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"

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 ...

12-07-2008

Reasons for ProxyOriginatingRequestUNID to change during user move

Tags: adminp notes

I'm currently working on a script that will assist a customer in moving about 16k users to a new central environment, and during testing I ran into a strange issue where the ProxyOriginatingRequestUNID and ProxyOriginatingTimeDate field values change once the client has picked up the changes.

In the current environment there's about 20 servers spread across a number of sites, and because there is no mail file name uniqueness, they cannot just use the user move process from the administration client, besides they don't want to have to manually deal with all those approve mail file deletion requests.

I've build an app that generated a unique file name for all user mail databases, and where one could assign the intended new servers to the users, and initiate the user moves.
It also contains an agent that monitors the administration requests that are generated in admin4.nsf, approving the 'Approval for Mailfile Deletion' requests that are generated once the user's client has picked up the new home server/mail database information from the server.

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)

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