Ray's points of view :: Activating Lotus Notes 8.0.1 Widgets in Ubuntu 7.10 or any other Linux

Category Ubuntu

This is a copy from my internal post on the IBM TAP Connections Blog server. http://blogs.tap.ibm.com/weblogs/ray.davies@uk.ibm.com/entry/activating_widgets_in_ubuntu_7

I have been using Ubuntu with the IBM LUD Temperance Desktop as my primary system for some time now. Almost everything I need is available with one major exception and that is my HTC mobile phone sync support but more about that later. One other annoyance is that 8.0.1 for Linux did not include widgets and as I am constantly demonstrating the capabilities of Lotus on Linux it is a problem for me. So this morning I thought I would hack it and see what happens. Long story short it worked (almost) perfectly and I now have full widget support in Linux for Notes 8.0.1. Being clever I thought I would add a quick Technote but alas I was beaten to the post by Chad Scott that submitted Technote 1294951! Well a quick check showed we both did the same thing so I do not feel that bad about it. Here is what I did in glorious colour! I love screen snapshots! OK, starting Gimp and KSnapshot...

Extract the Windows 8.0.1 UpdateSite.zip file

This can be done by running the installation. I ALWAYS extract my installations to c:\temp and name them something memorable and do not delete it until I really need to so in my case I already had an extracted UpdateSite.zip. All I needed to do was use SMB to browse the Windoze machine and copy the file across to my home/rayd/incoming directory. From there I simply extracted UpdateSite.zip. I know that site.xml contains all the addins and I new that the widgets was called toolbox something. I decided to delete all entries apart from the three toolbox entries to ensure I have a clean install. I will install the Quickr bar later today.

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Install the new site.xml file

To install updated addins you can select File -> Application -> Install and choose "Search for new features to install." In this section you can add new repositories and link to other site.xml files across the enterprise. Now that I have a bit of time I will be locating all my old favourites and adding them back into Notes.

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Now simply point it to the directory where you have updated site.xml and extracted UpdateSite.zip

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Always remember Best Practices. Make a backup copy of any file you alter! In fact I always make two!

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Result! As you can see the site.xml file has shown the supported addins so now it is just a matter of installing the updates.

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Whoops! Broken. This sounds like access control. I have no idea where the log file is but what I did do was add a group called notes and added myself and root to the group. I then issued a chown and chmod to the relevant directories.

chown -R root.notes /opt/ibm/notes/
chown -R root.notes /etc/lotus/notes/

And then:

chmod -R 777 /opt/ibm/notes/
chmod -R 777 /etc/lotus/notes/

Success!

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Once I activated the Widgets section in Preferences I was able to add Widgets

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Here is an example of a web page I added. As you can see the Widgets sidebar is active and the web page widget works.

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The bad news is that I can not seem to drag and drop a google widget but that is a problem for later. I will continue to investigate.

So in summary Linux, no sorry that is not true, Ubuntu rocks! I have it installed on a T61 laptop and it is awsome. I have recompiled the kernel to support 4gb of memory and I use Envy to update my Nvidia drivers when required. I use "Xinerama" to extend my desktop from the Thinkpad 1920x1200 display to my LCD 1680x1050 screen and I am able to activate OHP's on demand, something that was impossible with the T42 ATI drivers. So all is good in Linux land. Roll on Ubuntu 8.4 and Notes 8.5.

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I have included the text from Chad's KB entry. I really did find this AFTER I played around but fair is fair! The entry is mark for Intranet only but it is not rocket science so...

Product:         Lotus Notes > Plug-ins > Version 8.0.1
Platform(s):     Linux
Edition(s):      Standard
Doc Number: 1294951
Date:              05/02/2008

Author: Chad Scott/Austin/IBM

Problem

The Widgets feature is not provisioned when installing Notes 8.0.1 on Linux.

Symptom

The Widgets feature is unavailable in the Notes client. In particular, there is no option under File -> Preferences.

Resolving the problem

The workaround is complicated and involves several steps.
1. Extract the updateSite.zip file from a Notes 8.0.1 Windows install kit to a temporary directory, preserving the directory structure.
2. Open the site.xml file and (optionally) remove all non-toolbox features (there should be three).
3. Import the site.xml file into your preferred Update site (e.g. Updatesite.nsf)
4. On the Linux operating system, you must have the ability to install features in the installation directory. This is not the default behavior, as these directories are owned by root. As a workaround, assign group ownership to a group that will hold your Notes users (e.g. a group called notes) for all of the installation directories. Be sure this group has full access to the directories. For example:
cd /opt/ibm/lotus
chown -R root.notes notes/
chmod -R g+rwx notes/
5. In the Notes client, go to File -> Application -> Install and choose "Search for new features to install." This assumes you have previously configured your preferred Update site for this notes client.
6. Provision the Widgets features from the list and restart the client.