Blair Armeau

A quick and easy guide to installing Domino on Linux

By Mark Lawson

This page originally found at http://www.dominopower.com/issues/issue199911/linux001.html

When Lotus placed their Sneak Preview (SPI) of Domino for Linux on Notes.Net in August of this year, I’m sure even they were surprised that 50,000 people chose to download it — considering each download was a non-trivial 130MB. This gives some indication of the scale of the interest in Linux, both as an alternative platform in its own right and as a platform for Domino.

Recently, at Lotusphere ’99 in Berlin, Lotus announced the second release of the software, Sneak Preview II (SPII), which has fixed several of the problems associated with the initial version. What scares many people away from taking the plunge and trying SPII out is the steep learning curve associated with Linux, especially if your interest is Domino-on-the-platform rather than the platform itself. This article shows you how to install and setup SPII on a spare PC in less than one hour, with no Linux knowledge. From there you can explore and decide whether you want to invest further time in learning Linux as a Domino platform. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Of course, if you’re already a Linux wizard, you’re already halfway home.

Things you need to have first

Since you don’t get the Notes/Domino client or administration software with SPII, you are obliged to have at least two PCs available and connected via TCP/IP: one with the client and administrator installed, the other the target for Linux.

Moving on, the target box must be a Pentium class machine with at least 64 MB of RAM (128 MB is recommended) and 1 GB of disk storage. We used a retired P200 workstation with a 2 GB disk and upgraded it to 96 MB of RAM.

On the software side you need a copy of a Linux distribution. RedHat 6.0 works out of the box so this is a good choice if you don’t have a strong opinion either way. We used Mandrake Linux, which is based on RedHat 6.0, from The Linux Emporium (at http://www.linux-emporium.co.uk/). This distribution costs the princely sum of £2 or US$3.25 (CD only).

You also need a copy of the Notes/Domino server software, either downloaded as a tar file from Notes.Net or on CD from Lotus. If you download it and you don’t have a fast link, you might find it drops out on you halfway. A tip here is to have a word with your local ISP and see if they’ll do it for you for a nominal fee. Another idea is to install GetRight (available from http://getright.com/). This nifty program is quite stubborn about downloads — it restores failed downloads and keeps working at it until the entire file is on your hard drive.

Installing Linux (20 minutes)

First off, if you haven’t already, install Linux on your target PC. I’ve outlined the main points below:

• If you can’t boot from CD, create a boot floppy (see installation documents).
• Boot the soon-to-be Linux box and, when asked, choose “Server” as the installation option, it will then install all the appropriate software.
• Set up the network as you would in Windows, i.e. IP address, etc. I include this as a single bullet item, but assume there will be some poking around the system before you get this right. Once you can ping the box, you’ll know you succeeded.
• Set up X-Windows, but don’t worry if it’s not perfect. Say No to the “Start Automatically” question.
• When asked for an “ordinary user” name, choose “notes”. You’ll need this for the Domino installation later on.
• When the PC reboots, log in as “root”.
• Type “setup” and disable the http task in “System Services” if you want to use the http task in Domino instead of Apache (Apache, a popular Web server, launches by default in most Linux releases).
• Once you restart the PC by typing “shutdown -r now”, you’re done.

Installing Domino (40 minutes)

I’ll assume you have the Domino software on CD. If you don’t, you’ll want to transfer the software to the Linux box. You can do this using FTP or Samba (see “Sharing Linux drives with Samba”, elsewhere in this issue).

Let’s install Domino on your Linux box:

• Place the CD in the drive and log in as root if you haven’t already done so. Make sure you’ve got your cursor at a shell prompt. If you’re in X-Windows or some other shell, you can launch a Shell tool, or quite to the basic command-line shell.
• Type “mount /dev/cdrom” to mount the CD. You should hear it spin up.
• Type “df” to get a list of partitions and how much space is available in each. By default, the install tries to put the program and data in /opt/lotus and /local/notesdata respectively. The listing below shows what partitions are in what directory trees and in our case this would mean cramming both partitions into 136 MB.

Filesystem	Size	Used	Avail	Use%	Mounted on
/dev/hda8	250M	100M	136M	42%	/
/dev/hda1	17M	782k	15M	5%	/boot
/dev/hda6	638M	165M	440M	27%	/home
/dev/hda5	638M	275M	330M	46%	/usr
/dev/hda7	250M	6.3M	230M	3%	/var

• From the list we could see that /home/notesdata would be better for the Notes data in order to have enough room for some databases.
• From the prompt type “/mnt/cdrom/linux/install” and follow the prompts to install the software. Notice that the “notes” user you created earlier will own the software.
• Once the installation is complete, logout as “root” and then log back in as “notes”.
• Change to your notes data directory. In other words, type “cd /home/notesdata” or “cd /local/notesdata” if you installed into the default directory.
• Now type “/opt/lotus/bin/http httpsetup.” When the program starts starts, go to your other PC, start up your Web browser and open the URL http://<linux_box_ip_address>:8081. (Of course, replace <linux_box_ip_address> with the actual IP number). You should get the Domino server Setup screen that we’re all familiar with. Set up the server as usual.
• If created, the Cert.ID and Server.ID will have been placed in the Notes data directory. Your Admin user ID will have been attached to your document in Names.NSF
• Once set up, go back to the Linux server and type “/opt/lotus/bin/server” and watch it start up. Note you don’t get the “>” prompt on the console but don’t worry, you can just type commands as normal.
• If you didn’t choose to have Domino start the http task automatically, then type “start http” at the console. Next, use your browser to open http://<linux_box_ip_address>:8081/names.nsf and detach the user ID from your document.

The “:8081″ syntax is a special case that allows you to set up the server over the Web by running the http task in this special “standalone” mode. Once the server is set up the http task is just loaded like any other task (usually automatically) and takes no parameters.

The Apache Web server is the default in Linux as IIS is on NT. You can choose to disable Apache (as I suggest in a previous section) or move the port number Domino uses to something else, say :8080, using the Administrator. In fact the latter is often the preferred mode, as many people looking at Domino want to take advantage of the good things in Apache and forwarding appropriate .NSF requests to Domino (in the same way that people use the IIS/Domino combination in Windows).

Now you can switch to this ID and use your Client and Administrator as normal from your PC.

Congratulations, you’re done!

Conclusion

I hope this has given you the confidence to try out Domino on Linux. Although it’s complicated by the Windows standard, the reliability is very high and the cost negligible. Linux is set to grow as a server choice that can only be good for the Domino market. All in all, it’s a platform worth getting to know.

• Product availability and resourcesThe Notes.Net site is the primary site for the downloadable software and a good discussion group with support issues and porting information to other flavors of Linux at \http://www.notes.net/linux (you’ll have to register).
• Mandrake and other flavors of Linux are available from the Linux Emporium at http://www.linux-emporium.co.uk/.
• GetRight is available from http://getright.com. Mark Lawson is MD of Electric Memo Ltd., who specialize in Lotus Notes solutions. He can be reached at markl@electricmemo.com