JoeLitton.net

Ubuntu and Notes 8.5.1 - how to configure

Joe Litton — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:03:54 -0400

All of the Lotusphere 2010 backpacks included a CD that can be used to install the Ubuntu operating system alongside - or in place of - Windows. On Wednesday night during Lotusphere, I used that CD to put a clean installation on the laptop on which I'm currently typing. It took about 30 minutes to replace Windows XP Pro with Ubuntu 9.10. After that, I also installed Notes (not part of the CD from the backpack). Please note that as of this writing, Notes 8.5.1 will not run properly on Ubuntu 9.10 without a couple of adjustments (adding some font files and 4 library files). More on that in a moment, but first some suggestions for tweaks to do immediately after installing Ubuntu.

If one uses the CD from the Lotusphere backpack, Ubuntu is installed, and the Symphony suite (word processing, presentations, and spreadsheet) is also installed...along with an icon linking to LotusLive and a couple of icons to use to access documentation and instructional videos that are installed. You may want to make a few additional adjustments; the links below are from excellent documentation posted by others.

I suggest that you Install the Java Runtime Environment first. Then have a look at the Top 10 Things That You Need to Do After Installing Hardy Heron -- the suggestions in that posting seem to me to still be valid in the current 9.10 Karmic Koala version of Ubuntu.

Once any desired customizations are done from the above links, it's time to get Notes working (if you have access to a licensed Notes install file). As listed in a posting on developerWorks, you will want to add some needed fonts. Issue this command from a Terminal prompt:
  sudo apt-get install ttf-xfree86-nonfree
Next, add some needed library files. To do this, download this compressed file: http://linux-aha.de/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/notes_libs_karmic.tgz. The 4 files in that compressed archive file need to be extracted, set with proper permissions and with root ownership, and copied to the /opt/ibm/lotus/notes folder. To change the ownership, open a terminal window, navigate to the folder where the 4 files have been extracted, and for each file, execute the following command (in place of "" type or paste the name of the file - without the angle brackets):
  sudo chown root:root
To set the file permissions to the needed values, issue the following command for each of the 4 files:
  sudo chmod 755
Then copy the 4 files to the /opt/ibm/lotus/notes folder.

Your mileage may vary, but these steps gave me a nice solid Ubuntu install, and allowed the Notes 8.5.1 client to run happily.

Reminder: First Linux Installfest at Lotusphere2010

Joe Litton — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:25:27 -0400

Linux Installfest at LS10!
Date: Thursday, 21 Jan
Time: 12:30pm - 1:30pm; right between GURUpalooza and Ask the Developers; you can bring your box lunch
Room: Dolphin 6111 -- Central Elevator bank

Do you have Linux running at home and have questions on installing Lotus products on your machine? Do you have questions on Linux or how to install the conference CD provided in your bag? Are you curious about Linux and have usage questions or concerns? Then come to the Installfest!

Joe Litton (Twitter: joelitton) and Bill Malchisky (Twitter: BillMalchisky) will host the first focused install festival (i.e. Installfest) at Lotusphere. We will specifically provide two types of assistance:

(1) Installing a new Linux desktop and the IBM Client for Smart Work, which includes Ubuntu 9.10 onto machines
(2) Installing Lotus Notes, Symphony, Sametime Connect, etc. for those attendees that have a Linux build already but would like some guidance

Note:
Red Hat has generously provided Live Discs for all attendees
Canonical has generously provided additional copies of Ubuntu 9.10 and the IBM Client for Smart Work

We look forward to seeing you on Thursday! Have a great Lotusphere conference.

Linux Installfest at Lotusphere

Joe Litton — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 17:24:47 -0400

What: Linux Installfest at Lotusphere (various flavors of linux)
When: Thursday (21Jan2010) 12:30pm
Where: Dolphin Hotel, Suite 6111

If you are interested in seeing linux running on a PC with Notes, or want to pick up some free media to use to install it, or try installing live, or might like to talk to someone about linux on the desktop or on the server ...then please come and join Bill Malchisky and me (Joe Litton) on Thursday. This is a completely unofficial happening. We're slotting this after GURUpalooza and before Ask the Developers, so this won't conflict with anything (except travel plans, if you're one of those folks who abandon Lotusphere before the last few hours of Lotusphere goodness have concluded!).

Bill is very experienced with Red Hat, Suse, Ubuntu and more and can discuss client and server implementations with great authority.

I am not nearly as knowledgeable as Bill, yet even I have installed and upgraded many versions of Ubuntu on my Dell netbook, Toshiba laptop, and Gateway desktop machines, beginning with version 6 several years ago (the latest is 9.10). I am walking, semi-talking proof that you do not need to be a linux guru to happily install and run linux as your operating system of choice.

So when you're done garnering those last gems from GURUpalooza, pop over to Dolphin Suite 6111 and check out what the free and open source linux world might offer you!

B.A.L.D. (Bloggers and friends Annual Lotusphere Dinner): Sat 16Jan2010, 3:30pm onward

Joe Litton — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 16:20:01 -0400

The 2010 edition of the Bloggers Annual Lotusphere Dinner (BALD) will again spontaneously erupt at Big River Grille & Brewing Works on the Disney Boardwalk, starting at 3:30pm. If you want to come but can't make it until 4pm or 5pm or 6pm or ....no worries. Just show up if you care to and when you care to and look for the geeks with beer. This is intended as a purely fun and social and informal gathering. You do not need to be a blogger. You do not need to be bald (but of couse, as any bald guy will tell you, bald is quite attractive. 'Course I didn't start saying that until I was bald.)

Suggestion: Please consider bringing cash if you can. If you and whoever else is at your table can consolidate and pay your ticket as cash and as a single ticket, that is MUCH easier on the servers. Each year we have more folks (somewhere around 100 last year), and if people are wanting to pay individually with a credit card, it causes a bit of stress for the staff (each credit card purchase must be authorized, and so it causes quite a delay when there are 10 or 20 credit cards needing to be authorized!) These folks work hard, so let's try to help them help us to have a good time. Remember, the quicker they can process the payments, the quicker they can bring refills :) ...As the evening comes on, folks typically then migrate over to the ESPN club just a bit down the Boardwalk for Turtle's party.

Looking forward to seeing everyone. Don't be shy, please just show up and join your fellow geeks. It's really a quite friendly bunch.

Teamstudio tools for Notes 8.5.1 - now implemented as Widgets

Joe Litton — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 16:07:44 -0400

Hey! Teamstudio's latest version of their tools (Edition 25, for Notes 8.5.1) is implemented as Widgets. How cool is that? As illustrated in the pic to the left (click the thumbnail to see a reasonably-sized version), to install one of the tools, you simply go to the Teamstudio download page, and then drag the desired tool Widget to your Widgets panel in the Notes client (you do need to restart Notes for the tool to be available). FYI, one does need to have a valid license for the selected tool in order for it to actually work; you are prompted for the serial number and license key the first time you activate a given tool.

I've used Teamstudio tools for many years. Since there are so many changes with Designer 8.5.1, I'd figured it would be a bit of work for Teamstudio to adapt their tools. It's wonderful to see that the updates include taking advantage of the Widget capabilities. THIS is the future of tools integration. Very cool.

Gmail outage: not universal problem, down 12 hrs so far (Tue 30 June 2009)

Joe Litton — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:12:36 -0400

For about the past 12 hours (so far) Gmail has been unavailable for me. I suspect the server that houses my mail is down ...badly, horribly down. If you click the thumbnail image to the left, you'll see a screen shot of the error. The symptoms are that I attempt to sign on, and after several minutes (I timed it at about 3.5 minutes) an error screen finally displays. I've tested this at work during the day and at home this evening. I've tested using Windows, Mac, and Linux machines, using various versions of IE and Firefox. And I've tried accessing Gmail from my BlackBerry. I can log on to iGoogle, but not to Gmail. My wife's account is fine.

The error that displays is: Temporary Error (500), Numeric Code 93. From what I've found searching the net, this is an issue that has hit others at various times, and appears to affect just those unlucky enough to have their mail on an affected server.

So... for now I have no personal email. Others hit with this issue in the past have written of Gmail being inaccessible for anywhere from a few hours to several days. Well it's been 12 hours for me so far; hopefully things will be working by tomorrow. And I will definitely configure Evolution on my home machine (Ubuntu OS) once I can get to my Gmail settings to enable POP.

This also makes me painfully aware of the issues that may present themselves to those who dive headfirst into cloud computing. Gmail is free, so I can't really complain too much; it's been great for me for years -- until today. But I would very seriously consider how to mitigate the risks before I would run a business based on applications in the cloud!

Dell Mini 9 - LOVING this little Ubuntu netbook

Joe Litton — Tue, 3 Mar 2009 20:50:37 -0400

I've posted a few pics on Flickr ...showing mainly the quick 6 setup screens. Notes 8.5 screams on this little guy. I don't know if it's the 2GB of RAM or the solid state drive, but it's definitely the fastest I've seen Notes 8.5 run. Really the only thing I don't like (and this does really bother me) is that the apostrophe key is down on the bottom row ...2nd key to the right of the spacebar. OK, they just weren't trying on that placement. C'mon! ...I have no idea HOW many times in the past week I've been typing and have hit the Enter key instead of the apostrophe.

Since I'm a little guy with little-girl-size fingers, the keyboard feels just fine to me. And no problem at ALL for the apps. Of course, I've been playing with Ubuntu for a while. But NOW, this IS my main home machine. And I'm totally digging it :)

Joining the Netbook camp

Joe Litton — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 13:22:01 -0400

I've ordered a Dell Mini 9

Back in early October of 2005, I ordered my current laptop, a Toshiba A75-S213 (P4 3.33GHz, 1GB RAM, 100 GB HD, Windows XP Pro, 15.4" display, weight: 7.9 pounds, battery life: 1 hr if lucky). And I purchased a 3 year warranty. The extended warranty expired 4 months ago, so the laptop is starting to die. Since I have a laptop from work, and I've got a desktop machine that I'm rehabilitating, I decided to get a machine that would meet my needs when travelling (not really all that much travel), and more importantly allow me to sit in the family room or outside with Shirley as we each geek away ...without the blasted machine dying on me due to its poor battery life or its advanced age.

So I decided to research netbooks - the drastically shrunken laptops that have become the rage. Among my requirements: it had to be lightweight, quick to startup, silent, and I did not want to pay for MS Windows, since the machine was going to run Ubuntu. Microsoft prevents a netbook Windows system from using more than 1GB of RAM, so I ideally wanted a system that came preinstalled with Ubuntu and that would allow me to have more RAM. The Dell Mini gets great reviews and meets all of my requirements. I was hoping to spend less than I did - especially since the base price of the Mini is US$259. After popping on a 64GB solid state hard drive (US$150), portable CD/DVD (US$80), bumping the stock 512MB of RAM up to 2GB (US$75), springing for a 1.3M pixel webcam (US$25), and electing to purchase a 2 year extended warranty (US$39) ...with tax and shipping the grand total came in at US$620 (for those doing the math, a program through my employer gave me a small discount, so the $620 total is less than what it would have been otherwise). Given that I paid US$1415 for the Toshiba over 3 years ago, the $620 is OK!

The weirdest thing will probably be getting used to the difference in size, weight, and noise. The pic here shows my current Toshiba monster of a laptop. The paper on top of it is the size of the Dell Mini :) ...quite a difference. The mini, of course has a much smaller screen, but since I don't plan to do a lot of development on there (I will do some), that will be fine. The mini is over 5.5 pounds lighter than the Toshiba, and it's battery should last about 4 hours, vs the 1 hour I get out of the Toshiba (when the Toshiba doesn't die even WITH remaining battery power).

I thought about this quite a while and read a fair amount before deciding to go for it. It should arrive in a couple of weeks. This will be interesting :)

Verizon BlackBerry Storm after 1 month: grade: B

Joe Litton — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:01:54 -0400

I've now had the Storm for a bit over one month. My prior BlackBerry was a Curve. Overall, I give the new Storm a 'B' grade...and I think it will be an 'A' after another OS upgrade or two.

There's a definite learning curve, but it only took me about an hour to be accustomed to a touch screen. Helping Shirley configure the Curve (she opted to replace her Pearl with my now-discarded Curve), I found myself already trying to select items on the screen using my finger. The real learning was in getting used to the typing on the faux keyboard. There are postings on a few web sites suggesting Option settings to tune the typing. For me, these settings work best:

Select Options > Screen/Keyboard, scroll down to the Touchscreen section, and set Tap Interval = 600, Hover Period = 700, Swipe Sensitivity = (High) 6. Experimentation is the key here. The other thing that improved the feel of the keyboard tremendously, was to pop off the battery cover, trim 2 business cards to the size of the battery, and place the trimmed card stock on top of the battery (between the battery and the cover). This suggestion is posted on CrackBerry. As with the Option settings, one should definitely experiment.

OK, so here's what I like:

It's a BlackBerry. My Notes mail and calendar from work synch effortlessly and wirelessly as long as I have a BlackBerry
Beautiful large display. This is far and away the reason why I prefer this device
The touch screen is easy to use for navigation
Tight integration with other apps like Facebook, Flickr, YouTube
Great phone coverage from Verizon
Notes mail on the Storm displays with colors, renders tables, etc.
I can open (or God forbid, edit) Excel, Word, and Powerpoint files
The camera is 3.2 megapixel, so it takes some decent pics
Did I mention the incredible display?

And a few things I don't like:

From time to time it will just reboot..sort of like a BSOD, but at least it restarts itself. Happens a couple of times a week.
Had to buy a new BlueTooth headset (Motorola H710 works nicely)
The camera. What the heck?!?! A glacier will pass by and melt in the time it takes to snap a single pic. It literally takes several seconds for a picture to snap.

There's a software upgrade coming in a few weeks (RIM releases it, then Verizon tests it for a bit before releasing) that should improve some issues. So overall, I really like this device. Those few little irritants that I listed are what keep me from giving it an 'A', but I will be keeping this BlackBerry.

Best part of Lotusphere: sharing intense learning with fellow curious colleagues

Joe Litton — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0400

It struck me this evening that the best part of Lotusphere is the combination of taking in SO much information - learning such an incredible amount - and sharing that experience with so many other curious people.

We're geeks in order to earn a living, yes, but also in large part because there is so much joy to be found in exploring and learning. It is the nature of the human existence to constantly seek for more and more. Whether that 'more' is knowledge or money or love or anything else, we are not happy if nothing ever changes. We crave growth (as much as we may sometimes fear change). Lotusphere offers an intense opportunity to learn from the research of many brilliant colleagues - and to share this wonderful week with others who also yearn to constantly expand their knowledge.

I was thinking earlier about going back to the office tomorrow. At our regular jobs, few of us have the opportunity to be researching and diving deep into new realms every single day. We may not be mired in a world of TPS reports, a la Office Space, but we do all nonetheless have a certain degree of routine to our normal work days. That routine is pleasantly disrupted by the frenzy that is Lotusphere, and joyously shared with a few thousand close friends. And I am already missing it and looking forward to Lotusphere 2010.