Misc. Ramblings

As warned yesterday, before doing any of the following, understand that there is no warranty whatsoever (insert Disclaimer here). You follow these instructions at your own risk. While they worked for me, it might be because I was facing in the right direction and said the magic words just right. In addition, these instructions assume you are using IPX to access the Netware servers and not IP. While the instructions may be similar, they may or may not be the same. I can't say for sure because we don't use IP to access the Netware servers. And finally, these instructions assume you have at least a minimal understanding of Linux and Netware. If this isn't true, stop now because if you make a mistake, it is possible to screw up not only your PC, but also your Netware network.

That said, a version of CrossOver Office (based on WINE) is included and installed in Xandros Desktop 2.5 Business Edition. I don't know if that is true in the other versions of Xandros so if you aren't using the Business Edition you are on your own.

Inserting the install CD and clicking on the Lotus Notes R5 install file automatically executed CrossOver Office which created a fake Windows environment for Notes to install to. Note here, as I've emphasized several times yesterday, as far as I know, you MUST be running as root for the install to work. If you aren't, the install will run until it's time to copy files to the Netware server. At that point, you will get an error saying the directory is read only.

Otherwise, the Notes install runs and appears just like it does in Windows. However, since I'm using NCPFS to access the Netware servers, and Linux does not use the idea of letters of the alphabet to represent drives (or volumes in the case of Netware) getting to the Data directory of the Netware server is a little different than in Windows. Fortunately, CrossOver Office creates a pseudo "Z:\" drive that you can use to navigate to your mount point (mine is /mnt/netware). From there, you just drill down to wherever your Lotus/Notes/Data directory is found and install to there (assuming you are doing that type of install).

Once the Data directory is identified, the install program begins copying files to there and a fake c:\ directory. The copying across the network to the Netware server seems substantially slower than in Windows. In fact, it took more than five minutes but eventually finished. It's a good thing you only need to do this once!

Once the installation is completed, you access Notes by clicking on Launch --> Windows Applications --> Programs --> Lotus Applications --> Lotus Notes. The Notes client should then start-up and you will need to do an initial configuration, as you would in Windows (again remembering the fake Z: drive is where you start to navigate from).

Once configured, the Notes client operates as it would under Windows. Although, screen updates are slower, but not so slow that it's unbearable. I did see one strange thing, when I first sent a test message, I used the network address book to lookup a name. I found the name, but when it pasted in to the "To:" section of the email, all I got was %#$@W%$!. I'm not sure why that happened and when I tried it again I didn't have that problem.

Otherwise, I am very pleased that Lotus Notes is running under a version of Linux. The final barrier to switching from Windows, for me anyway, is getting a replacement for Office that can translate Word and WordPerfect files better than StarOffice 7 or OpenOffice currently does. I understand that OpenOffice 2 will be out in Q2 so perhaps the wait is not long.

One last note, before you shut down, you MUST use the ncpumount -A command to unmount your netware connection. If you don't, and you then reboot and try to login via Windows, your Netware server may still see you as logged in and therefore refuse to let you login again. I know this runs counter to what one How-To says but it's wrong (at least in our environment). Linux does NOT cleanly unmount your connection when you shutdown. You must do that yourself before you shutdown. So use the above command to logout of all Netware connections before you shutdown.

Aloha!