Friday, May 9, 2008

Windows Firewall strikes again!

So this morning I decided that I was going to play with Domino 8.0.1. More specifically, I wanted to show off the Lite mode to the boss. So away I went installing Domino on a laptop I have been using for the last couple of days to test the Notes client upgrade. Everything appeared to be going fine. I was able to get the server up and running with a test account and access DWA locally on the laptop. But things quickly changed when I tried to connect to the laptop from my normal workstation. I could ping the "server" but connecting with a web browser wasn't working. I pulled out the trusty NPING.exe and tried to ping the "server" on 1352 and 80. Still no luck. Then it occurred to me that this laptop is imaged with our corporate image and Windows Firewall is locked down. So here's what I did to resolve the issue to allow not only Domino sever connectivity, but also http connectivity to the laptop.
  1. Access the Windows Firewall application. There are several ways to get there.
  2. Click on the Exceptions tab.
  3. Click the Add Program button.
  4. Scroll down the list and select the Lotus Domino Server.
  5. By default, the scope for connecting to the server is Any Computer. You can change that selecting the Change Scope button and make the necessary settings you are comfortable with. Click OK to exit the Change Scope window.
  6. Click OK to add the Domino Server exception to the list.
  7. Click Add Program button again.
  8. Click Browse.
  9. Browse to where you installed nhttp.exe on the computer.
  10. Again, if needed, click the Change Scope button to make any changes and click OK to exit the window.
  11. Click OK to add the nhttp.exe application to the exceptions list
  12. Click OK to exit Windows Firewall
With those steps done, it's time to show off some DWA goodness. An easy fix for temporarily running Domino on a Windows system that's not a server.

No comments: