Backup solution for Ubuntu

I was looking for a good-enough backup solution for Ubuntu. After a few minutes of googling I settled for Back In Time http://backintime.le-web.org/ .

It wonderful, I can set it to backup my software every hour (or more, or less). Which keeps med happy. Sometime I do stupid thing like edit a document and press Ctrl-A and then enter, and then Ctrl-S and I dont realize this until the next time I open the document again.

It keeps snapshots of the filesystem. So that I can go back to every hour since it started. Never again loose a document!

It a one-click-install on ubuntu. And then create a folder, for example, Backups in your home directory. Then in Back in Time select which folder to backup and how often, and where the backups should go.

Customizing Sametime Connect Entry 8.5

The IBM Lotus products are sometimes a bit messy to customize. Many customers want a silent installations that does-the-whole-job, which includes:

• Hard coded server address
• Swedish dictionary
• Some features on or off by default

I have created several packages of Lotus Notes, Lotus Symphony and recently Lotus Sametime.

The problem with Lotus Sametime (as with Lotus Symphony) is that there are many undocumented features. And doing even the simplest thing can be troublesome. Also the manual sometimes contains outdated information. Whats good about customizing Lotus Sametime is that it is only text files that needs to be editied. It’s not like when customizing Lotus Notes where the buggy (but useful) InstallShield Tuner for Lotus Notes has to be used.

Anyway, this is how I did it:

1. using “optional-components-update-site.zip” i extracted the 2 dictionary files and included them in the Sametime Connect installfiles

2. Updated site.xml (copying information from site.xml in the above zip-file)

3. Updated install.xml (the tricky part, and I copyed the line from the american dictionary and modifyed it)

4. Updated install.xml to include Outlook integration

5. Updated silentinstall.ini

6. Updated plugin_customization.ini

I ran into two major issues doing this package:

1. Dictionary refuse to install and leaving the whole installation broken
2. Interface language still enlish even though “silentinstall.ini” explicitly says swedish

To solve part 1 I had to dig into the logfiles, and finally I found out that it had something to do with signing. However I found a solution:

Installing the spell checker (dictionary) on Sametime Connect or integrated Sametime in Notes 8 http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21260550 which contains this information:

Note: After updating the install.xml file to point to those jar files, you might receive the following error message: SEVERE CWPST1015W: Plugin com.ibm.langware.v5.dic.es_ES.feature_5.3.1.9-200810091628 failed to install. The reason provided is CWPST1001W: No signature found

com.ibm.rcp.security.internal.update

And the solution is to add this to [installdir]/deploy/plugin_customization.ini

# settings for enabling PKI based provisioning security

com.ibm.rcp.security.update/VERIFICATION_LISTENER=com.ibm.rcp.security.update.DefaultVerificationListener

com.ibm.rcp.security.update/EXPIRED_SIGNATURE_POLICY=ALLOW

com.ibm.rcp.security.update/UNSIGNED_PLUGIN_POLICY=ALLOW

com.ibm.rcp.security.update/UNTRUSTED_SIGNATURE_POLICY=ALLOW

Part 2 was a little bit trickier.

The installation command was not correct. After a lot of testing, this is what I used:

msiexec /i setup.msi /Lv install.log /qn SETUPEXEDIR=”MY_SETUP_DIR” INSTALLDIR=”C:\Program Files\IBM\Lotus\Sametime Connect” STSILENTINIFILE=”silentinstall.ini” STSILENTINSTALL=TRUE

Welcome Ubuntu One

Ubuntu is incredible in many ways. One of them is 2GB free storage in the cloud.

It’s very easy to install. Just start it from System->Preferences

You can attach several computers to your free account, so that /home/username/Ubuntu One will contain identical files across two or more computers.

Fully functional Lotus Domino Administrator in Linux

Yes we are finally here.

The Lotus Domino Administrator does work in Linux –  Since when?  – It recently just started working for me. Maybe it was 8.5.1 FixPack 1 which did the trick, or it was Wine version 1.1.39.

The Lotus Domino Administrator has worked partly before. But I was never enable to open the “console”, because the application would then crash immediately. Now this works!

Anyhow, this is how I did it.

Needed tools:

Ubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.04 64bit alpha3

Wine version 1.1.39

Lotus Domino Administrator 8.5.1FP1 for windows

Procedure:

1) Make sure that Wine 1.1.39 is installed. If unsure, pick upp the Terminal and write “wine –version”. If not 1.1.39 or later, then either go to http://www.winehq.org or install via “UbuntuTweak”.

2) Copy the installation files from Windows. For example, if the Domino Administrator is installed in C:\Program Files\IBM\Lotus\Notes\ (in windows)  then copy this folder into your home-folder (in linux). For example /home/username/Notes

Now the Data-catalog is located in /home/username/Notes/Data (check to se if its there, also check if leading character is a “D” or a “d”).

3) Update notes.ini

Open up /home/username/Notes/notes.ini in a text editor.

Now replace Directory=C:\program files\ibm\lotus\notes\Data with /home/username/Notes/Data

Also, all lines that referr to C:\something – remove them all!  Only the above line is important. If unsure, you can try to convert them all to “linux” path, but the above worked for me.

4) Fire up Lotus Domino Administrator and watch the magic.

cd /home/usernamne/Notes

wine admin.exe

5) Optional:

Create a start up script admin.sh. Mine looks like this:

cd /home/username/Notes
WINEDLLOVERRIDES=”mfc42=n,msvcp60=n,oleacc=n” wine admin.exe

I run the script this this command “sh admin.sh”.

Here is the result:

Favourite Ubuntu applications/tools

Tools like Firefox, OpenOffice, Nautilus, Gimp etc are excellent and builtin. These tools are installed separately.

1) Ubuntu Tweak http://ubuntu-tweak.com/

The most imporant tool is Ubuntu Tweak,  with this useful utility its possible to:

a) Change the look

b) Change the behaviour

c) Install more applications

d) Install newer applications

When I have installed Ubuntu (or Linux Mint or Easy Peasy) this is the first tool I install. It is also the key to install some of the applications mentioned below.

2) Shutter http://shutter-project.org/

Screenshot tool with editing abilities. Its way better than Snagit (a popular windows only product)
– remember to install “libgoo-canvas-perl” to be able to edit images

3) Virtualbox homepage: http://www.virtualbox.org/

Virtaulization made easy. Its way faster than VMWare Workstation and its also well integrated into Ubuntu Desktop.

– Tip: If you want to create blazingly fast Windows XP machines, then remember to install Intel AHCI drivers into guest operating system and switch from IDE to SATA in Virtualbox.

3) Pidgin http://www.pidgin.im/

Even though Empathy is maturing to a better product everyday, I still use Pidgin, because everything just works.
– Tip: install “facebookchat-pidgin” to chat with your facebook friends.

4) VLC http://www.videolan.org/
– Excellent Mediaplayer. I use it watching movies and listening to radio.

5) Chrome browser http://www.google.com/chrome
Faster than firefox, but does not have the same pleothora of plugins. Good as a compliment to firefox

6) FileZilla http://filezilla-project.org/

Supports all protocols (ssh, ftp, ftps, etc)

7) Docky http://do.davebsd.com/wiki/Docky

MacOSx-alike taskbar that goes way beyond. Requires “Window Composing” to be enabled though.

8 ) Krusader http://www.krusader.org/

Im used to Total Commander for Windows, and this is an excellent replacement.

9) Wine http://www.winehq.org/

Useful to run som basic and important Windows applications: for example Lotus Domino Administrator, Notespad++, Wordfinder

Installing Lotus Notes 8.5.1 FP1 on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx 64bit

There is an excellent source for installation of Lotus Notes on Ubuntu 8.04 here.

Anyway, this is how I installed Lotus Notes 8.5.1 FP1 Swedish on Ubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.04 64bit alpha3.

1) Prerequisites:
sudo apt-get install libgnomeprintui2.2-0 ia32-libs ttf-xfree86-nonfree

2) Package CZ931SV.tar is downloaded from IBM PartnerWorld and extracted, here are the files:
$ ls
activities.sv.sh
cae.sv.sh
ibm-lotus-activities-8.5.1.i586.deb
ibm-lotus-activities-nl2-8.5.1.i586.deb
ibm-lotus-cae-8.5.1.i586.deb
ibm-lotus-notes-8.5.1.i586.deb
ibm-lotus-notes-core-sv-8.5.1.i586.deb
ibm-lotus-notes-nl2-8.5.1.i586.deb
ibm-lotus-sametime-8.5.1.i586.deb
ibm-lotus-symphony-8.5.1.i586.deb
ibm-lotus-symphony-nl2-8.5.1.i586.deb
notes.sv.sh
sametime.sv.sh
smartupgrade.sh
symphony.sv.sh

Using the Terminal, go to the folder with the files and run this command:

sudo dpkg -i –force-all ibm-lotus-notes-8.5.1.i586.deb ibm-lotus-notes-core-sv-8.5.1.i586.deb ibm-lotus-notes-nl2-8.5.1.i586.deb ibm-lotus-cae-8.5.1.i586.deb ibm-lotus-activities-8.5.1.i586.deb ibm-lotus-activities-nl2-8.5.1.i586.deb ibm-lotus-sametime-8.5.1.i586.deb

3) Now its time for fixpack 1, this file is also downloaded from wither IBM Partnerworld or IBM FixCentral. Here are the contents:
$ ls
ibm_lotus_notes_fixpack-8.5.1.i586.deb
ibm_lotus_notes_fixpack.sh

sudo dpkg -i –force-all ibm_lotus_notes_fixpack-8.5.1.i586.deb

Now Lotus Notes 8.5.1 FP1 is installed. But this version in not 100% compatible with Lucid Lynx, there are still a few steps.

No love from Lotus Notes:
:/opt/ibm/lotus/notes/framework$ ../notes
../notes: error while loading shared libraries: libgnomeprint-2-2.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

4) Installing compatibility libraries part 1:

cd /tmp
wget http://frozenfox.freehostia.com/cappy/getlibs-all.deb
sudo dpkg -i getlibs-all.deb
sudo getlibs -p libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprint2.2-0 libgnomevfs2-0 libgnomeui-0 libxkbfile1 libstartup-notification0 libsepol1 libselinux1 libgsf-1-114 libgsf-1-dev librsvg2-2 librsvg2-common libavahi-client3 libavahi-common3 libavahi-glib1 libbonoboui2-0 libcroco3 libdbus-1-3 libdbus-glib-1-2  libgnome2-0 libgnomecanvas2-0 libgnome-keyring0 libgnome-menu2 libesd0 gtk2-engines-murrine gtk2-engines libgnome-desktop-2-17

Note: There might be other dependencies, but these are enough to get the client going.

Now we get more love Lotus notes, but were not there yet:
:/opt/ibm/lotus/notes/framework$ ../notes

Gives this:

5) Installing compatibility libraries part 2:

(Edit 2010-06-02. The links here are dead. So download from here instead: http://linux-aha.de/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/notes_libs_karmic.tgz , then extract the files to /tmp folder and copy as described below. I hope to find a new link where download is just as easy as the commands below)

(Edit 2010-07-06. On Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat Alpha 2 and Lotus Notes 8.5.1 with fixpack 3, these files are not needed at all. Maybe it is the same under Lucid Lynx?)

cd /tmp
wget http://www.benkevan.com/upload/lotus_notes/libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0
wget http://www.benkevan.com/upload/lotus_notes/libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0
wget http://www.benkevan.com/upload/lotus_notes/libgdk_pixbuf_xlib-2.0.so.0
wget http://www.benkevan.com/upload/lotus_notes/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0
sudo mv *.so.0 /opt/ibm/lotus/notes

6) OpenWith

sudo mv /opt/ibm/lotus/notes/openwith /opt/ibm/lotus/notes/openwith.orig
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/gvfs-open /opt/ibm/lotus/notes/openwith

At this point Lotus Notes gives a lot of love but it is not complete. See the looks of scrollbars etc. It’s very blocky. The error message seems to be:
(<unknown>:23164): Gtk-WARNING **: GModule (/usr/lib32/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/engines/libmurrine.so) initialization check failed: Gtk+ version too old (micro mismatch)

Final version:

Hopefully IBM will release 8.5.2 (expected Q3) as a fully compatible version with Lucid Lynx. Also, I’m hoping for a version that is fully compatible with 64bit out-of-the-box, doing the getlibs-thing and “–force-all”  isn’t exactly user friendly.

Maybe if IBM could cooperate with Ubuntu and put Lotus Notes into the “partner” repository, so that a simple mouse click would install it?  IBM did this for Lotus Symphony 1.1 32bit.

Note: I still use english locale. So user interface is in english.

Update:

These instructions are still valid with Lucid Lynx RC1 and also for Lotus Notes Fixpack 2.

I updated the getlibs command with libgnome-desktop-2-17

Tip: Remeber to tweak it

1) sudo nano /opt/ibm/lotus/notes/framework/rcp/deploy/jvm.properties

– change vmarg.Xmx=-Xmx256m to vmarg.Xmx=-Xmx1024m

2)  nano /home/anders/lotus/notes/data/notes.ini

– put in Create_R85_Databases=1

Update 2:

8.5.2 will behave better! :)

Look at:  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gtk+2.0/+bug/398250/comments/30

Just wanted to note that I’m currently on Lotus Notes 8.5.2 Beta and the problem has been resolved :o)

Running GTK 2.18.6 I’ve tested.. yay

Update 3:

Icons on buttons and in menus were removed in Ubuntu 10.04 to remove clutter. This can easily be enabled again. To get icons in menus and on buttons:

Press Alt and F2 (at the same time) then run gconf-editor and browse to: /Desktop/Gnome/Interface/, in there set menus_have_icons and buttons_have_icons to true.

Changes wille have effect immediately:

Icons in menus:

Icons on buttons:

Update 4 (2010-05-26)

http://www.benkevan.com seems to be down a the moment. And I cannot upload files here since wordpress blocks anything that is not media. Sorry for this.

Also, gnome-open is replaced by gvfs-open. Because gvfs-open should handle things better.

Update 5 (2010-06-02)

http://www.benkevan.com is still down. So a helpful reader provided this link instead http://linux-aha.de/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/notes_libs_karmic.tgz

Update 6 (2010-07-08)

Im testing out Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat Apha 2 and on that I have installed Lotus Notes 8.5.1 and fixpack 3. And I do not need the benkevan libraries no more. It works anyway.