Thomas Hampel

 28 May 2011
Here the problem:
You want to create a new replica of an existing database on a server which you are responsible for, you are not allowed to access the remote server.
Not having access means your user ID is e.g. in an access deny group, or in a more simple scenario a firewall is blocking direct access.

However, how would you pull a new replica from the remote server down to yours?

The answer is simple - you can set up a replica stub on your server without the need of accessing the remote server.
here is a short description how to get this done
1.        Switch to your workspace, make sure you have no database selected.
2.        Use File\Replication\New Replica
3.        Type the Servername + Filename >from< which you want to pull the replica.

4.        Click "Select"
Now your client will try to connect to the remote server, which of course wont work.

5.        A dialog box will display, showing an incomplete question
< img src="../dx/ReplicaNewSelect.jpg/$FILE/ReplicaNewSelect.jpg" alt="Unable to find path to server" title="Unable to find path to server" >  
Here you have to select "Yes" without knowing what the question actually means.
Note: Obviously thats a bug, but it seems that it has not been fixed yet.
6.        Choose to which server you want to put the replica, also define a file name of your choice.
7.        Disable "Create Immediately"

8.        Hit okay to create an uninitialized replica stub
9.        Last and final step is to replicate this database on console level using the command:
>pull remoteserver/ou/o localpath/filenam.nsf

Note for beginners:
Your server also must be allowed to read from the remote server and the target server needs to know how to reach the source server...so make sure you have propper name resolution or connection documents in place.  

Thomas Hampel

 3 May 2011
Installing Lotus Notes on Linux is rather simple, the UI starts right away without any problems.
However if you happen to run command level operations such as compact or fixup you may run into problems because the following error message may appear:

"error while loading shared libraries: libnotes.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory"

Notes is complaining it can’t find libnotes.so which normally resides in the /usr/lib folder on your machine.
All you have to do is to create some links so that the Notes/Domino code can find this file

To do so you will have to be root or have sudo rights and execute the following commands
sudo ln -s /opt/ibm/lotus/notes/libnotes.so /usr/lib/libnotes.so
sudo ln -s /opt/ibm/lotus/notes/libndgts.so /usr/lib/libndgts.so
sudo ln -s /opt/ibm/lotus/notes/libxmlproc.so /usr/lib/libxmlproc.so

or if you want a more propper solution, use those commands (thanks to Brian for reminding me)

# Create the conf file and put into place
echo “/opt/ibm/lotus/notes” >/tmp/lotus-notes.conf
sudo install -m 644 /tmp/lotus-notes.conf /etc/ld.so.conf.d/

# Tell the linker to use it
sudo ldconfig

Note: Of course all these commands refer the the standard Notes client installation directories, which you may need to adjust to fit your installation.