10 Years Later: The Hell and Glory of Installing FileNet Daeja Viewer

10 Years Later: The Hell and Glory of Installing FileNet Daeja Viewer

Back in 2015 I had to pull off one of those invisible masterpieces that leave a mark in your career: building IBM FileNet P8 + Content Navigator + Daeja Viewer from scratch, on top of Windows Server, WebSphere, DB2, and Active Directory.

It wasn’t plug-and-play. I went through 100+ virtual machines, breaking and rebuilding, until LDAP, JAAS, CE, ICN, and DB2 finally came together. While some colleagues said “this is too difficult,” I was neck deep in LDAPS, certificates, Kerberos SPNs, WebSphere JVM tuning, and those endless logs that only make sense at 3 a.m. After many sleepless nights, the system finally went live in Sydney, Darling Harbour.

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The Number One Enemy: Daeja ViewOne

This viewer was both hated and necessary. Without it, PDFs and TIFFs would not render at all. Typical WebSphere log error looked like this:

[5/18/15 11:01:32:341 BDT] 000000cd LocalTranCoor E   
WLTC0017E: Resources rolled back due to setRollbackOnly()

FNRAC1008E: Unable to get data from server

[FNRPE0911843060E] Error executing the CA RPC call configEventExportStoreProperties
Root cause: java.lang.NullPointerException

Translation: the viewer was trying to fetch Content Engine configuration and died with a NullPointerException. If you didn’t know how to read between the lines, you could be stuck for days.

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The Classic jiServerException Bug

Sometimes, when opening a TIFF in ICN, you’d hit this random error:

ji.net.jiServerException: Server did not respond with OK
Error: IO error: null

Open the same document a second time — and suddenly it worked. Root cause? HttpOnly cookies in WebSphere. IBM documented this years later, but back then it was all about trial and error.

Fix (WebSphere 8+):

1. Go to Servers > Server Types > WebSphere Application Servers > Session Management.
2. Uncheck Set session cookies to HTTPOnly.
3. Go to Global Security > Web and SIP Security > Single Sign-On (SSO).
4. Uncheck Set security cookies to HTTPOnly.
5. Restart the node.
   

And finally, Daeja would behave.

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LDAP / Active Directory: The Real Challenge

Authentication was a nightmare if you didn’t master LDAP + Kerberos. These snippets saved my life back then:

SPN for the service account:

setspn -S HTTP/filenet-appsrv DOMAIN\svc-fn-was
setspn -S HTTP/filenet-appsrv.domain.local DOMAIN\svc-fn-was

Optimized LDAP filters:

(&(objectClass=user)
  (!(userAccountControl:1.2.840.113556.1.4.803:=2))
  (|(memberOf=CN=FN_Users,OU=Groups,DC=domain,DC=local)
    (memberOf=CN=ICN_Users,OU=Groups,DC=domain,DC=local)))

Testing LDAPS from PowerShell:

Test-NetConnection -ComputerName dc01.domain.local -Port 636

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Lessons of a Mexican Engineer in Sydney 🇲🇽🌏

Looking back, I see that work as an invisible masterpiece. Nobody documented the fine-tuned configs I made, but that environment likely kept running 10 years later.

What I learned:

• FileNet was never for “manual installers” — it was for engineers who understood the guts of the system.
• Many of the fixes we discover at 3 a.m. never make it into IBM’s official manuals, yet they keep mission-critical systems alive.
• And yes: Mexicans can leave a mark anywhere — even in Darling Harbour.

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#FileNet #IBMFileNet #ContentNavigator #DaejaViewer #WebSphere #DB2 #ECM #EnterpriseContentManagement #LDAP #ActiveDirectory #Kerberos #JavaEE #WAS #IBMCloudPak #SystemIntegration

Sydney will always remain more than just a project site for me. While others enjoyed Darling Harbour’s sunsets and the lights of the Opera House, I was deep in WebSphere logs, LDAP filters, and NullPointerExceptions. Yet, in between sleepless nights and 100+ virtual machines rebuilt from scratch, I felt the same energy of the city itself — resilient, alive, and relentless.

Ten years later, I look back and realize that my work was not only lines of code or system configs, but a piece of me left in that harbor, quietly running inside servers that still power critical processes. Sydney gave me sleepless nights, but also the memory that Mexican engineers can leave a mark anywhere in the world.

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Español
Sídney siempre será mucho más que un simple lugar de proyecto para mí. Mientras otros disfrutaban de los atardeceres en Darling Harbour y las luces de la Ópera, yo estaba sumergido en logs de WebSphere, filtros LDAP y NullPointerExceptions. Sin embargo, entre desveladas y más de 100 máquinas virtuales reconstruidas desde cero, sentí la misma energía de la ciudad: resiliente, viva y persistente.

Diez años después, miro hacia atrás y me doy cuenta de que mi trabajo no fueron solo líneas de código o configuraciones de sistema, sino una parte de mí que quedó en ese puerto, corriendo en silencio dentro de servidores que aún sostienen procesos críticos. Sídney me dio noches sin dormir, pero también el recuerdo de que los ingenieros mexicanos podemos dejar huella en cualquier lugar del mundo.

Manifesto X: The Real Digital Natives------Manifiesto X: Los verdaderos nativos digitales

 

Manifesto X: The Real Digital Natives

These days, people talk about “digital natives” as if it only applied to those born with a smartphone in their hands. But the truth is different: the real digital natives are Generation X — those of us who grew up in the 70s and 80s.

Why? Because we didn’t inherit the internet: we witnessed its birth, configured it, and made it work from scratch.

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Cables, modems, and green screens

During my university years, I connected to the UNAM servers at the Academic Computing Center, across from the Faculty of Engineering. With a borrowed account, a US Robotics modem, and Windows 98, I made my first steps into networking.
It was a ritual: dialing in, hearing the screeching modem tones, waiting for the connection, and hoping no one picked up the phone to cut it off.

Later came Solaris at the Institute of Physics, with serious Linux commands and long nights coding in Fortran. There were no YouTube tutorials or Stack Overflow threads. It was manuals, trial and error, and persistence.

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From users to builders

Generation X didn’t just use technology: we built it and understood it from the ground up.

• Manually configured TCP/IP.

• Built local networks with coaxial cable and basic hubs.

• Installed Linux from floppy disks.

• Wrestled with X-Windows until it finally worked.

• Programmed in Fortran, Pascal, and C, long before Python made things easier.

This gave us a deep understanding: we know what lies beneath, why it works, and how it breaks.

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Those who came after

• Millennials and Gen Z were born with the internet already built. For them, Google, social media, and smartphones have always existed. They navigate it fluently, yes, but rarely know what’s under the hood.

• We, on the other hand, saw and touched the guts of the network. For Generation X, the internet isn’t magic — it’s engineering, code, and countless hours of trial and error.

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The true legacy

Calling younger generations “digital natives” is like saying that someone who drives a car is automatically a mechanical engineer.
Generation X were the ones who laid the cables, set up the servers, and wrote the first lines of code that still support today’s digital world.

We may not be making noise on TikTok, but our legacy is in every click, every protocol, and every byte moving through the network.

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Manifiesto X: Los verdaderos nativos digitales

Hoy se habla mucho de “nativos digitales” como si fueran los nacidos con un smartphone en la mano. Pero la verdad es otra: los auténticos nativos digitales somos los de la Generación X, los que crecimos entre los años 70 y 80.

¿Por qué? Porque no heredamos el internet: lo vimos nacer, lo configuramos y lo hicimos funcionar desde cero.

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Cables, pitidos y pantallas verdes

En mis años de universidad me conectaba al servidor de la UNAM, en el área de Cómputo Académico, frente a la Facultad de Ingeniería. Con una cuenta prestada, un módem US Robotics y Windows 98, me lancé a mis primeras conexiones de red.
La experiencia era ritual: marcar, escuchar los pitidos del dial-up, esperar la conexión, y cruzar los dedos para que no se cortara la línea telefónica.

Más adelante llegaría Solaris en el Instituto de Física, y con él, los primeros comandos serios en Linux y las largas noches programando en Fortran. Cada paso era un aprendizaje sin tutoriales ni “stack overflow”: puro manual, prueba y error.

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De usuarios a constructores

La Generación X no solo usó tecnología: la construyó y la entendió desde sus cimientos.

• Configuramos TCP/IP a mano.

• Armamos redes locales con hubs y cable coaxial.

• Instalamos Linux desde disquetes.

• Nos peleamos con X-Windows hasta hacerlo correr.

• Programamos en Fortran, Pascal y C, mucho antes de que llegara Python a facilitarlo todo.

Ese camino nos dio un entendimiento profundo: sabemos qué hay debajo, por qué funciona y cómo se rompe.

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Los que vinieron después

• Millennials y Gen Z nacieron con internet ya listo. Para ellos, Google, las redes sociales y los smartphones siempre estuvieron ahí. Se mueven rápido, sí, pero rara vez saben qué hay detrás.

• Nosotros, en cambio, vimos y tocamos las tripas de la red. Para la X, internet no es magia: es ingeniería, código, y horas de prueba y error.

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El verdadero legado

Decir que los más jóvenes son “nativos digitales” es como decir que alguien que maneja un auto es automáticamente ingeniero mecánico.
La Generación X fue la que tendió los cables, instaló los servidores y escribió las primeras líneas de código que sostienen el mundo digital de hoy.

Puede que no hagamos ruido en TikTok, pero nuestro legado está en cada click y en cada byte que circula.

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👉 Por eso lo afirmo: los auténticos nativos digitales somos los de la Generación X. Los que transformamos el pitido de un módem en la autopista digital por donde hoy circula el planeta entero.