Gareth Howell

I'll post learning points and tips to be aware of when installing Lotus Foundations Start as I come across them.

Tip
If the internet domain name of your Foundations server is (e.g.) astrium.baldock.lincolnburnett.com, then the Start (Domino) server is created as astrium/baldock and the Domino domain is baldock.
i.e. the domino server will take the common name of the Foundations server and use the first element of the domain name for the Organisation and Domain.
Also, the Domino server will place itself in the nominated internet domain, so it must be visible from outside!

So,
be careful how you name your Foundations server before you install the Start add-on.
Make sure the domain name of the Foundations server can be addressed from the Internet: don't choose a non-resolvable domain like internal.loc

Tip
If you add a user with the ID of garethhowell, this becomes their internet mail address (i.e. garethhowell@baldock.lincolnburnett.com)

So.
When you add new users to Foundations, make sure the ID you use is how you wish them to be addressed from outside (e.g. gareth.howell)

Having installed a "proper", activated copy of Lotus Foundations Core (i.e. the operating system bit) on to proper hardware, this morning I installed the "Start" add-on (i.e. the Domino server).

All I had to do was copy the "pkg" directory to the "autoinstall" share on Astrium, refresh the "Software Update" screen and click "install".

20 minutes later and I now have a functioning Domino server with LDAP, DWA, POP, IMAP and SMTP running.

As a follow-up to my previous entry on installing Nitix, this entry covers the equivalent process for installing Lotus Foundations Core Server
The process is pretty much the same except that the option to perform a memory test has been removed, you now have to explicitly accept a Novell SUSE license and the IBM licenses and the look and feel has been changed in the Web Config.

I've just put the screens in this time so you can see the differences.

A good question, and one I have been asked by several people. "I thought you were all into SharePoint and Groove now?" said another. Well, yes, to a point.

It's really a matter of economics. I don't care what IBM says, from the perspective of our Company (elastictime), the Notes business is diminishing in the UK. It may well be growing elsewhere, but not here. We're not going to give up on Notes, but we expect it to deliver s smaller proportion of our business over the coming years. Our core collaboration competencies apply equally to SharePoint and Groove, so it makes sense to build our business in that direction.

So, why Foundations?

A number of reasons, some of which are geeky and others of which are business.
In no particular order:

• It has the potential to be an appliance sale. I love appliances and the business one can build around them. They are perfect for the S end of the SMB space because they don't impact on the (non-existent) IT capabilities in the customer.
• It's Linux based. I've been in love with Unix/Linux since the late 70's when I installed it at a previous employer in place of DEC RSX-11 on a PDP-11. My desire was partially satiated by Apple building OS X on BSD, partially by IBM supporting Linux for Domino, but was waiting for something like Nitix.
• It has neat additional features like Intelligent Backup and NitixVault which address the major problems of having IT in small businesses - disaster recovery.
• It can be supported remotely over a VPN
• It's perfect for SMB

One thing that I forgot from last night: being charged £17.80 for a round of four drinks! Two glasses or wine, a (small) bottle of beer and a diet coke.
Ripoff!

This is more of an aide memoire for me.

To use the free VNC Viewer from RealVNC to access a desktop on Leopard, you need to:

• Make sure the Mac user account has a password set
• Change the VNC Viewer options to use "Full Colour" and
• Disable "render cursor locally"

The short answer is, easy! Run the compatibility tests, boot Nitix and do basic configuration, install Lotus Foundations Start, configure users. Unless you choose to burn in your hardware (highly recommended but takes 48 hours) it should all take no more than one hour.

I've installed it several times now on various pieces of kit, just to get the hang of it. Apart from one occasion it all went smoothly. The one that failed is actually a good indication of the sophistication of the product.

First, the successful process. (I'll cover the failed installation separately)
Tip: You may need to "view" the images full size to see them properly (right-click view_Image in Firefox)

1. Configure the hardware

• You will need a box with an Intel x86 processor, at least one hard disk, at least one Ethernet card and a CD/DVD drive.
• If you have two hard disks you can configure one as an intelligent backup drive (idb) or configure a RAID array. If you have more than two, then one can be the idb drive.
• You need two network adapters if you are going to use the Foundations server as a firewall.

Plug (both of) the network adapters into the same switch, insert the CD and power on.

The server will boot from the CD (provided the hard disk(s) are unformatted and present the boot loader



Select option 2 to run the compatibility tests



This will load Nitix in a special mode and present options to do a basic compatibility check, an advanced check or burn in tests.

As a minimum, run the basic compatibility test. Better still, run the burn-in test for 48 hours.

This screen shows the burn in test status screen


2. Initial Load and configuration of Nitix.
At the moment, I am still using the Nitix Blue precursor to Lotus Foundations Start but I doubt the process is going to be much different.

Disconnect the second network adapter if you have it (the one that will connect to the outside world)

Boot from the CD but this time elect to run Nitix (option 1)

Nitix will boot from the CD, discover all the hardware, assign a DHCP address and be ready for configuration (takes about 1 min). If you want (and you probably will) you can change the IP address to one statically assigned to this server.


That's it as far as dealing with the console on the server, the rest is done through the web config interface from a browser. You need to have JavaScript enabled on the browser.

3. Web Configuration
Open a browser and navigate to the URL given on the server's status screen.



You must enter your root password, domain name and can also enter your activation code at this point. If you choose not to, Nitix will run as a trial for 30 days but won't run the software updater.  



You will then be presented with the  Web Config screen.



This screen shows the current status of the server and any outstanding warnings.

Notice that you are warned that you are running under a TRIAL license and that your are booting from the CD

Adjacent to the "Disk Status" there is a warning  that your main disk is not configured. You have the options to add both drives (I have two installed in this example) as a RAID-1 array or have one as the main disk and one as an idb drive. Assuming you have installed reasonably large disks then I would advise choosing to use the second drive as an idb. A better option still is to install three drives, use the first two as a RAID and have the third as your idb drive. I'll blog about using idb and hot swappable drives separately.

To configure the disks, simply click on the appropriate link. Nitix will then configure the disks and install itself to the main disk. You can then shutdown and remove the CD. Nitix will then startup from the installed image.

At the end of this, you have a basic Nitix server installed and running.

I'll cover installing Nitix Blue separately.

We went to see Brian Wilson at the Albert Hall last night. What a blast!

This concert was primarily a collection of greatest hits; though there were a few tracks from the upcoming "That Lucky Old Sun" which we saw performed at the Festival Hall last year and which is released on CD in September.
The band was brilliant, as ever, with Jeffrey Foskett delivering mind tingling falsetto vocals.

The sound was OK; not as good as the Festival Hall in my opinion, but as a good as it gets here with a bit of muffling evident; particularly in the percussion section. Nelson Bragg was doing his best, but we just couldn't hear him properly. It was most notable on "Heroes and Villains" where Bragg is continually changing instruments. In previous , you could hear every one of his contributions clearly; not last night unfortunately.

Apart from that, and a screw up by the band in the middle of "Heroes and Villains" it was an excellent evening and I came away with the usual sense of wonder at the brilliance of The Man. Brian played keyboards and bass and led the vocals.

The more I hear pieces from "That Luck Old Sun" the more I am looking forward to getting my hands (and ears) on it.

elastictime has just signed up as a reseller for Lotus Foundations Server, the Nitix based autonomic appliance from IBM's newly acquired Net Integration subsidiary.

The Lotus Foundations site can be found at http://www.lotusfoundations.com which as others have pointed out is a rather odd URL for IBM/Lotus to choose.

As a company, we've been itching to put together a Domino appliance that just sits in the corner and does its job. This is it! Net Integration's Nitix operating system is a Linux variant with a high degree of autonomic computing built; enabling small businesses with little or no IT support to get access to a best of breed mail and apps environment , plus office file and print, firewall etc in a single box.

Net Integration have spent a great deal of effort making the box self reliant, down to automatic backups to hot-swappable disks.

The first product is Lotus Foundations Start, which is Nitix, Domino server, Lotus Symphony office suite, security and backup bundled together.

Pricing for the UK isn't fixed yet as far as I know, but expect it to be very competitive against Microsoft Small Business Server and new Enterprise Business Server. See Graham Dodge's Blog entry on comparison of Foundations, SBS and EBS for an idea of what to expect.

I've been using twitter for a while now, so it's time to take stock.

I subscribed ages ago but after playing with it for a bit, put it to one side as I couldn't really see it's purpose. That started to change at this year's Lotusphere, where there was a pseudo-user called lotusphere2008. I kept an eye on that using twitterberry and contributed a bit, but it was still a sideline in the social networking universe as far as I was concerned.

That changed after a I read an article (which I can't find now) that gave a really good use case for twitter. In this use case, twitter was positioned as a replacement for casual office gossip. You know the sort of thing: you are sitting working at your desk and you can hear others chatting in the background. Most of the time you ignore them, but occasionally they say something that prompts you to join in.

Now in our case (elastictime) this can be a valuable replacement for the fact that we are virtual and don't have an office. If we (i.e. me and my co-workers) drop the occasional non-specific comment into twitter (e.g. I just tweated that "It's hammering down here", or earlier I tweated that I off into town to post a letter) then I am dropping digital bread crumbs that build a partial picture of what's going on. Similarly, if I see that Ian is reading a particular article and I have also read the same article, we can chat about the content.

Like most companies, we use instant messaging to support 1-1 chats and the occasional group chat. I see twitter as a lower level background information feed.

Once I got that model, I started to use twitter a lot more and now tweat regularly throughout the day. I use Twhirl most of the time (unlike Sametime or AOL I can have Twhirl running on multiple machines simultaneously which suits my working environment). I also follow a number of external non-personal feeds: examples are bbctms (Text Match Special), bbcnews, bbcpolitics, marsphoenix, macrumours, and bbc5live).

I now see twitter as an important addition to the tools that reduce the occasional sense of isolation created when one works from home. This makes it all the more infuriating when twitter goes off the air! It has to be said that twitter is a bit flaky at the moment and there have been occasions when I have been tempted to throw it out in favour of (say) friendfeed. I haven't, mainly, for two reasons: no offline tool support for friendfeed yet and the absence of the non-personal feeds.