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Netcool/Portal 2.1.2.2 ReadMe

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Table of Contents

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1 - Requirements

2 - Patch Installation

3 - Recovering Product Integration Module Artifacts Lost During Upgrade

4 - Resolved Issues

5 - Known Issues

6 - Known Bugs





Requirements

============

This patch is for Netcool/Portal 2.1.2.

 

The release version of a Netcool/Portal system can be verified by running the

portal version command.



     From the command prompt, change directory to PORTAL_HOME/bin



     Type: portal version 





Patch Installation

==================

1.   In addition to regularly scheduled backups of your database, back up your

     database before applying patches, or conducting upgrade procedures.

     Back up your running system as follows:



     i)  Run an XMLExport to back up your Netcool/Portal system.



         From the command prompt, change directory to PORTAL_HOME/bin

 

         Type: XMLExport 



     ii) Backup the PORTAL_HOME folder before installing any patch.  



         Note: Any changes made to non-custom areas of the Netcool/Portal may 

         be overridden, and may need to be re-applied manually.  Review the 

         contents of the patch.jar file to see if this applies to your system.



2.   Stop all Netcool/Portal services.  If you have not installed 

     Netcool/Portal services, stop all Netcool/Portal processes from a 

     command window (or from the Start menu in Windows).



3.   Copy patch.jar to PORTAL_HOME.



4.   Extract the upgrade jar file into your system:



     From the command prompt, change directory to PORTAL_HOME/bin



     Type: portal FilesImport -jar ../patch.jar 



5.   Start all Netcool/Portal services.  Or, if you have not configured 

     Netcool/Portal to run as a service, start all Netcool/Portal processes 

     from a command prompt (or from the Start menu in Windows).

     

6.   Review the section below entitled "Recovering Product Integration Module 

     Artifacts Lost During Upgrade".  Perform step A or B.

     

7.   Review Resolved Issue #2 below regarding Tivoli Netcool/Webtop proxy

     channels. Run the PIM repair utility if you are using the Tivoli 

     Netcool/Webtop PIM.





Recovering Product Integration Module Artifacts Lost During Upgrade

===================================================================



In Netcool/Portal 2.1.2, the Netcool Suite Product Integration Modules (PIMs) 

are no longer delivered by default.  When upgrading from a previous release, 

the Content Retrieval Service (CRS) rulesets for these modules fail to be 

restored.  There are two options to recover the lost items:



A)  Re-install all of the Netcool PIMs.  This will ensure that any updates to 

    the PIMs required by this release are made.



- OR -    

    

B)  Run the following steps to import the full customizations from the 

    existing system, and then check for any updates that may be required.



 	1) Open a command prompt and change directory to the $PortalHome212/bin 

 	   directory.

	2) Run the following command to generate an archive, by exporting 

	   all of the CRS artifacts that should be moved to the new 2.1.2 system:

	       \bin> portal FilesExport -jar customizations.jar custom.package -file "$PortalHome212\config\export.properties" -home "$PORTAL_HOME_OLD"

	3) Run the following command to import the crs export set.

           \bin> portal filesimport -jar customizations.jar

	4) Restart Netcool/Portal 2.1.2.  (Note: Optionally - you may 

           use the Integration Manager - Manage Proxy to reset all of the 

           CRS files.)

	5) Review the configured PIMs and check for any PIM updates that may

	   be available from IBM.





2.1.2.2 Resolved Issues

=======================



1.   Fixed the Single Sign On (SSO) prompts to properly encode characters

     entered in language formats such as German and/or Chinese.  The 

     encoding of text/html; charset=UTF-8 will be used.  

2.   Provided a portal command utility to allow the administrator to 

     perform a single action that will process all view-sets that are 

     provisioned to domains, users, & roles and deletes any item that is

     no longer defined in the system.

3.   Added portal commands to address an issue occurring when an

     administrator use RDP (in console mode) to access the portal server's 

     desktop and then logs off.  This action would cause the portal service 

     to fail.  A workaround is now provide to allow the administrator to 

     register the portal services as separate process.  To perform this action

     open a command prompt, cd to $PortalHome/bin, and run the following 

     commands:

         \bin> portal servicesremove

         \bin> portal webserviceadd

         \bin> portal jspserviceadd

         \bin> portal portalserviceadd

     Note: The first command un-installs the default portal (allstart) 

     service, and the next three register each process (web, jsp, portal)

     as a separate service.

4.   Fixed username character validation to allow apostrophe characters.  

     This is important as users defined in LDAP systems may have this

     character in the username.

5.   Fixed an issue where users who have been exported via XMLExport 

     can not be unlocked by setting lockFlag="false" and running XMLImport 

     to reload the users into the system.

6.   Fixed a validation error where password history rules conforming to the

     PasswordPolicy were not being enforced when the user would change their

     password.





2.1.2.1 Resolved Issues

=======================



1.   In Netcool/Portal 2.1.2, the Netcool Suite Product Integration Modules 

     (PIMs) are no longer delivered by default.  When upgrading from a previous 

     release, the CRS rulesets for these modules fail to be restored.  The

     export.properties and export-1.properties files were fixed to ensure that

     the full set of customizations are exported.



2.   A Tivoli Netcool/Webtop PIM utility was added to inspect and repair any 

     Tivoli Netcool/Webtop proxy channels to ensure that only 13 or 20 rulesets 

     are registered.  In 2.1.2 upgrades, some customers had an issue in which 

     the Tivoli Netcool/Webtop Map and AEL channels would no longer work after 

     the upgrade.  This was a result of 

     both 13 and 20 rulesets being specified.  Enter the following command to

     run the Tivoli Netcool/Webtop PIM utility:

          \bin>  portal webtopfix –dmn System –uid administrator –pwd {adminPW}

     

3.   A problem was fixed in the CRS reset function to ensure that the cached 

     file list is found when a directory is specified.  Previously, in some 

     cases the CRS was not detecting new files placed in a folder, when the 

     handler files were being referenced by folder name.



4.   The package delete process was fixed to ensure that the crs ruleset 

     directories are renamed (backed up), so a customer can redo a package 

     installation without having any remaining custom crs files from the

     previous package installation.  Folders for a deleted package in the 

     crs and crs-custom directories will be renamed to include an appropriate

     timestamp.



5.   The About page was enhanced to provide a full version report.  This report 

     includes the set of installed packages and their versions.  This update

     is in place to help customers more easily identify packages that are

     out of date.

     

6.   A new command line utility was added to print a list of the currently

     installed PIMs in the system.  Enter the following command to run this

     utility:

         \bin>  portal PIMVersion –dmn System –uid administrator –pwd {adminPW}

         

7.   Login processing was fixed to properly direct users to the appropriate

     content when the login request includes a direct channel or view link.



8.   Handling of password policy was fixed to better handle a MinAge setting 

     of 0. This setting prevents the system from storing the password change 

     time, which interferes with the configuration of admin change requiring 

     the user to reset the password at login.

     

9.   To improve performance, the system handling of View-Set and 

     Look and Feel (LAF) lookups was updated to be cached on the session and 

     only looked up on the full portal page rendering.  So the following will 

     trigger any updates to the LAF or ViewSet to be displayed to the user:

     A) New Session, or

     B) Browser Refresh





Known Issues

============



1.  The Netcool/Portal installation fails when running on Windows 64 bit platform.

    To work around this follow these steps:

	- Unpack the installation exe file in the directory where you plan to install

        the portal.

      - Download the JavaService 2.0.7.64 from 

        http://forge.objectweb.org/project/showfiles.php?group_id=137 and replace

        $PortalHome\bin\helpers\JavaService with the downloaded version. 

      - Open a console prompt and cd to $PortalHome\bin

      - Run the following command to configure the location of Java, where 

        ${JavaHome} specifies the location of the JDK.

        \bin> portal setjavahome=${JavaHome}

      - Run the following command to setup the other dependencies:

        \bin> portal setup

      - Run the following command to setup the portal to run as a service:

        \bin> portal servicesadd



2.  The Netcool/Portal upgrade process fails to copy the Product 

    Integration Module (PIM) artifacts of the Netcool suite.  The 

    workaround is to run the steps noted above or to re-install the Netcool 

    suite PIMs.



3   When upgrading from version 2.1.1(.1) to 2.1.2, there may be two 

    Quick Start views displayed in the portalAdministrator view-set. You can 

    remove the older Quick Start view by using the Integration Manager to 

    delete the "/mm/Quick Start" view from the system.    

    

4.  The Netcool/Portal web interface may be slow the very first time

    the Netcool/Portal system is viewed.  This is caused by the initial

    compilation of JSPs into binary classes.



5.  Ignore the following exception (including a stack trace) which is displayed 

    in the console of the JSP Process:



       ClientAbortException:  java.net.SocketException: Broken pipe





Known Bugs

==========

1.  Netcool/Portal is unable to unassign the custom value of an inherited field 

    of a class.  The inherited value will be used in the Class Editor.

    

2.  The SSO (Applet) administration interface does not update the display with 

    changes made through another interface.  The interface requires another 

    item to be selected and then re-selecting the original domain, user, or 

    role to update the display.

    

3.  AuthDef with a property named "name" causes the resolver to stop.



4.  Class does not get created when the class name entered is the same as the

    package name or starts with the package name.

    

5.  Sniffer results may be lost as a user runs with the sniffer enabled.  Work

    around: User should reduce the amount of content being sniffed.

