Using a Notes client to automatically replicate between two disconnected Domino domains

Sean Cull  29 April 2009 22:37:49

It is often necessary to replicate Notes / Domino applications between different organisations. for example a Notes Development Shop may want to maintain a replica of a clients production database to allow easier support.

In most cases you would manage this process via a server - server connection. This is bread and butter stuff for a Domino server and there are lots of options to specify frequencies, end points etc.. This is definitely the preferred route.

Sometimes however the particular topology of the networks mean that it is not possible or affordable for two servers to connect to each other. I had a case such as this and was manually using a Notes client to relay information from one server to the other server - a pretty tedious process. I then came up with the following scheme to use a dedicated client machine ( in actual fact a virtual machine ) to do this automatically via a local replica.

Continue Reading "Using a Notes client to automatically replicate between two disconnected Domino domains" »

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What do you loose if you use the standard mail template and IMAP

Sean Cull  20 April 2009 08:52:34

I was demoing Lotus Notes to a potential client and they were really interested.

They do have some enthusiastic IMAP users so IMAP is a requirement. We tried IMAP with the standard Notes mail template and it seemed to work OK. They need the layered calendar view in the 85 template so the IMAP templates ( from R5 ) is not an option.

What issues we will get if we use the IMAP with the standard 85 template ?

They want to choose Lotus over Group wise and Microsoft because

>They really like it for its cross platform support ( MAC, Linux and Windows ),
> Because it looks similar on each client
> Because of Traveler with Nokia
> Cost

Thanks, Sean

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Nasty bug installing Domino on RHEL

Sean Cull  6 April 2009 23:51:12

I am doing an install of 8.5 on RHEL 5.1 this week and as I haven't done one on this combination before I thought I would do a dry run, just as well really as there is a bit of a nasty install bug.

If you install RHEL 5.1 and then allow the updates to run in their default mode the system gets upgraded to RHEL 5.3 ( yes I know Domino is certified at 5.1 but it is generally good practice to apply the available patches and it is not initially clear that you have been upgraded )  When you then try to install Domino you get the following error messages :
 
error while loading shared libraries: libc.so.6

This led me to think that I had missed some dependencies and I eventually found the pre-requisits list here =>

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?&uid=swg27013075

Installing these didn't help and after a lot of searching I eventually I came across this tech note from IBM

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21367942

Cause

This error occurs because the Domino startup script incorrectly evaluates the 5.3 version number in the file /etc/issue as RHEL 3.0. This causes the Domino startup script to set the UNIX environment variable of LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.19 that is meant for RHEL 3.0 only. Setting this variable makes Domino 7 and 8 servers detect a kernel version that it was not designed for, thus the error occurs.

The technote goes on to describe how to modify the script file to get around the problem

Other Quick Notes

I will write up the installation process in a future posting but for now it is worth noting the following :

The above bug

This note from Red Hat - better than anything IBM seems to have
https://www.redhat.com/f/pdf/rhel/Lotus_Domino_Server_Implementation_Guide_V1_11-11-2008.pdf

Daniel Nasheds startup script
http://blog.nashcom.de/nashcomblog.nsf/
http://www.nashcom.de/nshweb/pages/startscript.htm

You need to disable sendmail as it stops Domino accessing the SMTP port ( and you don't want to have it running any way )

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IBM XPages Wiki - first thoughts and demo

Sean Cull  21 January 2009 09:59:58

IBM has released their Xpages Wiki on Open NTF as part of their new initiative to support the Open Source community. You can see Steve Castledines post here, Steve is the leading light behind the the Domino Blog template and I guess the Wiki Template.



I think that this is a fantastic thing but a quick test of the template "out of the box" shows that either I have badly deployed it or it is still very much a work in progress in need of community input. I have added a list of issues here. Please note that it may be my "rapid" deployment that is the problem.

I have deployed a version >>>here<<<< for people to try. There is also a copy of the new 8.5 discussion template here. Please do not abuse them and also please note that hey are running on a fairly modest server ( P IV 3Ghz,1.5GB Ram, single disk, lots of bandwidth )

One of the stated aims of this blog is that it is not an opinion blog - there are others that do that better. Having said that here are some of my immediate thoughts :

This is a great move in freeing up the flow of useful examples from IBM. I have been looking at versions of this Wiki for some time thinking it would be nice to be allowed to use it - it will be a win - win for all hopefully

I am sure that this initial posting of the template is the tip of the iceberg and I may be rushing in too soon with an opinion !

I have been frustrated by the lack of support for the Blog template for some time. This is not any criticism Steve Castledine as he has put a lot of effort into providing information via his blog and I guess ( I have never spoken to him ) that he has had his frustrations as well. Yes there is some formal documentation but nowhere near what you would expect for a commercial "product".

If IBM think that posting this template to Openntf will allow them to have an even lower level of documentation than the blog template then I honestly believe that this will backfire badly. Yes it is open source, yes the community needs to participate but none the less people customers and potential customers will try and use it and will judge IBM by its usefulness just the same way that people judge ( and admire ) other project chefs. IBM is a huge in comparison to all of the other participants in the Lotus Community and it needs to make a proportionate effort and follow its words "offer resources to invigorate the community " with actions

Sean

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First thoughts on the 8.5 discussion template

Sean Cull  6 January 2009 11:35:10

I deployed an 8.5 gold discussion template to the server. The new template is a big improvement but I did find some weird stuff !

The Holy Grail for me is "out of the box" rich text compatibility between browser and client. It was very refreshing to see this




Then I though "how did that image get there ?" Well after trying a few things I found that if you dragged and dropped a jpg onto the web form it displayed as an image in Notes BUT has not visible on the web form !



I wonder is this functionality that is in development ? It would be fantastic if images could be dragged and dropped such that they were visible on the web forms !

The other ( welcome ) surprise was this dialogue as I signed in - not so sure about the html tag showing through.



I have left the discussion database open for now at http://seancull.co.uk/public/discussion.nsf please do not abuse it.


The other thing that I found, and which surprised me, was that using an 8.02 client to create a new replica of the database in a new location on the 85 server did not work. I know some people will think that I am asking a lot to use a lower client to do this but this type of thing has usually worked in the past. I tried it a few times with no success, the only way to deploy the database was to create a new one using the 85 server as the template host - I wonder is this a constraint or am I doing something else wrong ?






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Blog running on 8.5 Gold, well done IBM

Sean Cull  6 January 2009 10:00:05

Well done IBM, Notes 85 has been released today. I down loaded the server install ( 600Mb ) in about ten minutes and had the server up and running in another 20 minutes plus a reboot. It will take more work to convert the ODS etc.. but I can do that later on this server.



There was a problem down loading the quick start files but hopefully this will be sorted soon



The user clients are also there but I can't see the designer client. Once that is released ( any ideas anyone ? ) then I will be looking to switch to 8.5 for my main client.

I would also like to try using a linux desktop on VMware but this seems to be a bit fraught. I tried to install Ubuntu ( I know its not supported for Notes ) and had to do some mods to get the networking and the VMware tools to work - not sure how it will go with Notes 8.5 - will post when I know more.

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SNTT : Button to check if your users are fowarding mail to external email accounts

Sean Cull  11 December 2008 18:28:53

Users forwarding automatically forwarding emails to external accounts can cause both security and reliability issues. I have seen instances where an email was automatically sent to an external account which sent back an error bounce message ... which got sent to the same account ... which sent back another bounce message ... and so on.

There are two main ways that users will do this.

The first is to modify the mail forwarding address in their person record ( Can your users edit this setting ? Should they be able to edit this setting ? ). You can find these affected records by searching the people view in the NAB / Domino Directory using a search string such as the one shown below - this is a cruse search looking  for the existence of the "@" symbol in the mailaddress field. Note that you can save this as a shared search for future use.



The second method that users use to forward mail to external accounts is to use the mail rules in their mail files. These can be disabled in the server configuration record but they are genuinely useful things to have in many cases.

I have written code for a button which will scan everyones mail rules ( assuming the user has access to their mail files ) and return a report of mail rules containing the symbols "@" and "." in the same forwarding address. This is a fairly crude search string but it is effective in most cases - feel free to improve upon it.

Clicking on the button will produce a report such as the one below which is emailed to your Notes account.


Continue Reading "SNTT : Button to check if your users are fowarding mail to external email accounts" »

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SNTT - Short agent to change the run on server for scheduled agents

Sean Cull  4 December 2008 18:00:00

I use this administration agent in my databases to quickly change the "run on" server for all f the scheduled agents when I deploy a template to a new server.

The other approach I use is to have the agent "run on all servers" but to then have each agent check for a configuration document in the database which then lists which servers it is allowed to run on. If the current server is not in the configuration document then the agent exits.

Sub Initialize
        Dim session As New NotesSession
        Dim ws As New notesuiworkspace
        Dim db As NotesDatabase
        Set db = session.CurrentDatabase
        Dim askme As Variant
       
        askme = ws.Prompt (PROMPT_OKCANCELEDIT, _
        "Suggested Server", _
        " You must use the format CN=...." ,db.server)
        If Not Isempty (askme) Then
                Forall a In db.Agents
                        If Not a.servername = "" And Not a.servername = "*" Then
                                If a.servername = askme Then
                                        Print a.name + " already set to run on chosen server"
                                Else
                                        Print "changing " + a.name + " from " + a.servername + " to " + askme
                                        a.servername = askme
                                        Call a.save
                                End If
                        End If
                End Forall                
        End If
        End Sub


change_server.lss

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GPSED.COM Blackberry GPS Datalogger and Memory Map overlay ( 8/10 considering it is beta )

Sean Cull  29 November 2008 17:43:12

Some time back I read about GPSED.com on Graham Chastneys blog.

I do quite a bit of hill walking and mountain biking and although I think navigation by GPS is a deeply flawed idea in the mountains ( a philosophical point about the skill set you should have rather than any technical issues) I do like the idea of using a GPS as a datalogger to record how your journey went and to share it with others.

I installed the GPSED.com sofware on my Blackberry 8310 and went for a mountain bike ride. I then uploaded the route to GPSED.COM ( see here ) and then downloaded it into Memory Map - a popular digital mapping system in the UK. The screen shot below shows the output - well impressive for free software.



The software is buggy, for example when you switch units the numbers change but the units label stays the same. I am also uncomfortable that you cannot delete your tracks from the web site once you have made them public.

Memory Map itself is very impressive. I use it a lot for planning routes in the hills. Being an optimist it is particularly handy for comparing the ascent profiles of known walks with planned walks

duddonwoods.jpg

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If your Snagit Editor is really slow and hogs CPU then read on

Sean Cull  29 November 2008 16:49:15

UPDATE : Snagit 9.1 has been released ( @ 9/12/08 ) and appears to cure this problem

Note :  I am not entirely sure I understand why this works but it does seem to. I have asked Techsmith for clarification and will update this accordingly

I am a big fan of Techsmiths Snaggit for creating annotated screenshots. Recently I have found that the editor program it has been taking 50% of the CPU and causing the computer to hang. I tried to reinstall it but that made no difference. Then I came across this artice on the Techsmith support site  :

After making a capture, Editor loads slowly or the CPU usage jumps to a high amount which locks up the machine.

In version 9 this can happen if there is a zip file in the same folder with all your images that SnagIt Editor is keeping track of.  This is a known issue that will be fixed in a future release.  As a temporary workaround please remove all zip files from the folders that your images are contained in.

Continue Reading "If your Snagit Editor is really slow and hogs CPU then read on" »

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• Comments [1]

Jabra SP700 Bluetooth Hands Free and FM transmitter ( 7/10 but could so easily have been 10 / 10 )

Sean Cull  29 November 2008 07:56:06

	The Jabra SP700 is a visor mounted bluetooth car kit which also acts as an FM transmitter for a bluetooth A2DP MP3 player e.g. your Blackberry 8310 or similar. This means that you can listen to your phone calls or your MP3's on the car radio speakers The implementation is brilliant in most ways but there are some features which seem to lack thought .

Pros

Very Effective

Very clear conversations even through the car speakers at speed

Excellent voice dialling on my BB 8310

Eliminates the need for an MP3 transmitter

Cost GBP 40

Cons

My BB 8310 will restart the current podcast after I receive a call ( probably a blackberry profile issue )

You need to explicitly activate the FM transmitter with a button when a call comes in if the FM transmitter is not in use. Once you do trigger it it announces the frequency which takes 3 seconds and in that time you cannot hear your call ( you can turn this off but I think you then loose the other quite useful voice prompts )

Unlike some other less feature rich models it does not convert the incoming call number into a name - it just reads out the number

Silly Design Mistakes

The in-car charging cable has a really fiddly plug ( like a small usb but not ) which fits into a recess behind a rubber plug - a frustration when you think that most people will want to charge the device whilst it is still attached to the visor

The device will pair with multiple bluetooth devices but only one at a time. this is not too bad ( although see this one from the competition ) but the frustrating part is that it will only pair automatically with the last device - so if your wife uses it with her phone then you need to go into your phone menu to re connect your device - it would be great if it cascaded through the devices until it found one.

The blue LED which is almost directly in your line of sight needs a piece of tape over it to stop it dazzling you at night - I believe that this can be turned off but you need to download the manual - tape is easier !

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SNTT: Stopping users from opening the wrong replica

Sean Cull  22 October 2008 22:00:00

One of the great strengths of notes is that users can access the same information on different servers or on local replicas. It can also be a real problem.

I have frequently had calls from people along the lines of

"I added some information and I can see it but my colleague can't".

One of our clients recently wanted to deploy replicas of their business critical applications to a different server to improve robustness. Without taking any special steps this actually reduces robustness and user satisfaction because over a period of time users end up using different replicas from each other and sometimes are using a slow server ( a branch office in South Africa on broadband was often a culprit ) without realising this.

The dynamics of how Notes chooses which server to open next often puzzles me but I was once told that it was to do with the alphabetical order of the servers because of the order of the databases in catalog.nsf - and once the top icon is for a distant server users will always use that server.

Anyhow, the code that follows may help. In this particular case the business applications are only used on one site so access to any off-site server should only be required if the on-site server cannot be accessed, his makes it easy - in other projects I have used a rule whereby the application should be accessed on the same server as the persons mail file

There are 3 design elements :

1) an action that creates a profile document listing the name of the preferred server - this is manually triggered when the system is set up

2) some script in the database initialize script which compares the preferred server lists above with the actual server

3) a subform which pops up to alert the user if looks as though they are using the wrong server.


Essentially the code does the following :

checks to see if the person has access to the database
gets the preferred server name from the profile document and compares this with the actual server name.

if the actual server != the preferred server then the system checks to see if the preferred server can be opened.
if the preferred server can be opened then the user is advised as shown in the screen shots below otherwise the user is allowed to open the requested server

I wasn't able to write code to actually switch to the new database so instead it closes the database and brings the correct icon to the top on the workspace. i have not tried this in a "workspaceless" environment.







You may think that the steps required to access the "wrong" server are a bit OTT but remember that this pop up only gets triggered when the "preferred" server is available.

Continue Reading "SNTT: Stopping users from opening the wrong replica" »

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Blog partially reskinned - I hate IE

Sean Cull  15 October 2008 23:49:33

I will post more about this but I am part way through reskinning this blog as part of a project to re-develop our company web site.

It works great in Firefox but IE is not so good - reminds me of this graph

Firebug is just brilliant

Click on the comments button to see the old style



Link

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Improving the meta title data on Domino Blog entries ( a passed on tip )

Sean Cull  7 October 2008 20:25:08

When you look at the Google results for Sean Burgess you will see that the title of the Blog article is clearly shown in Google whereas if you look at my current Google results you can see that the default template behaviour is just to use the site title - I think that Seans method is more informative.



At ILUG 2007 Sean explained that you can change this by using the DXSubject  tag in addition to the DXTitle tag. Note that you can only do this where the page displayed relates to a single article otherwise there is no DXSubject value - took me a while to realise that ;)
Continue Reading "Improving the meta title data on Domino Blog entries ( a passed on tip )" »

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SNTT - Visual Directory - thumbnails in the domino directory

Sean Cull  2 October 2008 23:06:02

Last year one of our clients asked us to help create a directory of staff with thumbnail images, profiles and contact details. After bouncing it about we agreed that using the Domino directory would make sense as much of the information was already there.

I am always wary of messing with the directory but in this case it was a relatively small directory ( < 200 people ) and we set out to add design elements rather than modify existing design elements. The scheme that we came up with is shown in the images above - essentially the system converts thumbnail images ( 80px x 80px ) into image resources and then displays these image resources in the view.

I doubt that this approach will  scale to very large organisations but I have used it on a version of Jake Howletts test directory with 2,000 names and it works fine.

Before launching into the technical description I would like to thank the following people whose code is included in some way :

• Our client who paid for some of this work and kindly agreed for it to be open sourced - it was a win - win because we obviously didn't charge them for the open source code that we used.
• Ewan Arthur, a colleague from FoCul,  who worked with me on the code
• Julian Robichaux -  http://www.openntf.org/Projects/codebin/codebin.nsf/0/DF779ACFF30EB48886257118004D35B5
• Lou Capizzoli on Openntf.org  http://www.openntf.org/Projects/codebin/codebin.nsf/0/DF779ACFF30EB48886257118004D35B5
• Charles Robinson  http://www.cubert.net  ( the my documents folder code )
• Rocky Oliver / Andre Guiard  http://www.lotusgeek.com/SapphireOak/LotusGeekBlog.nsf/D6Plinks/ROLR-6MBMQJ        

The Scheme

A new form was used to display the persons profile. This form has an action button allowing a jpg file to be uploaded and stored in a rich text field called UserPhoto.

A background agent ( which needs unrestricted privileges ) takes the newly attached jpg files, downloads this to the hard drive on the server and then creates an image resource using DXL using code from Lou and Julian. The name of the image resource is the document unique id of the person record. The jpg file is deleted from the hard drive once the image resource has been created

A new view displays the person records and the image resources associated with each person record. The view has a form formula which forces the new profile form to be used when a document is opened from this view. The form has a form field to make sure that the default form for that record is always the original Domino Directory person form,

In the examples attached below I have left the default domino directory views in place but it is a simple matter to change the default opening view ( edit the Mainframeset ) to be the new one with the images

Note that the forms and code shown here are simplified from the production system but the key concepts still work.

The Design Elements

The only change to the existing elements of the Domino directory is the default view for the mainframeset frameset, everything else uses new design elements. These are :

Forms :

.FoCul\PersonProfile

Views :

Focul\01. Profiles\By Name)

Script Library :

.FoCul_Image_Resource_Handling_6_01

Scheduled Agent :

.FoCul\Update Image Resources ( note that this needs to be set up for your named server )
note that the agent contains a selection rule so that it only runs on records needing to be processed

Other agents :

.FoCul\Set images for all people - populates all records with test images stored in c:\temp\images  ( may not be MAC friendly )

(.FoCul Remove Profile)

The Downloads

There are four downloads :


Very Small : The script library at the heart of the system

.FoCul_Image_Resource_Handling_6_01.lss

Small : A database with just the required additional design elements ( 0.5 Mb )

designelementsonly.zip

Medium : A full Domino Directory (8.0.2 ) with the original and the new design elements and 10 records ( 3 Mb )

somerecords.zip

Large : The 2000 record Domino Directory with test images ( 40 Mb  )

fakenameswimages.zip

Areas for Improvement

The system probably won't work on MAC or Linux ( clients and servers ) without some simple changes to the file paths construction

Some code is needed to remove the resource images when a thumbnail or person record is removed

Unashamed Plug

Ewan and I would be very happy to help anyone who wants commercial support to implement this type of system ( or any other system ) via FoCul Ltd. We are based in the UK and have a particularly strong record in developing applications for the Manufacturing sector.

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