options” on the next screen.

• Click “Next” and choose when to run the backup, e.g. “Run now”.

• Click “Next” and check if all options are correct.

• If you want to start your backup, click “Finish”

Before the Quickr upgrade you need to upgrade your DB2 database to version 9.1 Hotfix 4a. The following is a description of the steps to do so (as I did perform the upgrade with a German installation the menu options might slightly differ as I translated them myself):

• You need to have the CD labeled “W-2” (part number C188SML) ready to perform the upgrade.

• Stop Quickr server.

• Set Websphere services to “manual” (to avoid long waiting time after next reboot !)

• Stop all DB2 services and the DB2 control center..

• Switch to the directory “Windows\IA32” on the CD and run “SETUP.EXE”. The DB2 Launchpad opens.

• In the launchpad click on the left navigator “Installation of a product” and then select “Work with an existing installation” of the DB2 Enterprise Server Edition.

• In the following list choose the correct copy of your database to upgrade. As action there is already displayed “Perform upgrade”

• Click on “Start DB2 Installation Assistant”.

• The DB2 setup wizard is starting and the upgrade is automatically performed.

• When the installation has been completed, click “Finish” and restart your system.

• After restarting the machine check if your DB2 database is now on Version 9.1 Fixpack 4.1a. You can see this in the log file “db2diag.log” which is located in the directory C:\IBM\Quickr\db2\WPDB2INS. Jump to the end of the file where you can find the information about the last restart of DB2. You should find some line like “Informational tokens are “DB2 v9.1.401.444”, “s080122”, “WR21405”, Fix Pack “4a”.”

• Stop the Quickr server if it is currently running.

• If you are running an external Web server, such as HTTP server, stop also the Web server.

• Create a backup of the following files located in C:\IBM\Quickr\PortalServer\config:

  wpconfig.properties
  wpconfig_dbdomain.properties
  wpconfig_sourceDB.properties

• Enter the correct values for the PortalAdminPwd, WasPassword, LDAPAdminPwd and LDAPBindPassword parameters in the wpconfig.properties file.

• Set WpsHostPort and XmlAccessPort to the same value in the wpconfig.properties file (normally this should be already the case).

• In the wpconfig_dbdomain.properties and wpconfig_sourceDB.properties file set the correct user names and passwords for the DB2 database user.

• The WebSphere Portal Update Installer removes plain text passwords from the wpconfig*.properties files. To keep these passwords in the properties files, include the following line in the wpconfig.properties file: PWordDelete=false.

• Create the C:\IBM\Quickr\update directory and copy the latest Portal Update Installer (part number: C16HWML) into this directory.

• Create the C:\IBM\Quickr\update\fixpacks directory and store the cumulative fix JAR file for release 8.1 (part number: C16HVML) in this directory.

• Perform the following steps to change the HTTP connection timeout value for the WebSphere_Portal server (if you already performed updates/fixes before you might already have done this step!):

1. Click Servers → Application Servers → WebSphere_Portal → Web container settings>Web container transport chains.
2. Increase the timeout values for each entry listed in the web container transport chain section. Click HTTP Inbound Channel. Change the Read timeout value to 180 and change the Write timeout value to 180.
3. Save your changes.

• Launch the graphical user interface tool from the appropriate directory using the following command: C:\IBM\Quickr\update\updatePortalWizard and follow the instructions. Choose “Install fix packs” and make sure you enter the directory where you installed the JAR file. If the installation goes wrong please checkall user/passwords in the above mentioned .properties files as wrong enttries here seem to be the most common problems.

• If you are running an external Web server, restore the application mappings to that Web server by running the configureweb_server_name script:

1. Open a command prompt to C:\IBM\WebSphere\Plugins\bin
2. Run the script “setupCmdLine.bat”
3. Run the script “configureYourWebserverName.bat” (with “YourWebserverName” equals to the name of your installed webserver. E.g. if you have installed your webserver as “webserver1” the script is called “configurewebserver1.bat”

• If you are running an external Web server, such as IBM HTTP server then perform the following steps:

1. From the WebSphere Administrative Console click “Severs → Web servers”.
2. Select your Web server
3. Click on “Generate Plug-in”
4. Click on “Propagate Plug-in”
5. Verify that the path where the plugin-in was propagated is the correct path which is defined in D:\IBM\IBM HTTP Server\conf\httpd.conf (Keyword: “WebSpherePluginConfig”). If not, copy the file “plugin-cfg.xml” manually to the correct position.
6. Restart the web server

Check with this technote if there are any post-installation fixes which need to be installed.

Currently the following fix is needed for ALL installations:

Cumulative Connector fix, which addresses Outlook Crash and Upgrade install failure (LO28175)

The other fixes might only be needed in cluster or high-load environments (as described in the technote).

To install the fixes you have to perform the following steps:

• Create the C:\IBM\Quickr\update\Fixes directory and store all fixes (JAR files) in this directory.

• Launch the graphical user interface tool from the appropriate directory using the following command: C:\IBM\Quickr\update\updatePortalWizard and follow the instructions. Choose “Install fixes” and make sure you enter the directory where you installed the JAR files. A list of all available fixes will be displayed. Mark all fixes you want to install and click on “Next”.

• After the installation please check all README files which came with the fixes. For some fixes you need to perform some additional steps on the console. Please do not forget to perform these steps!!

The following configuration step is required for all Lotus Quickr 8.1 installations:

1. Stop the Quickr 8.1 Server:

• a. Open a command prompt and change to the following directory: C:\IBM\Quickr\AppServer\bin
• b. Enter the following command: stopServer.bat WebSphere_Portal -user was_admin_userid -password was_admin_password

2. Run C:\IBM\Quickr\PortalServer\config\WPSconfig.bat apply-pk55493

3. Start the Quickr 8.1 Server

• a. Before starting the Lotus Quickr application server, you must have all required servers running. Make sure that the following servers and components, if applicable, are started:

 Database
 LDAP server
 An external Web server
 WebSphere Application Server
 The WebSphere_Portal enterprise application 

• b. Open a command prompt and change to the following directory: C:\IBM\Quickr\wp_profile\bin

• c. Enter the following command: startServer.bat WebSphere_Portal

• d. Set all Websphere services to “Automatic” again which you might have set to “Manual” before.

4. If you preserved passwords during the installation and you want to manually delete the passwords, open the wpconfig.properties file and include the following line in the file: PWordDelete=true. Then run the following task from the C:\IBM\Quickr\config directory to delete the passwords: “WPSconfig.bat action-delete-passwords-fixpack”