Passworddecoder for WAS-Passwords

We frequently have the same problem on customer sides that we find WAS-installation (WebSphere Portal, IBM Connections, Sametime etc) and nobody remembers the passwords used for internal/ machine users.

If you look into config files you will find only the encrypted passwords.

Because of this you can decrypt your password using one of three methods.

1. You can just search the web
2. You can execute a long commandline on your server.

Examples for this with WAS Version 8

../java/bin/java -Djava.ext.dirs=/opt/WebSphere/AppServer/deploytool/itp/plugins/com.ibm.websphere.v8_1.0.201.v20111031_1843/wasJars/ -cp securityimpl.jar:iwsorb.jar com.ibm.ws.security.util.PasswordDecoder {xor}HQkdb2Y=

encoded password == "{xor}HQkdb2Y=", decoded password == "BVB09"

Same for version 7

WAS Version 7

../java/bin/java -Djava.ext.dirs=/app/websphere/appserver/deploytool/itp/plugins/com.ibm.websphere.v7_7.0.3.v20110824_2356/wasJars/ -cp securityimpl.jar:iwsorb.jar com.ibm.ws.security.util.PasswordDecoder {xor}HQkdb2Y=

encoded password == "{xor}HQkdb2Y=", decoded password == "BVB09"

The most diffcult thing for us is to remember the command and the syntax to execute. Well, we wrote a scipt.

Feel free to copy it to your homedirectory and execute it (at your own risk). The script will check for the correct path and gives you the decrypted password on the command line.

Download here...... 

IBM Notes installation on Ubuntu 12.10 and 12.04 LTS

If you want to use the current LTS release 12.04 or the current release 12.10 it is highly recommended to use the 32-bit version of the operating system even if you have more than 4Gb of RAM installed on your pc.

If you really need to install a 64bit version of Ubuntu use the installation script from Mat Newman (very helpfull, Mat. Thanx for sharing it).

If you decided to use the 12.04 LTS version you should now use the ubuntu software center to install a different kernel. Best choice is a so called PAE-Kernel, which means that you still run a 32-bit operating system which aftwerwards will be able to use 36-bit of memory, which means up to 64Gb of Ram. This might be enough for your laptop ;-).

If you installed 12.10 there is no need to install a different kernel because the generic kernel already has enabled the PAE-feature.

The next step is just for 12.04 users.

After installing the new kernel and rebooting your machine check whether you have the right kernel up and running by typing to a shell

uname -r

which results in something like this:

On 12.10 you will just get something like

which is perfectly good enough for us.

After that you have to install some ubuntu libraries to meet all dependencies of IBM Notes. Do a

sudo apt-get install libgnomeprint2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnome2-0 libgnomeui-0 libgconf2-4 libgnome-desktop-2-17 libjpeg62 libxss1 ttf-xfree86-nonfree

That's it. After that you can start to install IBM Notes. Switch to the directory where the instalation files are located (eg a network device mounted at /media/install) and start the installation of IBM Notes there by typing

sudo ./smartupgrade.sh

This will install the current version of IBM Notes 9. After finishing the Installation start IBM Notes the first time to configure it correctly.

All components that are shiped will be installed. There is no realy need to install additional libraries to be able to work with IBM Notes on a 32-bit Version of Ubuntu Desktop.

After that, enjoy your IBM Notes client on Ubuntu.

And your PC has a lot of available memory.

If you want to see this as a video have a look at

Any questions or any feedback to this article? Use the button in the right panel to contact us.

Off Topic: iTunes Migration from one USB HD to a new one

When I did my last backup of my HD containing all my iTunes sound and video files I recognized, that this hd will not live longer than two or three more days. So the first thing I did was to buy a new hd and copy all files from the old one to the new one. This leads into the first trouble because I was switching from one operating system to a different one. Starting point was Windows, new system was a Windows VM running on Ubuntu in a VMWare Workstation.

I did a couple of tests on how to implement this. The best way was the following:

1. Make a backup copy of your iTunes music folder.
2. Make a backup copy of your media files.
3. Switch to iTunes folder. In my was: C:\Users\knaepp\My Music\iTunes
4. Make backup copies of all files in this folder (eg create a zip-archive)
5. Edit file "iTunes Music Library.xml" with a real text editor (notepad++ or SCI TE TextEditor on Linux)
6. Search and replace all wrong foldernames in this file.
7. Move file iTunes Library.itl to a different folder.
8. Recreate this file by hand (eg copy con "iTunes Library.itl" - enter - F6 - enter)
9. Start iTunes.
10. iTunes recognizes that "iTunes Library.itl is not correct and will recreate this DB-file. (This will last a while..... be patient ... in my case - which meant 11000 media files - all about eight hours)
11. Your library will now point to the new directory.
12. Have a lot of fun (instead of waiting)

Received a Lotus Award for Outstanding Customer Satisfaction in Northeast IOT

As IBM told us some days before Matthias Knäpper received an award for 2011 for his training activies during the last years. Many thanks to IBM and Lotus for the last decade offering trainings and projects together with us that makes outstanding customer satisfaction possible.

We hope to be able to offer a lot of trainings in the future to help customers to enhance their skills all around Lotus Software.

And here comes the award......

IBM offers XPages Coruseware for free

IBM opens up to OCW (OpenCourseWare movement) and offers the material for their "Introduction to IBM Lotus Domino 8.5 XPages" course D8l55 for free @ Lotus Greenhouse. As Ed Brill, IBMs Director for Messaging and Colaboration, mentions this is IBM's step to support those, who want to start learn on xpages.

There are several other courses about xpages that might be interesting for you.

If you are interested in instructor lead courses contact us immediately!