06-13-2014

[There is no RPC service named Account ] error on BlackBerry 10 device after activation

Tags: BlackBerry BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 BES 10 Traveler activation error activation lotus
For those still supporting BlackBerry devices...

I recently ran into this problem while activating a new BB 10 device at a customer site. (BES 10 in combination with IBM Notes Traveler 9.0.1)

Steps to reproduce:
- create new user in the BES admin interface
- activate the device
- enter Domino webmail password on device when prompted by BB Hub

After a while this error appears.
I have found this KB document which http://www.blackberry.com/btsc/KB35447 contains instructions on how to redeploy the email profile but this not fix the issue.

The cause in my case was that the user was not a member of the group that's allowed access to the Traveler server - too bad the error message wasn't more descriptive or it would have saved me quite a bit of time.

P.S. Is it just me or is the BB Q5 slooooooooooooooooooooooooooow

08-03-2012

The fixup that didn't

Tags: Lotus Domino fixup corrupt database 8.5 8.5.x
After a problem at a customer with a corrupt database which could not be fixed by the fixup task, (the database kept reporting that a consistency check was in progress) one of my coworkers contacted IBM who eventually gave him the following bit of information

There is a known issue where fixup does not delete the bad document: SPR # TSOE8KCJCP - Fixup does not repair corrupt database

Setting the following ini variable should allow fixup to continue on the error.

DEBUG_FIXUP_DELETE_ERRORS_INCLUDE=2B8,227

The SPR is a regression that was introduced in 8.5.1 and the last known release where it worked is 8.5 . So if the workaround does not work, try to run fixup on a 8.5 server to see if the database is cleaned up.

11-11-2011

8.5.3 Standard client "Error accessing product object method" after upgrade

Tags: Lotus Notes Lotus Notes 8.5.3
After upgrading a client from 8.5.2FP3 to 8.5.3 and accessing the mailfile on an 8.5 server I'm getting the following error:

A picture named M2

After clicking ok, the miniview shows: "Part of this application did not start correctly due to an open dialog box. Please close the dialog box and refresh this section to re-open the application"

09-02-2011

Errors while syncing Android devices after moving data directory.

Tags: Lotus Domino Traveler
One of the great things about Lotus Domino has been that it is so dead easy to move the data directory to another location by just updating the references in the server's notes.ini file.

However, when moving the data directory on a Lotus Notes Traveler server this is not enough.

Besides updating the notes.ini file you will also need to update the path reference that can be found near the end of the <dominodatadirectory>\traveler\cfg\NTSConfig.xml file

If you don't you might run into a number of errors on the server console (at least I did at a customer)

01-30-2010

Words of warning: Servers\Mail Users view in 8.5.1 Domino Directory has changed

Tags: 8.5.1 Lotus Domino 8.5 Directory
I recently ran into a nasty surprise in an agent I wrote ages ago that uses the Servers\Mail Users view in the Domino directory to find users per server, which performs some checks against the mail database.
The agent loops through the entries, using the NotesViewEntry.ColumnValues instead of accessing the underlying document, in the view which worked fine all the way up to Domino 8.5.0

After upgrading the Administration server to 8.5.1 the agent started reporting problems with the database owner, ACL etc.

Turned out that the Name column of the view has been changed from displaying the user name in Abbreviated format to 'Lastname, Firstname'.

So if you've ever used this view in any of your code, check to see if this change has consequences, and while you're at it also check for changes to any of the other views in the Domino directory that might have changed. I know I will

Oh and what did I learn from this? - When writing code that relies on information from a system database, add an additional view (with the prohibit design refresh ... property set of course)

01-06-2010

My experience sofar with Ubuntu Karmic 64 bit (Desktop & Server)

Tags: Lotus Domino Notes 8.5.1 VMWare Server 2.0.2 64 bit Linux Ubuntu Karmic
Sofar my ride with Karmic hasn't been all smooth.

I've upgraded my server from Ubuntu Server 8.04 (Hardy Heron) to 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) and recently to 9.10 Server (Karmic) on 64 bit and encountered a few issues, and not just with Domino 8.5.1 - and yes I know this is not an IBM supported configuration

After the upgrade my Domino server came up without a problem but I noticed an error message from the full text indexer about not being able to find libstdc++.so.5
This library was replaced by the upgrade by libstdc++.so.6 - so I ended up pulling a copy from a previous release and adding that to /usr/lib32

Other than that sofar I haven't found any problems with Domino.

Daniel Nashed's SpamGeek also just continues to do it's job

I also have 64 bit VMWare Server 2.0.2 running on this server and after the upgrade the vmware modules refused to build, fortunately I found a fix here:

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-install-vmware-server-2-0-x-in-ubuntu-9-10-karmic.html

I have a Windows 2003 Server VMWare guest that started life as a physical box that I converted to a VM sometime last year that never had any problems but ever since the upgrade (and subsequent patch) has a tendency to die under high I/O loads. VMWare kills it (Worker#18| Caught signal 6).

After that, it was time for my laptop ...

01-05-2010

CA Process does not like admins with local mailfiles

Tags: Lotus Domino 8.5.1 CA Process
Ran into this one the other day while making a small change to my CA based certifiers:

Cannot locate user certificate. Make sure server contains your certificate for encryption


Turs out that when your location document is configured with your mail file location as Local, you will not be able to make any changes to notes and/or internet certifiers inside the CA Process.

See also KB #1168945

Why it requires the location of the mailfile to be 'On Server' instead of just checking the home server as configured in the location document (or the server you're actually administrating) is beyond me though.

10-12-2009

Lotus Domino 8.5.1 Gold available for download at PWSW

Tags: Lotus Domino 8.5.1 partnerworld pwsw

Just noticed the gold version is available on PWSW, so I started downloading rightaway and atm I'm actually getting a decent download speed (I'm maxing out my ADSL )

08-03-2009

IBM Lotus Domino support forums not available for browser access

Tags: IBM Lotus Domino Support Notes.Net

I tried accessing the domino forums from the web using the all too familiar www.notes.net url - which returned an error.

ok, perhaps they're phasing out this domain, let's try www.ibm.com/support

I select Lotus and Lotus Domino, click on the Forums and Communities link which takes me to this page:

A picture named M2

Clicking any of the the Notes/Domino x discussion forum links returns this:

A picture named M3

Guys, I know it's holiday season but some people still have work to do, how hard is it to keep servers up and running?
You guys are aware of the cluster capabilities in your software? Why not use it

Same goes for sites like PWSW.

The track record for availability is not great advertisements for the product's high availability features.

Update 06-08-2009:
It's borked yet again.
Haven't been able to access PWSW's software access catalog all day either and that's a resource business partners pay good money for.
Coworker just send me this link (http://www.lotus.com/ldd/r5fixlist.nsf ) that also takes me to the apology page.

Looks like the Lotus product pages have all wondered off on vacation or something.

05-18-2009

DWAHF_v8.5_191.12CHF2's readme

Tags: Lotus Domino iNotes R8.5 HotFix
Did the person who wrote the readme for the hotfix actually look at it?

Here's the directory content of the hotfix:
A picture named M2

and the directory contents for w32 (basically the same applies for the other platforms):
A picture named M3

Now look at the readme:

If there are files mentioned below and are not found in the zip file, then there was no changes to the files and the files don't need to be replaced.

(PLEASE NOTE:  These files listed below and in this file are not identified using the correct CASE Sensativity, Please use the CASE of the file You are replacing as a guide for installation.)

Server       Location
Platform                                                                        Files

Win32         <Domino data directory>\domino\html                        dwa85.cab
                                                                                dwa85W.cab
                                                                                dwa85res_en.dll  

        <Domino program directory>                                         ninotes.dll
        (note:  all files in the w32 directory need to be        ninotes.sym
        installed)                                                                ndolextn.dll ***** (see note below)
                                                                                ndolextn.sym ***** (see note below)

        <Domino data directory>/jvm/lib/ext/                        dlt.jar

        <Domino data directory>\iNotes                                Forms85.nsf
                                                                       
        <Domino data directory>                                                us.dic
                                                                                uk.dic
                                                                                wpdic.dic


NOTE:  If files are mentioned above are not found in the zip file, this means no changes occurred in this file.

The files that are not included with the HotFix but are referenced in the readme file are marked in red.

To top this off, there are files in the hotfix that are not even mentioned in the readme:
        <Domino data directory>\domino\html\download\filesets\                n_DOLBASE.exe
                                                                                n_DOLBASE.inf
                                                                                n_SHIMMER8_5_en.exe
                                                                                n_SHIMMER8_5_en.inf

Update: I should've read further towards the end of the file, this particular bit actually did make it into the readme.

And why is it too much to ask to provide an installer instead of having to manually copy those files for every server in your environment, after all this IS the 21st century is it not?

Don't even get me started on this whole applet signature debacle. It all seems very sloppy to me. Perhaps IBM has done away with their Q&A department as a cost-saving measure?

03-31-2008

Toolbar madness

Tags: Lotus Notes 8.0.1 Bug

This is what happened to my toolbars when I decided to send an excel sheet from within Excel 2007.

A picture named M2

Before, the toolbars were all neatly organised in three rows, and no, I did not switch to the administration and/or designer client in this session at all.

03-16-2008

Notes 8.0.1 and COM glitch?

Tags: Lotus Notes 8.0.1 Bug

I executed a VBA macro in an Excel sheet that access the Lotus Notes client through COM objects.

This semi-launched the standard client to the point it showed the background screen (see below), with the last used location selected at the bottom right hand corner.

A picture named M2

Even after closing out of Excel, the client stays open in this state in which it does not respond to anything.

The only thing left to deal with this is to execute nsd -kill to terminate this client instance before it is possible to use the client again.

03-10-2008

Yet another weird problem in R8.0.1 a.k.a. beta 5

Tags: Lotus Notes 8.0.1 Bug

I start the full client (which I closed out of normally previously on this computer), and open my mail and end up with this screen:

A picture named M2

It doesn't matter if I access the local replica or the one on my server.
When opening the blogsphere db that this site's hosted in I end up with this:

A picture named M3

No errors, just a blank page (btw, did you notice the toolbars?)

Sigh... R8 has got great potential but is still WAAAAY too unstable to be inflicted upon normal users.
How about paying as much attention to fixing 'features' as to adding new functionality?

03-10-2008

Yet another error

Tags: Lotus Notes 8.0.1 Bug

At some point today when I was tinkering with some code in designer, I managed to crash the client, triggering nsd to step in and cleanup the mess (or so I thought).

I checked taskmgr, to make sure all notes processes had terminated and saw none running before I restarted my client, which resulted in the following:

A picture named M2

Clicking OK resulted in the following usefull error message (NOT).

A picture named M3

By he way, can somebody with a higher resolution than my laptop (1200x800) tell me if there's more than the one default action in this prompt?

After running nsd -kill I was able to finally start my client again.

03-05-2008

Usefull error message

Tags: Lotus Notes 8.0.1 Bug

All of a sudden I started getting this error when trying to open a database:

A picture named M2

03-04-2008

Widget Woes

Tags: Lotus Notes Widgets 8.0.1 Bug

Initially I had setup the client with a local widget store called toolbox.nsf.
When I configured a widget catalog on the server and changed the config to use the catalog from the server (toolbox.nsf) it came up with a prompt telling me that the toolbox.nsf was already present and that  a new replica could not be created. So I closed out of the client, and removed the toolbox.nsf from my client's data directory, and restarted the client, only to find the following error popping up again, eventhough there was no local toolbox.nsf anymore as you can see in the following screen shot:
A picture named M2

Changing the name to toolbox2.nsf in the widget prefs resulted in creating a local replica of the toolbox.nsf on the server with the name toolbox2.nsf and all is well now.

What leaves me to wonder where does he client store the information about the local widget store that caused the above error message eventhough there really was NO local toolbox.nsf

03-03-2008

Productivity Killer

Tags: Lotus Notes Symphony 8.0.1 Bug

R8.0.1 Standard Symphony components (a.k.a. productivity tools) is still a productivity killer for me.
My client decided to hang 3 quarters in to writing a document , presenting me with an hour glass, with no apparent reason.

This isn't even on my company laptop where I've had issues with Symphony from the start. On this one it had worked fine in 'beta 4' (R8.0.0).

For some reason even regular alt-tab through applications was acting up, as was clicking on the taskbar icons to switch applications. Instead of activating the intended application it would not restore it to the foreground but would set the taskbar icon to blink.

After about 5 minutes as I was about to click the nsd -kill shortcut on my desktop, it decided to behave in such a way that I could actually save my document.
I ended up finishing my document using Open Office 2.3 which did not misbehave the way Symphony did.
After closing out of the R8.0.1 Standard client (or 'beta 5' as it's called by the regulars in the IRC channel #notes on EFNet), Alt-Tab and clicking on the taskbar icon went back to their normal behaviour.

Things like this make me rather reluctant to advise customers to consider upgrading to Domino R8.x. (the toolbars are still all over the place between client sessoins)

Is this just me or is the R8.x client code base still too unstable for actual deployment?

03-01-2008

R8.0.1 Preference 'Feature'

Tags: Lotus Notes 8.0.1 Bug

Ran into a little snag today with the R8.0.1 Standard client, where the Preferences dialog becomes a bit hard to use as you can see below:

A picture named M2

Rebooting Windows appears to have solved this one (for now).

The fact that the toolbars are still moving around between restarts of the client is also a big disappointment for me.
Perhaps we should refer to this relase as 8.0 beta 5 instead?

Update:
When this happens, cancel out of the prefs and open prefs again and it should be fine once more (I like this consistency in the client)

02-22-2008

Weird error after starting Symphony-Spreadsheet

Tags: Lotus Notes Symphony 8.0.1 Bug

While having the R8.0.1 Notes client open, I launched the built-in spreadsheet program using the shortcut on my desktop, which opened fine, but after about 10 seconds the following  error appeared:
A picture named M2
Pressing "Cancel" would result in this dialog reappearing after a small delay.
Eventually I clicked on "Yes" which lead to this:
A picture named M3

Very usefull indeed.

02-21-2008

My first experience with 8.0.1

Tags: Lotus Notes 8.0.1 Bug

Just upgraded my 8.0 client, setup went fine, no errors or warnings of any kind.

First time I ran the client after upgrading I ended up with this:
A picture named M2

And an hour glass that just wouldn't go away.

Only after rebooting did I get the Standard client to run.

After the Notes Setup Complete dialog it still took quite a while before the client started working normally.

After going through some prefs and clicking on Apply I ended up with the following:

A picture named M3

Clicking 'Yes' resulted in the following:
A picture named M4

Clicking Ok led to the previous prompt, this repeats leading to

A picture named M5

Until you select 'No' on the 'Enter Lotus Notes Password' prompt.

These hickups aside, the upgrade fixed the Symphony components to actually launch instead of timing out after a minute or so with a message stating it cannot open a window (or something like that).

With the  8.0 release I never got the Productivity tools to work on the company laptop, initially with an upgrade from 7.0.3 to 8.0, but not even after doing a complete re-install of the client.

02-20-2008

Lotus Notes / Domino 8.0.1 is available on PWSW/PA

Tags: Lotus Notes Domino

As if you didn't know that yet

In case you're looking for the administration client, do not despair it is part of the Designer client package

Last time I checked there was still no sign of Traveler though

01-21-2008

R7 Administration Update Exam

Tags: Lotus Notes Certification

Decided to have another go at the R7 Administration update exam since I failed it the first time I tried it (not one of my best days no doubt).

Back then I was quite annoyed with myself, especially since the administrative side of Domino has always been my strongest point, well today I got my revanche...

01-18-2008

Yet another R8.0 'Feature'?

Tags: Lotus Notes

I just tried to send a pdf from within Adobe Acrobat Reader without the Notes Client already running, which started to launch the client (as expected, however, it never got to the expected bit where it would open a new message with the pdf attached to it. Instead I ended up with:

A picture named M2

At this point the taskbar was no longer visible and the Notes window did not respond to any user actions.

After killing the client through Windows TaskManager, trying to start the Eclipse client got as far as the screen shot below (taken with a webcam since it did not register at all with windows print screen function.

A picture named M3
After about 30 seconds the client would terminate, leaving no notes processes visible in task manager.

I'm glad they still kept the classic functionality through nlnotes.exe. which ran fine without having to reboot.

01-15-2008

Lotus Notes 8 Radio commercial

Tags: Lotus Notes

On my way to work this morning I heard something on a dutch radio station geared towards business people I had not expected to hear: an actual commercial promoting Lotus Notes 8, inviting people to give Lotus Notes 8 a try.

The ad mentioned a website that should provide more information about this trial offering, but I can't quite remember which one it was, I'll add the url later when/if I hear the ad again.

Personally I would've waited for 8.0.1 before getting people to try, because there are just too many erm 'features' in the 8.0 release, but still it is good to finally hear from IBM.
(Last time I remember hearing a commercial for Lotus Notes/Domino was way back when R5 was SuperHuman).

Update: here's the site that provides more information about the offer (dutch)

08-10-2007

R7 Application Development Update Exam

Tags: Lotus Certification

Since I had some room in my calendar I decided to finally bite the bullet and do the R7 App Dev update exam, which of course I did pass, which would make me a PCLP or whateve the current title is

Although I am a bit annoyed with the results, apparently I sucked at the programming enhancements parts of the test, scoring a meager 58% but managed to score 90% on webservices, a subject I pretty much glanced over when browsing through the designer help/release notes (which has forever been my preparations for the exams).
I scored 88% on the Domino development enhancement questions. Those last two are more consistent with my average scores over the years.

Oh well, perhaps I should try to do some more client development while gearing up for the R8 upgrade exams which are supposed to come up sometime this month.

07-12-2007

Neat 'new' Notes feature

Tags: Lotus Notes

Just as you think that after 12 years of working with Lotus Notes you pretty much know all there is to know, you might just run into someone like Daniel Nashed to teach you about a 'new' feature (which is exactly what happened to me last week.

We were working together on a project at a customer when I noticed him performing calculations in his client instead of switching back & forth between hist Notes client  & the calculator (or excel) so I asked him if he'd created an add-in or agent to do that.

Turned out the client can evaluate formula in any text field by pressing shift-F9 since at least back in the good old R4.x days

Guess I've been too busy with administration & backend development to notice all these years ... oh well we live and learn

Know of any other gems like this? Please share them with the rest of us

07-10-2007

FastNSF

Tags: Lotus Domino Tuning

Wombat in EFNet's #notes irc channel pointed me towards this site: http://www.fastnsf.com .

Has some info on Server.Load and some tips on performance tuning.

07-03-2007

Sametime 7.5.1 Connect Client Memory consumption

Tags: Lotus Quickplace

Just noticed the following in taskmanager (checkout the VM size for sametime75.exe)
A picture named M2

Talk about a resource hog

06-27-2007

QuickR on PWSW

Tags: Lotus QuickR

Just found out that QuickR can be found on PWSW, for those of us that have bought into the value pack that is.

06-21-2007

Quickplace 7 Error

Tags: Lotus IBM Quickplace

Just came across this beauty when I tried to create a placetype from a quickplace.
A picture named M2
Quickplace server: Domino R7.0.2FP2, QP7.0 on Windows.

06-21-2007

QuickR released on June 29

Tags: Lotus IBM QuickR

IBM Lotus QuickR, the successor to QuickPlace is scheduled for release on June 29, according to IdoNotes

05-24-2007

IBM Lotus Notes / Domino R8 Beta 3 is available

QuickImage Tags: Lotus notes8beta

Get it while it's still fresh https://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/iwm/web/preLogin.do?lang=en_US&source=swerplotus-nd8beta3

03-12-2007

Upgrade to BlogSphere v3

QuickImage Tags: Lotus

Last night I decided to give the latest release of the v3 BlogSphere template from openntf.org a try.

I followed the recommended steps for an upgrade as found in the BlogSphere documentation wiki by first running the Admin/Healht agent, followed by the design updated and copying of the skins and template documents from the design template.
Opening the database triggered the conversion code as mentioned in the documentation, however after processing only a small number of blogentries it popped up an error message:

Notes Error: Note item not found (EntryRich)

This left me with a site which was missing most of it's contents.

02-27-2007

Lotus Notes client Sametime component lost connection workaround

Tags: Lotus

I've encountered some problems in the past with the Lotus Notes client built-in sametime component, where it would continually loose connection (and reconnect).

After poking the client with several sticks I came up with a workaround which I posted in the R6/R7 Forum over on notes.net

11-15-2006

Connect your Sametime community to external IM communities

Tags: Lotus

IBM has announced IBM Lotus Real-Time Collaboration Gateway

Which is based on Websphere Application Server and requires DB2 and Sametime 7.5 CF1

08-21-2006

Sametime 7.5 is out!

Tags: Lotus

Just noticed on PWSW that Sametime 7.5 is available for download

04-04-2006

Team Studio Lotus Script Class Browser

Tags: Lotus
I just discovered that there was an update to Team Studio's free Lotusscript Class browser.

You can find it here

I think this is the most valuable free tool out there (followed by notespeek)

02-15-2006

Notes client bookmarks vs workspace survey

Tags: Lotus


Tell them about your preferences  

12-12-2005

Firefox 1.5 & Domino Web Access 7 problem

Tags: Lotus

Whe composing/forwarding/replying a message, the message edit window does not finish loading (unless you press ESCAPE).

I've read reports where attaching files failed to work as well, but sofar I've not seen that particular behaviour.

12-12-2005

Yet another strange Lotus Notes error

Tags: Lotus

After working as an Lotus Notes admin & developer for ten years I thought I'd seen my share of error messages, but today I came across one I had not seen before:

I created a new shared (lotus script) action in a database, added this action to a form, and when I click it I get this error:
A picture named M2
Apart from two field names, the code is identical to that of a shared action in another database (in this database the code works btw).


11-23-2005

Strange Lotus Notes MailMan error

Tags: Lotus

Got this one when I tried to print from Acrobat 6 while the notes client wasn't running yet:

A picture named M2

11-22-2005

Chuck Connell's Lotus Domino links

Tags: Lotus
Chuck posted the following links in one of the forums:
- domino security links
- some of his publications
- tools/sample code

11-17-2005

Administrator's guide to Domino servrer maintenance

Tags: Lotus

An overview of a number of Domino server tasks that can help in routine Domino server maintenance

Thanks to the #notes channell rodent : http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=0&uid=swg27006573

10-27-2005

Lotus Notes is in-efficient

Tags: Lotus



When opening a document with a large attachment (read-mode), the Lotus Notes client will read the wole document, the first part of the graph below.

A picture named M2

The second half of the graph is where I chose to open the attachment. The Notes client downloads the attachment from the server a second time

It would be nice to have a workaround for this behaviour, which not only wastes bandwidth, but more importantly time.

(If you know the doc has a large attachment you could of course press <ctrl>-<break> when it's opening the document, but a method around this that doesn't require the user to do the ctrl-break thingie everytime he/she opens a document with attachments.)

10-26-2005

Quick server-2-server replication without creating connection docs

Tags: Lotus

Wild Bill had this usefull piece of info on his blog http://www.billbuchan.com/web.nsf/d6plinks/BBUN-6HFSTA

10-06-2005

Lotus Notes ID Certificate expiration notification

Tags: Lotus

We all know that users will happily click away those warnings that start appearing when their ID's about 90 days from expiration, until they're finally locked out of the server, which is when they will annoy/call IT to complain.

10-05-2005

Interesting replication statistics

Tags: Lotus

This picture shows the replication statistics I got after replicating the R6 / R7 forum with the Notes2 server:
A picture named M2

I know I didn't have 64 databases selected (nor did I modify that many local documents.

10-03-2005

Strange problem saving large documents

Tags: Lotus
I recently ran into this strange problem while saving/copying documents with large attachments into a Domino database using a Notes client from within a Terminal Server session.

09-28-2005

Custom AdminP handlers

Tags: Lotus
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/ls-Custom_AdminP_Handler