PITFALLS
An upgrade from Notes Domino 5 to 6.5.1 is not without pitfalls.
On Windows 2000 at least, it seems
the calendars do not upgrade properly, causing the Tools Preference
dialog to fail in the Notes Client.
The solution to this is to write a
small Lotus Script agent to delete the calendar profile, which is then
rebuilt properly:
Sub
Click(Source As Button)
Dim session As New NotesSession
Dim db As notesDatabase
Set db=session.CurrentDatabase
Set
profile=db.GetProfileDocument("CalendarProfile")
Call Profile.Remove(True)
End Sub
Once this is done, the user
must go into her mail database, choose Tools, Preferences, Calendar
& To Do, Scheduling, and click OK. YOU MUST ensure that the mail
file is opened FIRST by the owner, or the mail file will end up being
owned by the person who opens it first - no matter who they may be -
that is to say, if the System Administrator opens the mail file, she
will end up owning it!
If this happens, change it via Tools, Preferences.
If an upgrade to the Notes Client
leaves you without bookmarks, toolbars, etc, delete either Cache.NDK
(this did not work for me), or bookmark.nsf (this did work - the client
rebuilt itself). These files are found in the Notes\Data folder on the
local PC.
It seems that the upgrade
upsets the
certification process and errors start appearing saying that the user
ID is out of date. You must recertify your users, by using the
Administration Client and the People and Groups tab in the Domino
Directory.
Ensure that the certlog.nsf database is copied over or you cannot
certify users. If it is not, copy it (ensure the server is shut down
first!) or create a new one.
Also, if you have been running two
servers and have consolidated them onto one (as we did) ENSURE YOUR
HOSTS FILE IS CORRECT - or mail agents will not run.
If you are installing a totally new
system, these problems will not occur.
A further problem: After
updating
a White Box server, it was found that the java 1.4.2 plug-in does not
work with Mozilla 1.4.3. As a server does not normally need to
have
a java-enabled browser, this is not serious.
BEWARE
OF DOMINO MAIL RULES!
To deal with a flood of spam Domino
Mail Rules were set up. One was "If body of message contains
Viagra OR Cialis OR Adipren do not accept message".
The effect of this was that emails containing the word "specialist"
could neither be received or sent!
So, be careful in the use of these rules, as there is no way of
specifying "Exact match".
For better control of spam, install MailScanner in front of Domino
and set a rule to send all emails detected as "Spam" to a special Junk
mail-in database so that an Administrator can then deal with them.
Problems
with Lotus Notes 6.5.1/6.5.3 on new Windows 2000 install
If after installing a new Windows 2000 PC you find Lotus Notes is not
working properly when the user is logged in, but it will work if you
are logged in as Administrator, check that the user is set up properly
- i.e. as a user on that PC as opposed to just a user in the
domain. It appears that if the user is not set up correctly,
unexpected results may occur, such as being unable to correctly see the
bookmarks and inbox, and in extreme circumstances a message which
insists on the Domino server being shut down (obviously this message
must not be acted upon)!
This seems to be the result of some kind of interaction between Windows
NT/2K permissions and Lotus Notes permissions. Correcting the
user setup cured the problem.
More Fun with
Lotus Notes
Sometimes the Lotus Notes client can get corrupted, and the pointers to
the Inbox, Sent, Bookmarks etc down the left hand side can disappear
into a "grey hole". Bizarre error messages about "infinite
recursion" (!) are likely to appear also.
Solution
Shut down Lotus Notes.
Go into the filesystem and find the folder \lotus\notes\data
In this folder there is a file called Cache.NDK.
Delete this file, or if you are unsure, just drag and drop it out of
the Lotus folder tree (say into My Documents).
Restart Lotus Notes.
All should return to normal. Notes will build a new Cache.NDK and
if you have removed the old one elsewhere, you can delete that safely.
Even
More Fun with Notes 8.5 and Vista
Notes 8.5 with Domino Administrator will not install on Windows Vista
(Home Premium in my case) unless you do the following:
Turn of User Account Control.
Install the program files as follows, changing the default locations in
the boxes provided by the installer:
Program
Directory: C:\IBM\Lotus\Notes
Data
Directory: C:\IBM\Lotus\Notes\Data
If you do not need the Domino Administrator, IBM recommends (should you
wish to leave UAC on) that with Notes 8.0.1 and higher, you do a
Multi-User install. Note, the Administrator and Designer need a
single-user install.
Fun with Notes Address Book
It can happen when using a Contact from your Lotus Notes address book
to send an email, that the email address is not added. This is
caused by having the same Contactin the Address Book twice, once with
the email address in and once without. If the one without the
email address comes first in the list, Notes will use that - EVEN
THOUGH NO EMAIL ADDRESS IS IN THERE!
If you find your emails coming back to you marked as being wrongly
addressed, check that the recipient is not listed twice. If
they are, put all relevant details into one copy of the Contact and
delete the other one. This should solve the problem.
Notes
says new contact does not exist - but I can see it !!?
A new contact was added to the personal address book, but Notes refused
to send mail to that address, saying that it did not exist.
Solution: A second copy of the notes address book existed in My
Documents, and Notes was updating this one in the Address Book Contacts
dialog, but looking at the main one in Documents and Settings\Local
Settings\Application Data\Lotus\Notes\Data. Changing the path to
names.nsf in File - Preferences - User Preferences - Mail did not help.
Shutting down Notes and double-clicking on the correct copy of
names.nsf caused Notes to open with the Contacts dialog pointing to the
right copy. Once this was updated and all was working properly,
the backup copy in My Documents was renamed names.old to prevent this
happening again.
User
Name Change Frolics
The Administration Process was used to change a user's last name, which
had been spelt wrongly due to a misunderstanding. Everything
changed,
access to his mailbox was fine, except that when he sent an internal
email, it appeared to come from his "old name" sent by his "new name".
On checking the 'Tools - Preferences' option on his mailbox it still
had the "old name" specified as the mailbox owner.
To fix this, as the Notes Administrator, open the database and click on
the Change button after "This mail file belongs
to", pick up and OK the correct name from the Domino
directory.
Ignore the dire warning that appears - access to the mailbox should not
be affected. Get the user to log out of Notes and back in again.
That
java hog
A Domino on White Box Linux server
developed a hard disk error and the disk had to be replaced.
Unfortunately, although the domino directory was copied back into
/local/notesdata, the .bash_profile file was forgotten.
The effect of this was that the java
process became a CPU hog, taking up nearly 50% of the CPU.
Restoring the .bash_profile
file with the Path and environment variable
tweaks as previous page, solved the problem.
Changing
a Domino Server's Hostname
If you
change the hostname of a Domino/Linux server in /etc/hosts and
/etc/sysconfig/network, in the
Domino data directory there are 5 ini files which need to have the
hostname change reflected in them:
dconsole1.ini
dconsole.ini
dcontroller1.ini
dcontroller.ini
notes.ini
In Domino 7 it is suggested that you do not manually change the names
in dconsole.ini and dconsole1.ini. Instructions are provided in
the files as to what to do in this case.
Unable to
access Domino server after names.nsf replicated
See this link
For Domino 7 on
White Box Linux 4.0 (Manifestdestiny), go to page 3