Notes from upgrading IBM Connections (part 1) – Files sidebar plugin not working

After upgrading a few IBM Connections environments from 2.5 to version 3 (and 3.0.1) I thought I’d better make some notes on a couple of issues I’ve come across (which will hopefully be useful to other people and help me to remember).

The first issue I’d like to describe is where after upgrading I was initially unable to get the Files sidebar plugin for Lotus Notes working.

The error I was getting was “Cannot connect to the Connections server. Either the URL is incorrect, the server is down, or a firewall may be preventing you from reaching the server. Check the URL, your firewall settings and the server status and try again.“

After first checking the obvious – username, password and Connections URL (which were all OK) the next place to check was the HTTP server logs as the error implied that the server was unreachable. In the access_log on the IBM HTTP server I could see numerous entries like the one shown below:

192.168.233.131 – - [16/Jul/2011:14:27:50 +0100] “GET /files/basic/api/introspection?format=XML HTTP/1.1″ 302 258

The access_log entries were showing that it was trying to redirect the client (HTTP code 302) but it was getting into an infinite loop.

The next part of the investigation was the httpd.conf file and almost immediately I saw the issue. In the file were two redirect lines (shown below) which were required in Connections 2.5, as part of configuring forcing traffic over SSL. These redirect lines ensured that authentication for Files and Wikis was sent over HTTPS.

Redirect /files/basic/api https://connections.demo.local/files/basic/api

Redirect /wikis/basic/api https://connections.demo.local/wikis/basic/api

Removing these lines (specifically the line relating to Files) and restarting IBM HTTP server stopped the infinite redirection loop and let the Files sidebar plugin work.