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 …

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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 ).

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!

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.