10-27-2014

Installing Lotus Notes 9.0.1 in 64-bit Ubuntu 14.04

Tags: ubuntu linux lotus notes 9.0.1
Download the installer from Partnerworld/Passport Advantage andunpack into a temp directory.

Unfortunately, there are some dependency problems on 64 bit Ubuntu Linux that prevent installation of the Notes client.

$ cd Downloads
$ mkdir n901
$ cd n901
$ tar -xvf ../NOTES_9.0.1_LINUX_DI_EN.tar

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"

12-21-2010

Lotus Notes 8.5.2 FP1 won't install on Ubuntu Maverick

Tags: Lotus Notes Ubuntu 8.5.2 FP1
I thought I'd quickly upgrade my Lotus Notes 8.5.2 client on Ubuntu Linux before going to bed, boy was I wrong.

dpkg: error processing ibm_lotus_notes_fixpack-8.5.2.i586.deb (--install):
 parse error, in file '/var/lib/dpkg/tmp.ci/control' near line 2 package 'ibm-lotus-notes-fixpack':
 error in Version string '8.5.2-20101215.1023_FP1': invalid character in revision number
Errors were encountered while processing:
 ibm_lotus_notes_fixpack-8.5.2.i586.deb

Turns out that. sometime between Ubuntu 8.x and the current 10.x version, underscores have become illegal characters according to Ubuntu's package manager.

12-23-2009

8.5.1 client with identity crisis?

Tags: Lotus Notes 8.5.1
When I started my Lotus Notes 8.5.1 Standard client this morning instead of showing me my workspace it didn't get beyond the empty framework:
A picture named M2
No errors, my task bar only showed one Lotus Notes item so it wasn't me double-clicking the quicklaunch icon (for a change)

So I was already getting annoyed even before finishing my first cup of tea.
When I pressed Alt-Tab to cycle to switch to an open commandline window I noticed it showed TWO Lotus Notes icons, one being the familiar prompt regarding one or more missed alarms.

To my surprise clicking the ok/yes button launched the basic client in a separate window.

Opening my mailbox from within the Basic client opens it up in ...

12-03-2009

Lotus Notes bashing cartoon

Tags: Lotus Notes bashing cartoon

This cartoon was mounted on the wall at a customer even before the decision was made to switch to Exhang:

A picture named M2

Since we stripped our users of the last bit of freedom helpdesk costs have dropped by 25%
- But we cannot sit on our laurels!

How can we take away their last bit of initiative and hope?
- We're already blocking Youtube, Facebook, USB sticks and all software except Office

We could migrate them to Lotus Notes
- Interesting idea but I fear problems with the unions


11-12-2009

Regression bug with HTML formatted email

Tags: 8.5 8.5.1 Lotus Notes SPR VNTR7UP3CD

Recently one of our customers contacted us with a support question regarding some HTML formatted emails.

R8.5.0 & 8.5.0 FP1 users can not forward or reply with history on some HTML formatted emails, like for example a reservation confirmation email sent by Hilton/DoubleTree hotels.

When accessing the email the messages loads correctly, but the status bar at the bottom of the screen shows 'Document attachment is invalid'.
Closing the message and opening it again will show a popup with the same message that the user needs to click on to be able to continue.

When trying to forward/reply with history, the error 'Cannot save bitmap to disk' appears when you click on Save as draft or Send/Send and File and you can not continue.

02-02-2009

Another helpfull error

Tags: Lotus Notes R8.5 Error
Yesterday when I started my 8.5 Standard client it appeared to go well, it opened the workspace, the replicator page and started replicating and then I got this helpful message:

A picture named M2
Clicking on Details didn't work btw, so I have no idea which composite app is acting up. (and this is a standard install, no 3rd party composite apps installed at all).

01-11-2009

Strange status bar message

Tags: Lotus Notes R8.5 Status Bar
Just noticed this in my 8.5 Standard client's status bar. (and I'm running XP, nothing fancy like Vista).

A picture named M2

And no that server does not have some exotic hostname with all kinds of non US-ASCII characters either

01-11-2009

8.5 Error messages are still very helpfull ... *NOT*

Tags: Lotus Notes R8.5 Error
One thing that apparently still has not been improved in R8.5: the completely braindead error messages are still there

A picture named M2

Very helpfull indeed.
And this happened when I clicked on the (move to) Folder action in the action bar from the Junk folder to move a message that I did want to keep to it's proper folder.

01-09-2009

Weird Notes 8.5 Designer Help Db behaviour

Tags: Lotus Notes R8.5 Designer Help
Earlier today I came across the following popup when I clicked on the 'IsOnServer' link in the Lotus Script NotesSession class document: in the 8.5 designer help database using the Lotus Notes 8.5 Standard client (and no Marzel this is not on my company Laptop - I still need to re-install that brick )

A picture named M2

01-07-2009

Lotus Notes / Domino 8.5 is available

Tags: Lotus Notes Lotus Domino R8.5

on a Passport / PWSW site near you.

Let's see if I can slip this upgrade in without approval from the CAB (after all it's not really a .0 release is it? )

12-22-2008

Another double-right-click quirk?

Tags: Lotus Notes R8.0.2

When I double-right-clicked in an email message to close out of the message and return to my inbox I was treated to the following dialog:

A picture named M2

Clicking on 'Yes' resulted in the 8.0.2 standard client crashing with the all too familiar nsd dialog.

And no Marzel, this is not my work laptop, although I have seen this behaviour on that one where I kinda dismissed it since nothing really works well on that one anymore, this is my personal one with relatively little software installed (no M$ office for example).

11-03-2008

Strange last replication date on replicator page

Tags: Lotus Notes 8.0.2 Basic Client

I just noticed something I had not seen before while creating a new local replica of my mailfile using the 8.0.2 Basic Client

A picture named M2

I know I've been around Lotus Notes for a while, but not *that* long.


10-27-2008

R7 Lotus Notes client with R4 / R5 Personal Address Book

Tags: Lotus Notes

Recently I was at a customer where they were having some problems with their clients.

Some of the issues reported were:
Users clients whose mailfiles were being moved from one server to another were not picking up the changes.
The customer has a desktop policy in place that (among other things) sets the Poll_Remote_Mailfile parameter in the client's Notes.ini file to allow the client to initialize replication outside of the regular 15 minute schedule when new mail arrives in the user's inbox.
Users were complaining that they only received email when the client replicated (on schedule or manually).

Further investigation showed that the clients involved all had one thing in common, they all had a personal addressbook that still had the R4 and R5 design.

Looking at those pab's kinda was a trip down memory lane

08-26-2008

R8.0.2 is available on PWSW/PA

Tags: Lotus Notes Lotus Domino 8.0.2 Bug

I just downloaded the full eclipse/standard 8.0.2 client and upgraded my main client.

The upgrade itself went ok (complaining only about an open instance of FireFox), but after launching the full client I noticed that I can no longer connect to my company's SameTime server.

(I have no problem connecting to the Bleed Yellow ST server so it's probably a setting on the server that's bugging me).

Update: The client does appear to be a lot faster than the 8.0.1
keep up the good work

One thing is still not fixed:

05-30-2008

Lotus Notes/Domino 8.5 Beta 1 is available

Tags: Lotus Notes Domino 8.5

Hop over to the Notes/Domino 8.5 Download site for the public beta.  -- http://www.ibm.com/services/forms/preLogin.do?lang=en_US&source=swg-lnd85  

Install, play around and then share your experiences with the rest of us through the Notes/Domino 8.5 Public Beta Feedback forum -- http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/nd85forum.nsf

05-29-2008

The ST chat window that refuses to go away

Tags: Lotus Notes Bug 8.0.1

It's been a while since I ran into a new 'feature' in 'Beta 5' (as 8.0.1 is called over in the #notes channel on EFNet (irc)), but here it is.

When trying to close out of a ST chat window the client throws this usefull error message at me:
A picture named M2

The chat window disappears to the background but is still listed in the taskmanager.

12-05-2007

Today's surprise

Tags: Lotus Notes R8.0

This morning's surprise:
A picture named M2

I have the workspace set as default homepage and this morning when I started the client I ended up with the 'bookmarks as workspace' mode that I have failed to start in the Eclipse based client intentionally.

12-05-2007

More R8.0 Standard fun

Tags: R8 Lotus Notes

After starting R8 'standard' this morning and clicking on the Mail bookmark I ended up with this:
A picture named M2

It had worked fine in 'basic/classic' mode earlier.

Can't believe there isn't a fix yet for a product that's being hailed as being the biggest thing since sliced cheese (or whatever the expression is), but has proven to be as stable as a first beta

I'm finding it hard to stay enthusiastic about the Lotus software portfolio due to a number of issues I've been running into lately:
- PeopleOnline applet in Quickplace 7.0 FP1 (and most likely in QuickR 8.0.0.x as well does not tunnel on port 80, it's hardcoded for 8082
- Sametime 7.5.1 CF1 delays in Audio & Video in on line meetings (half a second for video, a full second for audio even when the client and the server are on the same physical machine)
- Eclipse based Notes 8.0 (see above and previous posting)

11-19-2007

Missing entries in the create menu

Tags: Lotus Notes R8.0

While writing an email to my mom, I wanted to add a hotlink to a web page, only to find out that I forgot to copy the url from FireFox to the clipboard.

After switching to FireFox to copy the url to the clipboard, I noticed that the normal Alt-C, H, L key sequence to create a hotlink, did no longer work, instead the create menu showed this:

A picture named M2
This was using a dwa7 based mailfile.

Is it just me or is R8.0 (eclipse based) really f*cked up. (see previous posts/rants).

11-09-2007

R8.0 - Productivity Killer

Tags: Lotus Notes R8.0 Symphony

After getting fed up with some of the erratic behaviours in the R8.0 client (or should I say beta 4), I decided to do a full re-install (even followed some suggestions in the r8 forum about removing (default) printer etc.)
Uninstalled swiftfile, Lotus Notes client, removed directories, every trace of notes I could find in the registry and did a reinstall and guess what?

I still get this:
A picture named M2
when I try to access the Symphony components (the details are in the Read More section).


11-08-2007

Usefull error message?

Tags: Lotus Notes R8

I just ran into the following error while shutting down the R8 - Classic (or whatever it's called) client:

A picture named M2

This prompt did lost focus, and clicking on it did not work.
Alt-Tab or clicking on the taskbar icon would briefly show that the dialog was active, but would immediately loose focus again.

After re-starting the Machine Debug Manager service, and a quick Alt-Tab-R key combination the 'normal' nsd process kicked in

Guess I should leave that service on Automatic start

10-30-2007

R8.0 woes

QuickImage Tags: Lotus Notes

Last week I decided it was time for me to finally upgrade my main client over from 7.0.3 to R8.0

I promptly got hit by a number of 'features' of this initial release
Perhaps I should've listened to my wife who's got a deep rooted aversion to first releases.
  1. first of course was the disappearance of the Universal toolbar (eventhough it was customised),
  2. the fact that toolbars keep moving around in the toolbar at every start of the client
  3. mangled universal toolbar (like reported by Charles Robinson).
  4. Productivity tools fail to load (takes about a minute to even come up with the 'Unable to create view' error message).
  5. One moment automagic syncing of contacts between my personal address book and mail file is enabled, next time I start the client it's there but marked as disabled without a checkbox to enable it again.
  6. Integrated Sametime client opens a popup asking the user to set the geographic location, but when the user clicks on the button the preferences dialog that opens does not contain an option to set the location.
  7. When in addition to the R8 client you also have another client running (7.0.3 in my case), clicking the bookmarks for justabout everything from mailbox to designer client ends up opening in the other client - I know it's not supported but this has worked well <8.0 for years and it's annoying as hell.
  8. Home link in bookmark bar dissappears at start of the Notes client (and re-appears after re-start of the client
  9. Having to unlock more than once if automagic client lock has kicked in and a dialog box is open, like an alarm. (my personal record is about 11 times before the client actually could be used again).
  10. The client keeps switching back to 'Textured Workspace' on restart.
* Update
07-11-2007: Added 6 & 7,
16-11-2007: Added 8 & 9.
22-11-2007: Added 10.

10-22-2007

Notes performance tips

Tags: Lotus Notes Domino performance

http://nsftools.com/tips/PerfTips.htm

10-21-2007

Notes ID management

Tags: Lotus Notes

Search domino has a collection of articles on ID management

05-04-2007

Alternative Notes.ini Reference

Tags: Lotus Notes notes.ini

Rudi Knegt, has finally added a web interface to his notes.ini reference database and can be accessed here.

For those who don't know, Rudi has been organising the Administrator & Developer Camp events in Germany for a couple of years now.

The next AdminCamp event is scheduled for september 10 thru 12, 2007.
EntwicklerCamp (DeveloperCamp) was in february 2007.

Personally I prefer his notes.ini reference over the ones available at DRCC and DeveloperWorks, because it also includes third party ini parameters.

Keep up the good work Rudi.

05-04-2007

Archiving and Compliancy

Tags: Lotus Notes archiving compliance

When looking around for some possible archiving solutions besides CommonStore for Lotus Domino, I came across the following vendors and I was wondering if anyone's got any experience with either one.
http://www.ziplip.com/products.html" target=_Blank title="ZipLip">ZipLip
and
http://www.axsone.co.uk/products_lotusnotes.shtml" target="_Blank" title="AXS One">AXS One