Month: November 2008

More On Database Defragmentation

In a previous post I wrote about using Contig.exe to analyse defragmentation of your Domino databases. Contig.exe -a -v -s Drive:\DominoDataDirectoryPath\*.nsf > c:\fragments.txt will analyse all .nsf files in your Domino data directory and redirect the console output to a textfile.

Going through this textfile to search for heavily fragmented databases is a bit of a pain. I have created a simple database to import the file to get a better overview.

Start the import by clicking the Import action button, select the file you have created before and confirm your selection by clicking OK. Existing documents are not updated in this early release.

The code behind the action will now create one document for each database …

DOWNLOAD


Database Defragmentation – Poor Man’s Solution

You might already have heard of Defrag.NSF. Defrag.NSF. is a database-oriented utility that allows you to target Domino databases for defragmentation. You can automatically monitor and pre-allocate contiguous free space to be added to your databases during Defrag.NSF. maintenance, giving them headroom to grow without scattering data to random sectors of your disks.

Why is defragmentation of Notes databases important? To answer the question read Adam Osborne’s article:  Busting the Myth – how Compact -C fragments databases.

I’ve tested Defrag.NSF. during the beta phase of the product. It is a great tool, reliable and easy to use. So far , so good. But good tools cost money. And even $199 for a single server copy can be a lot if you do not have any budget.

As a developer, I could write my own solution, or find something in the World Wide Web. There are quite a lot of freeware tools ( even OpenSource ) available, but 99% of them can only defragment a whole disk but not a single file. The only tool I’ve found so far to defragment a single file or a set of files is Contig.exe by Mark Russinovich.

Contig.exe works on NT 4.0 and higher. Contig.exe can be used to defrag an existing file, or to create a new file of a specified size and name, optimizing its placement on disk. Contig.exe uses standard Windows defragmentation APIs so it won’t cause disk corruption, even if you terminate it while its running.

Just download and copy contig to your Windows directory and you are ready to analyse and defragment your databases. I’ve also tried to copy the executable to the Domino executable directory and trigger it by typing

load contig.exe -a -v -s d:\IBM\Lotus\Domino\data\*.nsf

Contig works and prints the results of the analysis to the Domino console. But unfortunately it seems that it has some side effect on running server tasks. At least the traveler task on my Domino 8.0.1 terminated abnormally.

Here are a few screenshots to show, how Contig works and that it can make files contiguous after being fragmented when using the -c option with ncompact.

Before running compact -c , my mailfile is not fragmented

Then I ran compact …

After the task has finished, contig -a -v showed 111 fragments …

Running contig -v moved the fragments to a free disk block and makes the file contiguous.

Well, this is my poor man’s solution. It is ok, if you only have a handful of databases on your server ( or you do not have a budget to buy a tool like Defrag.NSF ).


EVENT_CORRELATION_POOL_SIZE

Have you ever seen this error message on the Domino server console?

Error: “11/24/2006 10:51:05   Event: Error updating a Domino Domain Monitoring event document (NoteID 0xF2AA): Event correlation cache is full. You  can increase its size via the NOTES.INI setting  EVENT_CORRELATION_POOL_SIZE”

If so, then I assume you know that you can increase the cache size by adding the parameter

EVENT_CORRELATION_POOL_SIZE=104800000

to the server’s notes.ini for a maximum cache size of 100MB.

But, surprise, surprise, the error will occur again. I opened a PMR today because I could not find any useful information on the web. Mateja Kozamernik from IBM support Slovenia pushed me into the right direction and sent me the information I needed.

“Even with the maximum configured pool size, you may still see the above error. This occurs because Domino creates cached documents that are 2MB in size and the server allows a maximum of 200 cached documents by default.

Since 2MB x 200 is greater than the maximum allowable pool size, the error can occur unless additional parameters are enacted to control the document size and/or the maximum number of cached documents. The following notes.ini parameters are available for these purposes.

DDM_MAX_NOTE_CACHE (number of documents in the cache)
DDM_MAX_DOCSIZE_MB (size in megabytes of documents in the cache)

To ensure that the Event Correlation cache will not be exhausted when configured to the maximum 100MB size, use these parameters so that the following formula is true:

DDM_MAX_NOTE_CACHE x DDM_MAX_DOCSIZE_MB <= 100″


Using A Reverse Proxy For DWA

A few days ago we had a discussion on the German Notes Forum (www.atnotes.de) about how to setup DWA. One of the disadvantages of Domino is that you cannot use the passthru feature for web access as you would do when accessing a mailfile thru your companies firewall via a Notes client.

If you want to give your users access to their mails from outside the company via browser access, you would normally setup an additional server in the DMZ and store a replica of each user’s mailfile on the server. Another way of implementing web access is using a reverse proxy.

A reverse proxy is a gateway for servers, and enables one web server to provide content from another transparently. As with a standard proxy, a reverse proxy may serve to improve performance of the web by caching; this is a simple way to mirror a website. But the most common reason to run a reverse proxy is to enable controlled access from the Web at large to servers behind a firewall.

I’m not much of an administrator and when I searched Google for some How To I could not find any Lotus Notes / Domino related article. So I decided to try things out on my own. Here is what i found out so far.

I’m using OpenSUSE 10.3. The file/pathnames might be different in other distributions.

Install Linux; choose a minimal installation. I only added apache2 as an additional package. After installation you should see a “It works” page, when apache2 is running.

Now you can start to configure your reverse proxy settings.

Goto /etc/apache2 and append

Include /etc/apache2/mod_proxy_html.conf

to httpd.conf and save your changes.

Create a new file mod_proxy_html.conf in /etc/apache2 with the following content

# mod_proxy_html.conf, 2008 - Ulrich Krause

LoadModule proxy_module      /usr/lib/apache2/mod_proxy.so
LoadModule proxy_http_module /usr/lib/apache2/mod_proxy_http.so
LoadModule headers_module    /usr/lib/apache2/mod_headers.so

ProxyRequests off

ProxyPass /names.nsf http://Your_Internal_Server/names.nsf
ProxyPassReverse http://Your_Internal_Server/names.nsf /names.nsf

ProxyPass /domjava/ http://Your_Internal_Server/domjava/
ProxyPassReverse http://Your_Internal_Server/domjava /domjava/

ProxyPass /mail/ http://Your_Internal_Server/mail/
ProxyPassReverse /mail/ http://Your_Internal_Server/mail/

ProxyPass /iNotes/ http://Your_Internal_Server/iNotes/
ProxyPassReverse /iNotes/ http://Your_Internal_Server/iNotes/

ProxyPass /icons/ http://Your_Internal_Server/icons/
ProxyPassReverse /icons/ http://Your_Internal_Server/icons/

Save the file and restart apache with /etc/init.d/apache2 restart.

Type http://Your_Proxy/mail/yourmail.nsf in your browser. After login, your mailfile will be opened.

Not bad for a developer, isn’t it?

For additional reading on how to use Apache as reverse proxy, I recommend: Running a Reverse Proxy in Apache and Configuring iNotes Web Access with a WebSphere Edge reverse proxy server.


Do You Own One Of These Devices?

Nokia E71, Nokia E66, Nokia E90 Communicator, Nokia E70, Nokia E65, Nokia E63, Nokia E62, Nokia E61i, Nokia E61, Nokia E60, Nokia E51, Nokia E50, Nokia N96, Nokia N85, Nokia N79, Nokia N95 8GB, Nokia N95, Nokia N82, Nokia N81 8GB, Nokia N81, Nokia N78, Nokia N77, Nokia N76, Nokia N75, Nokia N73, Nokia N93, Nokia N93i, Nokia N80, Nokia N91, Nokia N92, Nokia N71, Nokia 3250, Nokia 5500, Nokia 6290, Nokia 6110 Navigator, Nokia 6120 Classic, Nokia 6121 Classic, Nokia 6122 Classic, Nokia 6124, Nokia 6650 Fold, Nokia 5320 XpressMusic, Nokia 5700, Nokia 6210 Navigator, Nokia 6220 Classic

These Nokia devices are compatible with IBM Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5. Read this Nokia press release for more information.


How To: Install Webmin on Ubuntu Linux

Webmin is a web-based interface for system administration for Unix. Using any modern web browser, you can setup user accounts, Apache, DNS, file sharing and much more. Webmin removes the need to manually edit Unix configuration files like /etc/passwd, and lets you manage a system from the console or remotely.Currently There is no Webmin package in the Ubuntu repositories.This tutorial will explain how to Install Webmin in Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex

You can install webmin for your server web interface to configure apache2, mysql, FTP servers and many more.
Now we will see how to install webmin in Ubuntu 8.10

I have only a minimal system installed, so some packages are missing and have to be installed before webmin itself can be installed.

Login to the console and execute the following command. This will install the missing packages

sudo aptitude install perl libnet-ssleay-perl openssl libauthen-pam-perl libpam-runtime libio-pty-perl libmd5-perl

No we can download the latest version from sourceforge.net

sudo wget http://garr.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/webadmin/webmin_1.441_all.deb

Now we have webmin_1.441_all.deb package, install this package using the following command

sudo dpkg -i webmin_1.441_all.deb

Ubuntu in particular don’t allow logins by the root user by default. However, the user created at system installation time can use sudo to switch to root. Webmin will allow any user who has this sudo capability to login with full root privileges.

Now you need to open your web browser and enter the following

https://your-server-ip:10000/

That’s all, folks!


Travel cancellation time: Lotusphere and Caribbean

Our company ( an automotive supplier ) will close for almost 4 week from mid december on due to the global financial crisis.

As a result, all employees have to spend their remaining days of vacation for the plant shutdown. So there are no days left for my planned trip to Lotusphere 2009.

I intended to stay the week before Lotusphere in Jamaica together with my SWMBO, then attend Lotusphere the next week, and return to Jamaica for another week before flying back home.

All trips are cancelled now. Sad day today …


Pop3Collect – Version 0.8.0 released

NotesNet.ch recently released version 0.8.0 of Pop3Collect. POP3Collect reads messages from one or more POP3 servers and sends them to an SMTP server (Domino, Exchange, Sendmail or any other compatible SMTP Server).

Version 0.8.0 comes with the following new features

  • Scheduling periods may be specified in the Connection documents to allow specific message scheduling times.
  • Send an email to the administrator if a new POP3 Collect version is available. The recipient will be the first entry found in the Administators field of the server document (Security tab).

Pop3Collect is a great tool and it’s FREEWARE! So, go and get it from here.


View and control your mobile screen on your desktop

The My Mobiler desktop application controls your Windows Mobile device through its Active Sync connection.

What you see in the desktop application is real time and you can interact with your mobile device using the mouse and keyboard as though you were holding the phone in your hand. It has screenshot and video capture capabilities as well as the ability to cut and paste between the phone and desktop environment. The MyMobiler desktop interface even has the ability to emulate the physical keys on the phone which lets you fully interact with the device. My Mobiler is a free download for Windows only.

It’s a great tool for live presentations of traveler and other mobile stuff.

Download