Thomas Hampel

 23 June 2015
I am tired of printing email attachments. Yes, I still need to print some of them e.g. invoices for tax computation or travel reimbursement needs, or credit card balance sheets for archiving them offline.
Most of them are e-mails with PDF file attachments which I need to print on a regular basis. In order to print them I need to be at home, using a device with apropriate printer drivers installed and connected to my home network.
There must be a more simple method, so lets see how to allow mobile or remote printing.

What options do we have for remote printing?

• Google Cloud Print - would be the easiest option but who wants to forward personal data to Google?

Using web-connected printers like those from HP or EPSON or Canon, but my current printer(s) do work fine and I see no reason to replace them.
Furthermore any mail would be routed to the vendors environment which I dont trust.

• VPN - probably the best approach, but still requires printer drivers and VPN software to be installed.
  Since none of the options above satisfied my needs, lets see if we can build a solution ourselfes...maybe using a Raspberry Pi
  Main idea is to poll an IMAP account on a regular basis and if new mail will meet certain criteria then print the PDF file attachment.
  
  
  Step 1 - Preparations
  Obviously you need to buy a Raspberry PI, the Model B+ is enough. You also need some further equipment like a memory card, power adapter, keyboard, etc.
  Beside installing and configuring the operating system you need to:
  • Expand the file system
• Enable SSH
• Apply latest patches by running update and Upgrade
  
  $ sudo apt-get update -y && apt-get upgrade -y
• Install updates automatically by using apt-cron
  
  $ sudo apt-get install apt-cron
• Configure your network adapter preferably assign a static IP
• Change system locale and keyboard layout to fit your needs
• Don't forget to Change the default password
• When using a WiFi dongle disable WiFi Adapter Power Saving Mode
  Step 2 - Set up a new IMAP (or POP3) account
  Contact your provider for a description how to do that. Make sure your provider supports SSL/TLS connections and make sure to enable antivirus/antispam control for your IMAP account.
  Remark: SmartCloud Notes / Connections Cloud users need to enable IMAP access first (see details)
  
  Step 3 - Import SSL Root certificate(s)
  SSH into your Raspberry PI and start by creating a new directory for this project
  
  mkdir pimailprint
  cd pimailprint
   
  
  For verification of SSL certificates we would like to store SSL certificates of our mail provider locally, preferably in another subdirectory.
  
  mkdir sslcerts
  wget {url-of-provider certificate} -O ./sslcerts/provider-name.cer
  c_rehash ./sslcerts/
  
  
  You can verify the functionality using OpenSSL
  
  Step 4 - Install Prerequisites
  Install the required packages
  
  sudo apt-get install fetchmail procmail uudeview
  
  Create a configuration file for fetchmail, in our case the file will be located in the project directory instead of the users home folder.
  With this configuration I'm using procmail as mail delivery agent in order to further process the inbound mail.
  
  nano ./fetchmail.conf
  
  using this configuration:
  
  set no bouncemail
  poll IMAP.YOUR-DOMAIN.COM
  service 993
  protocol imap
  user "YOUR-USERNAME"
  password "YOUR-PASSWORD"
  ssl
  sslcertck
  sslproto TLS1
  no keep
  mda "/usr/bin/procmail -m './procmail.conf'"
  
  Change file permissions so only you can open and see the file.
  
  chmod 700 ./fetchmail.conf
  
  Create a configuration file for procmail...
  
  nano ./procmail.conf
  
  and use this configuration which will store mails that contain an attachment in the folder ./maildata
  
  MAIL_DIR=./maildata
  VERBOSE=off
  LOGFILE=./logs/printmail.log
  :0
  *^content-Type:
  $MAIL_DIR/
  
  
  Step 5 - Install and Configure CUPS
  CUPS (Common Unix Printing System) allows any computer to act as a print server.
  Just refer to this page for installation and configuration instructions
  Remark: Make sure to set this printer to be your default printer.
  Once completed you can manage the printer queue remotely using https://[ip-address-or-dns-name-of-your-raspberrypi]:631
  
  
  Step 4 - Build your Script
  Create a new shell script...
  
  touch ./printmail.sh
  chmod +x ./printmail.sh
  nano ./printmail.sh
  
  using the following code
  
  #!/bin/bash
  # Parameters
  BASEDIR=$(dirname $0)
  CURDIR=$(pwd)
  MAILDIR=./maildata
  LOGFILE=./logs/printmail.log
  ATTACH_DIR=./attachments
  # change directory
  echo "Switching directory to : $BASEDIR"
  cd $BASEDIR
  # create log file if it does not exist
  touch $LOGFILE
  date +%r-%-d/%-m/%-y >> $LOGFILE
  # fetch mail
  echo "Checking for new mail..."
  fetchmail -f ./fetchmail.conf -L $LOGFILE
  # process new mails
  shopt -s nullglob
  for i in $MAILDIR/new/*
  do
   echo "Processing : $i" | tee -a $LOGFILE
   uudeview $i -i -p $ATTACH_DIR/
  # process file attachments with space
    cd $ATTACH_DIR
    for e in ./*
        do
            mv "$e" "${e// /_}"
    done
    for f in *.PDF
        do
        mv $f ${f%.*}.pdf
    done
    cd $BASEDIR
  # end of patch
   echo "Printing PDFs" | tee -a $LOGFILE
   for x in $ATTACH_DIR/*.pdf
   do
           echo "Printing : $x" | tee -a $LOGFILE
           lpr $x
           echo "Deleting file : $x" | tee -a $LOGFILE
           rm $x | tee -a $LOGFILE
   done
   echo "Clean up and remove any other attachments"
   for y in $ATTACH_DIR/*
   do
           rm $y
   done
   # delete mail
   echo "Deleting mail : $i" | tee -a $LOGFILE
   rm $i | tee -a $LOGFILE
  done
  shopt -u nullglob
  echo "Job finished." | tee -a $LOGFILE
  cd $CURDIR
  
  
  Step 5 - Test and Scheduling
  in order to test the whole script, just run it :)
  
  ./printmail.sh
  To run it on a schedule, just add the whole path to crontab.
  
  crontab -e -u pi
  
  in my case it is enough to run this script once per hour, feel free to customize it to your needs
  
  @hourly  /home/pi/pimailprint/printmail.sh
  
  
  
  Results
  By forwarding a mail to a specific email address I can now print attachments automatically. Back home all the documents I wanted have already been printed or will be printed when switching on my printer and I can quickly process them further on, e.g. for claiming travel expenses back. In my case I am forwarding mails manually to a new account if I want to print them. Of course it is also possible to use mail rules for processing mails automatically.
  
  Enhancement requests / what needs to be done:
  • End to end encryption with S/MIME
• Reply to sender when print job has completed
• Define printer settings based on acronym in subject line
  Remark: Feel free to use this script at your own risk.

Thomas Hampel

 18 June 2015
We all know that Admins are lazy. Being lazy can be helpful when having development skills, especially to reduce the amount of helpdesk calls by automating boring work.
How to import X509 certificates into a Notes ID when the certificate itself is stored in the Windows certificate store?

S/MIME Import / Export Automation
If needed, users can then export or import Internet Certificates directly from the Notes Client, but who wants to do that manually?
Even exporting the certificate from the Notes ID is too complicated for most users...


Looking for an automated way to export Internet Certificates, the pubnames.ntf provides there are some undocumented @Formulas that can be found for working with X509 certificates

• @X509Certificates([Subject];UserCertificate;"");
  Returns the list of subjects of the internet certificates stored in the person document field named "UserCertificate"
• @Command([PKCS12ExportCertsFromNAB];UserCertificate;Certificate;Number;"0")
  Where "Number" is the element in the list returned by @X509Certificates

In my opinion those @Functions still show too many dialog boxes, so lets try to make it more simple.
The C-API documentation provides the functions required namely PKCS12_ExportIDFileToFile and PKCS12_ImportFileToIDFile.

Wrapping both into a small script is easy...

Declare Function PKCS12_ExportIDFileToFile Lib "nnotes" Alias "PKCS12_ExportIDFileToFile" (_
           ByVal pIdFilename As String,_
           ByVal pIdFilepassword As String,_
           ByVal pPKCS12Filename As String,_
           ByVal pPKCS12Filepassword As String,_
           ByVal ExportFlags As Long,_
           ByVal ReservedFlags As Long,_                
           Preserved As Any) As Integer

Declare Function PKCS12_ImportFileToIDFile Lib "nnotes" Alias "PKCS12_ImportFileToIDFile" (_
           ByVal pPKCS12Filename As String,_
           ByVal pPKCS12Filepassword As String,_
           ByVal pIdFilename As String,_
           ByVal pIdFilepassword As String,_
           ByVal ImportFlags As Long,_
           ByVal ReservedFlags As Long,_                
           Preserved As Any) As Integer

Const PKCS12_EXCLUDE_PRIVATEKEYS=&h00000001

Calling those API's would be able to import a certificate from a file, but often the certificate has already been deployed to (e.g.) the Windows certificate store.
It would have been easy to use a Windows API call to export a certificate into a file and then import it again back into the Notes ID using the Notes API calls above.
Unfortunately M$ discontinued support for CAPICOM after Windows XP... so we have to use old school methods like using command line tools like Certutil

still with the resulting functions you can Import and Export X509 certificates from the Windows certificate store to the NotesID and back.

ImportInternetCertificatesFromOSCredentialStore.lss

ExportnternetCertificatesToOSCredentialStore.lss

As usual mind YMMV and feel free to further optimize the code to fit your needs-
Please use at your own risk and report back any suggestions or improvements!

Special Thanks to Marcus Floeser for providing the screenshot.

Thomas Hampel

 3 June 2015
The CA process in Domino is a server task to manage and process certificate requests. It is very helpful if you want support staff to register new users without knowing the password to your Domino Certificate.
As employees join or leave the support team you'll have to add / remove people from the list of Registration Authorities by using "Modify Certifier" from the Administrator Client tools menu.


Granting access for a new team member as usual...


and submitted the request


seemed to be successful


...but according to the log the Domino CA modification request failed with this error:


Root cause
One or more people listed in the first dialog do not have a person document in the Domino Directory or the person document does not have a public key specified.


Solution
First remove users which dont have a corresponding person document, and save + submit the request before adding new names.

Thomas Hampel

 2 June 2015
Recently I was trying to registering a Sametime Community Server at the Sametime System Console (SSC) using \Console\registerSTServerNode.sh (or .bat on Windows) as described here.

Unfortunately the registration failed with this error

AIDSC0898E: The sax exception occurred.Premature end of file.

Analysis
Taking a look into the log file [DominoData]/Console/logs/ConsoleUtility0.log did not show anything obvious, just the same error over and over again. One error for each attempt to register the community server.

com.ibm.sametime.console.deployment.client.util.SCSaxParser        parse        AIDSC0898E: The sax exception occurred.Premature end of file.

The script is getting input from two files, both located in the same directory [DominoData]/Console/

• "productConfig.properties" is used to set the Community server name and the server display name for SSC
• "console.properties" is used to define the connection properties like hostname, port, username and password

From your Community Server it was possible to access the Sametime System Console by using the following URL
http://SystemConsoleServer.YourDomain.tld:9080/stpolicy/policy/all
Logging in with the WAS credentials defined in the console.properties file worked fine.

Next step is to make sure your ST Community server responds to the following URL, depending on your configuration either HTTP on port 80 or HTTPS on port 443
http://CommunityServer.YourDomain.tld:80/servlet/auth/scs?xpath
Which also worked fine.

While reviewing the configuration I noticed the console.properties was configured not to use SSL.

SSCSSLEnabled=false

While the Domino community server was configured to redirect TCP traffic to SSL

Redirect TCP to SSL was enabled while I had set SSCSSLEnabled=false, so Domino was requesting to authenticate via SSL.
At least it was worth trying to streamline this setting - and guess what, it worked.

Solution
There are two options to fix this problem
Either use SSL by setting SSCSSLEnabled=true and specify the correct SSL port number in the file [DominoData]/Console/console.properties
or (less secure) disable usage of SSL by changing Redirect TCP to SSL to "No" on your Domino server.

References:

• Technote 1612553 - Manual registration of Sametime Community Server fails
• Registering the Sametime Community Server with the Sametime System Console on AIX, Linux, or Windows

Thomas Hampel

 1 June 2015
You are wondering why your beloved Notes widget all of a sudden is no longer available in the Widget catalog?
Of course the administrator of trust did not do anything - so what happened?

Here is a small hint:
Take a quick look into the widget catalog, there is a scheduled agent...


and the brief description
%REM *********************** Agent Notes **************************
This agent checks all new/modified documents to make sure that the
user created the document properly. It checks to make sure the proper
items are in place, and it also verifies that the categories that are
set are allowed by the document creator.

*************************** INTERACTIONS ***************************
There are no interactions with this agent. It is a scheduled agent
that is set to work against new/modified documents.

Conclusion:
If anything, such as AdminP, modified the document then this agent will run. In our case it was an AdminP name change request which caused the document to be modified.