Workplace 2.6 : Installation Experience

With Workplace Collaboration Services V2.6
announced at Lotusphere I decided to download it and check it out and see
how it compares to the 2.5 version that I last looked at.

One big change that I noticed immediately
was the download process. With the previous versions of WCS & WSE you
had to download the tar.gz files and then rename them correctly and place
them in the correct directory for the installer to work.  With this
version the downloads are all self extracting .exe’s.  Running the
downloaded files will extract out the .tar.gz files into the correct directory
structure for you.  This is a real time-saver.

The installation process is exactly
the same as in the previous versions, answer a few simple questions and
then wait for about 1 hour while the installer copies over the files and
then makes the required changes to suit your environment. If you are planning
on changing the directory to a different source after the install then
it’s recommended that you use ‘wpsadmin’ for the administrator username
and password during the install.

If you want to keep an eye on the install
process then I would recommend a great little utility called TailForWin32.
This utility will allow you to watch the installation log files so you
can see what the installer is doing. You can also use this utility to open
the log files while WCS is running, handy for checking on any issues you
may have while the system is up.

After the installation I noticed that
WCS does NOT install as a windows service. Considering that WSE 2.5 can
be installed as a windows service so that it can be started automatically
I feel that this is a small bit of a letdown in the 2.6 version of the
product. I understand that WSE is designed for a single machine and that
WCS is designed for multiple machines but at least make this an option
during the install routine.

I’m going to attempt to point the LDAP
to my Domino server now…