Lotus Notes in Linux? You bet!

You though you couldn't switch causes you'd be with out your notes client? Think again. I have outlined some easy steps to get notes running in your Linux environment.

I have read of people having success installing notes without a windows environment, I haven't done it myself. You may want to research the option on your own.

Wine? Is it a good year?

“Yeah, I like wine, matter of fact I could use a nice 1987 Cabernet Sauvignon right now, but what does that have to do with Linux?” Don't worry you're not the first to ask. In reality it Wine has a lot to do it!

Wine makes it possible to run Windows programs alongside any Unix-like operating system, particularly Linux. At its heart, Wine is an implementation of the Windows Application Programing Interface (API) library, acting as a bridge between the Windows program and Linux. ¹

For move information on Wine, visit the web, http://www.winehq.com/site/docs/wine-user/what-is-wine. Additional Wine resources are located in the References section at the end of this document.

Installing Wine

Wine comes as part of many Linux distributions. Make sure you have the latest version installed. The easiest way to get Wine is to download the package files from:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=6241

Most distributions provide a graphical tool for installing RPM packages, you can use it by simply clicking (Or double clicking, depending on your system settings) on the RPM. If you don't have a graphical RPM manager installed, using a shell, switch to the directory where you downloaded the RPM package file to. Once there, type this one command as root, adapting the package file name as required:

   # rpm -ivh wine-20031212.i386.rpm   

For more info on installing Wine visit

http://www.winehq.com/site/docs/wine-user/installing

Installing Notes Under Wine

Now to the good stuff! Wine sets up a Windows dir structure, under your home directory, (i.e. /home/user1). You can test your install by running by opening a console and typing,

wine notepad.exe

I have found the fastest way to get notes up and was to copy an working Notes install on a Windows box to the wine environment.

Copy c:\Program Files\lotus from you windows box

to

~/.wine/drive_c:/Program Files/ on your Linux box.

UPDATE: (2006-02-25)

run winecfg and add nlnotes.exe as an app, set OS to win98. Then goto dll overrides and add usp10 and set to native.

You can test your notes client by opening a console and typing,

wine "c:\program files\lotus\notes\nlnotes.exe"

Screen Shot 1Notes Client with incorrect directory permissions

If you get the a file browser box titled “Notes Directory Inaccessible”, Screen Shot 1, ensure that the notes directory you copied over is writable by you.

You can check the directory permissions through the GUI or command line. Modify the directory permissions by opening a console and typing,

chmod -R 744 ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/lotus

In some cases, Wine may complain that there's no config file. If so, just copy the system.reg file in .wine/:

cp system.reg config

This configuration has been found to work with Notes 6.5 and Wine-20040615 and Notes 6.5.2 and Wine-20040813.

When it's working, define aliases in ~/.bashrc: (should be on two lines)

alias lotus="wine \"c:\program files\lotus\notes\nlnotes.exe\" \ 
> ~/tmp/winelog 2>&1"

alias notes="wine \"c:\program files\lotus\notes\nlnotes.exe\" \ 
> ~/tmp/winelog 2>&1"

Everyday things seem to work ok, and performance is much faster than my previous configuration (Notes 5.5 under Wine-20040408). However, editing settings/preferences often causes it to crash/hang. When this happens, type killall wine-preloader and restart Notes. This suggests that, at least until the next version of Wine comes out, it's a good idea to do all necessary configuration on the Windows box before copying it to Wine. Of course, you can always copy a fresh lotus directory tree to Wine.²

Update: Using Notes 6.5.2 and Wine-20040716 seems to have fixed at least some of the crashing when editing preferences.

Update: Using Wine-20050930 notes fails to start. I had to run winecfg and set the default to Win98. In addition I copied over the usp10.dll to the windows/system directory. Back up and rockin!

Not sure this needs saying, but you can continue to run your Windows version, since all the data is replicated to the Domino server and clients will sync automatically.

References

http://www.winehq.com

1http://www.winehq.com/site/docs/wine-user/what-is-wine

2http://www.tux.org/~tbr/lotusnotes/notes6underwine.html