Thursday, August 28, 2014

Sametime V9 modification of STAVCONFIG.XML - be careful!!

I ran into an issue that wasted a lot of my time recently during a Sametime V9 Audio/Video install and I wanted to get it out there so others know about it and are not similarly affected.
As you may know, the config file for the Audio/Video is stored under the websphere STMedia server in a file called STAVCONFIG.XML. Most of the parameters in this file are displayed through the STMedia server screen on the ST Console but some are not... and that's where this get's interesting... you can change ALL the AV parameters by editing the correct copy of the STAVCONFIG.XML file, the correct copy being the one under the config path  below the DMGR profile i.e.



E:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\STSCDMgrProfile\config\cells\<Cellname>\nodes\<MediaServerNodename>\servers\STMediaServer

and NEVER here :

E:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\
<MediaServerProfilename>\config\cells\<Cellname>\nodes\<MediaServerNodename>\servers\STMediaServer

The latter location is where it will be synchronized to - never from....

So you probably already knew this... but here is the big ST V9 caveat.... you can change the STAVCONFIG.XML file in the correct place, but if you go check the parameters through the console here:







you will actually see the old configuration pulled in from somewhere (not quite sure where it pulls from - certainly not the STAVCONFIG.XML file you modified) and the file you actually modified gets changed back to what it was before.....
Consequently, you lose all your changes... so DON'T REVIEW the Console settings for the Media server after changing it in the XML file... unless you restart the DMGR, which seems to solve the problem.

So if you're modifying the STAVCONFIG.XML file manually, you need to do the following:


  1. Make changes in file under the dmgr profile
  2. FULL synch the node
  3. stay out of the SSC UI for the media manager until after restarting dmgr.
In retrospect, I wonder if this also applies to changes to the STPROXYCONFIG.XML file - I would imagine it does but I will check and post to this blog my findings.