BES for Domino - Not Amused
Category Blackberry DominoHaving been arm-twisted into buying three new BlackBerry Bold devices today (oooo pretty), my BES 4.1.6 shortly went into a Death Spiral. You know what those are if you've spent any time in admin, support, or generally as an IT professional in any capacity. They're the kind of problems that take you down several paths, finding and installing fixes, chasing many possible solutions, eventually leaving you frustrated enough to give up.
As the same thing happened when we tried updating the old 8700s to 4.5, I figured it would be known by now. Figured right! It would appear to be one of these issues:
SDR 201970 In BlackBerry Enterprise Server version 4.1 SP6, if a message contains rich content and plaintext, the BlackBerry Enterprise Server might create hung threads. In BlackBerry Enterprise Server version 4.1 SP6 MR1 and later, this issue is resolved.
-or-
*SDR 237069 In BlackBerry Enterprise Server version 4.1 SP6, in certain circumstances, when the BlackBerry Enterprise Server tried to process an image in a message for a BlackBerry device configured to receive HTML content, the BlackBerry Enterprise Server stopped responding. In BlackBerry Enterprise Server version 4.1 SP6 MR3 and later, this issue is resolved.
So all is good, right? Oh wait...you don't think I'm writing this as a successful technote do you? I thought not. Here's what is so wrong...
Only two Maintenance Releases, MR1 and MR2, are available for download, even though when you go to the Release Notes link there's a Release Note for MR3, posted Dec 8 2008.
The documentation for the Maintenance Releases as linked from the download location is in PDF format but you do need to be a bit of a wizard to know that - the links are to documents with no extension. Got it, figured that one out.
So without access to MR3, I downloaded MR2 and attempted installation. Looks pretty easy, it's an MSP installer for Windows. You get three files:
So of course you run besn416mr2.msp, provide the Admin password, and get this gem:
At which point you throw things. Anyone see a Setup.exe in that download? Am I missing the big picture here?
So next, backing off to MR1, on the off chance that in fact the problem we're experiencing is the one mentioned in the MR1 Release Notes and not the elusive MR3. And the SAME THING. Lovely, so now I get to run off to Google-land to find out who else has the same problem installing the PROBLEM SOLVING patches. Death spiral.
So after a number of command-line mishaps, I went ahead and took a shot in the dark, and "did what it said" in the witch-spills-blood-on-tea-leaves kind of way. In the release notes for MR2, there is the statement that the original installation media is required in order to run the patch. So I moved it there, and tried again. No love. Then I went ahead and reinstalled BES 4.1.6 from the installation media (i.e I ran Setup.exe). Restarted, then tried again with the msp file. Hmmmmm, it ran. Sort of. It got a ways then I got this:
Well that's your usual Windows fodder, so I restarted, with the presence of mind to take Domino to a Manual Service first. After restarting, I noticed that only two BlackBerry services remained in the Services panel, and both had been switched to manual. Progress. I was able to start the msp file again, and it seemed to complete successfully...four hours after I started with the patch. Now the waiting game to see if that fix in MR1 was the real deal, or if I have to wait for the mystery MR3.
What happened here?
Documentation failed to communicate the real requirements, and the real reasons for having the installation media. Next, and this is a guess, someone was either a) lazy or b) chose to skip an editing process on the message "Please run Setup.exe to apply this maintenance release." You see, what it really means is:
"Please locate the original installation media for BlackBerry Enterprise Server 4.1.6, and re-install using the Setup.exe program located there. Then, you can return and run this Maintennce Release program. We are sorry for the inconvenience."
Doesn't that make a lot of sense? I've seen more and more software installation programs and fixes suffer this fate of language. It's not a software problem, not an engineering problem, it's a failure on the part of software manufacturers to be clear, concise and complete in their language. RIM is by no means a sole culprit, I've seen some of the least comprehensible installation messages, error messages, and readme files out of IBM, Microsoft and many others. So the lesson? Write clear, concise, and complete messages in your software.
Comments
Not to mention, requiring anyone to re-run setup.exe to install a patch is just plain cruel.
Posted by Ted Hardenburgh At 10:59:26 AM On 12/24/2008 | - Website - |