Thursday, 20. September 2007
Notes 8 - File already exists
Executive summary: If you want to install Notes 8 using an existing Notes 8 dataset, delete bookmarks.nsf before you start and look out for broken Sametime communities too.
It's been quiet here for a few days. I've been busy.
I am very busy with the day job, actually, but one further distraction has been preventing me from making progress on a number of issues, or updating the blog. You see, Notes 8 died on me the other day.
To be fair, it wasn't Notes 8 that started the trouble. It was the Windows file system.
On booting up my system a few days ago, it started to complain about various errors in my profile. Various applications weren't working correctly, including Notes 8 which had been working well prior to that point. Notes 8 was just throwing a dialog saying "File already exists", all traces of the UI disappearing from view but a couple of processes still running which needed to be killed with nsd -kill before the whole sorry cycle could be repeated.
(When you have to kill Notes 8 after it has fallen over like this, you get to see first hand what Volker has been telling us all about.)
A quick CHKDSK revealed the problem - there were many serious problems with the file system, which CHKDSK /F subsequently claimed to have fixed. This was not malware, by the way, just a consequence of an earlier blue screen which had happened at a time when there was a lot of write activity on the disk.
Well, despite CHKDSK's claim to have fixed the issue, various apps weren't working and the OS itself seemed to be having stability issues, so I decided that the only safe option was to re-format the HDD and rebuild the OS. We have a reliable backup of all the data, after all.
After a complete OS rebuild, reinstalling all of the third party device drivers and updating the rebuilt system with all relevant patches, I was left with a clean system on which to attempt to build Notes 8.
The first thing I did was restore a copy of the Notes data directory from a known good backup. Not the whole of it, just the NSF, NTF and ID files plus desktop6.ndk (I still like my workspace).
Then I installed Notes, which does seem to take longer than it used to but completed successfully, and I was ready to run this new Notes client for the first time.
As expected, it asked a few questions - which ID to use, which server to connect to, password - and then announced that Notes set-up was complete.
And then...
A dialog announcing "File already exists", and all traces of the UI disappeared from view save for a couple of processes still running which needed to be killed with nsd -kill before the whole sorry cycle could be repeated.
Say what?
OK. Let's uninstall the Notes 8 client and try a different tack.
Uninstalling proved equally troublesome. The uninstall process fell over part way through, complaining that the provisioner had been unable to do something or other (it is not remotely clear what because these error messages are so long that they overflow the space available to show them) and I was left with a system containing Notes 8 neither fully installed and working nor fully uninstalled.
I had to use system restore to revert to a state prior to the Notes build in the first place.
I tried various patterns for the installation, variously omitting certain other files from the restored data set, and none worked. All led to the same place - "File already exists".
Finally, just as I was considering installing Notes 7.0.2 and just giving up, I decided to install Notes 8 completely vanilla, without any of my restored data set.
It worked, but obviously did not give me the full glory of the Notes client I had been using. However, now having a proven, working Notes client, I could put back my other Notes data, right? Well at least the NSF files and the workspace.
I did this.
"File already exists".
Infuriating.
Let's look in the file system to see which NSF file was most recently touched by the Notes client before it died. Perhaps the date stamp on the file might be a clue?
Well, the last file touched by the client before it died was bookmarks.nsf.
Fair enough. Let's delete that. Perhaps it's the file that already exists.
I did so and was delighted to see that this was indeed the file causing the trouble. After announcing that it was compacting the workspace, and silently creating a new bookmarks.nsf, the Notes 8 client came up looking very much like (but not quite the same as) the one I had before it died the other day.
What was different was that the integrated Sametime client would not connect to the server, complaining that the server was unreachable, perhaps down. Integrated IM in the Designer and Administrator applications connected perfectly via SSO, so there was no problem with the server, or the classic client. Just the Eclipse client.
The Preferences dialog would not allow me to make any changes to the default Sametime community, though that default community seemed to be broken in some way. After a bit more digging, I found a lot of configuration files under Notes\Data\workspace\.metadata\.plugins which seemed to be to do with Sametime.
I restored this tree from my backup, restarted Notes and, finally, everything was back to normal. Notes 8 was working and connecting to Sametime (though not via SSO - that has never worked for me) and I had all of my bookmarks and workspace intact.
The whole process took a day or so and was completely unintuitive.
I do not think it unreasonable to want to take an existing Notes data structure and marry it with a new Notes 8 client installation, but if you do just that and are not aware of the bookmarks.nsf gotcha, you could lose hours or days trying to figure out what "File already exists" actually means.
Category: Notes 8
Technorati: IBM Lotus Notes+8
It's been quiet here for a few days. I've been busy.
I am very busy with the day job, actually, but one further distraction has been preventing me from making progress on a number of issues, or updating the blog. You see, Notes 8 died on me the other day.
To be fair, it wasn't Notes 8 that started the trouble. It was the Windows file system.
On booting up my system a few days ago, it started to complain about various errors in my profile. Various applications weren't working correctly, including Notes 8 which had been working well prior to that point. Notes 8 was just throwing a dialog saying "File already exists", all traces of the UI disappearing from view but a couple of processes still running which needed to be killed with nsd -kill before the whole sorry cycle could be repeated.
(When you have to kill Notes 8 after it has fallen over like this, you get to see first hand what Volker has been telling us all about.)
A quick CHKDSK revealed the problem - there were many serious problems with the file system, which CHKDSK /F subsequently claimed to have fixed. This was not malware, by the way, just a consequence of an earlier blue screen which had happened at a time when there was a lot of write activity on the disk.
Well, despite CHKDSK's claim to have fixed the issue, various apps weren't working and the OS itself seemed to be having stability issues, so I decided that the only safe option was to re-format the HDD and rebuild the OS. We have a reliable backup of all the data, after all.
After a complete OS rebuild, reinstalling all of the third party device drivers and updating the rebuilt system with all relevant patches, I was left with a clean system on which to attempt to build Notes 8.
The first thing I did was restore a copy of the Notes data directory from a known good backup. Not the whole of it, just the NSF, NTF and ID files plus desktop6.ndk (I still like my workspace).
Then I installed Notes, which does seem to take longer than it used to but completed successfully, and I was ready to run this new Notes client for the first time.
As expected, it asked a few questions - which ID to use, which server to connect to, password - and then announced that Notes set-up was complete.
And then...
A dialog announcing "File already exists", and all traces of the UI disappeared from view save for a couple of processes still running which needed to be killed with nsd -kill before the whole sorry cycle could be repeated.
Say what?
OK. Let's uninstall the Notes 8 client and try a different tack.
Uninstalling proved equally troublesome. The uninstall process fell over part way through, complaining that the provisioner had been unable to do something or other (it is not remotely clear what because these error messages are so long that they overflow the space available to show them) and I was left with a system containing Notes 8 neither fully installed and working nor fully uninstalled.
I had to use system restore to revert to a state prior to the Notes build in the first place.
I tried various patterns for the installation, variously omitting certain other files from the restored data set, and none worked. All led to the same place - "File already exists".
Finally, just as I was considering installing Notes 7.0.2 and just giving up, I decided to install Notes 8 completely vanilla, without any of my restored data set.
It worked, but obviously did not give me the full glory of the Notes client I had been using. However, now having a proven, working Notes client, I could put back my other Notes data, right? Well at least the NSF files and the workspace.
I did this.
"File already exists".
Infuriating.
Let's look in the file system to see which NSF file was most recently touched by the Notes client before it died. Perhaps the date stamp on the file might be a clue?
Well, the last file touched by the client before it died was bookmarks.nsf.
Fair enough. Let's delete that. Perhaps it's the file that already exists.
I did so and was delighted to see that this was indeed the file causing the trouble. After announcing that it was compacting the workspace, and silently creating a new bookmarks.nsf, the Notes 8 client came up looking very much like (but not quite the same as) the one I had before it died the other day.
What was different was that the integrated Sametime client would not connect to the server, complaining that the server was unreachable, perhaps down. Integrated IM in the Designer and Administrator applications connected perfectly via SSO, so there was no problem with the server, or the classic client. Just the Eclipse client.
The Preferences dialog would not allow me to make any changes to the default Sametime community, though that default community seemed to be broken in some way. After a bit more digging, I found a lot of configuration files under Notes\Data\workspace\.metadata\.plugins which seemed to be to do with Sametime.
I restored this tree from my backup, restarted Notes and, finally, everything was back to normal. Notes 8 was working and connecting to Sametime (though not via SSO - that has never worked for me) and I had all of my bookmarks and workspace intact.
The whole process took a day or so and was completely unintuitive.
I do not think it unreasonable to want to take an existing Notes data structure and marry it with a new Notes 8 client installation, but if you do just that and are not aware of the bookmarks.nsf gotcha, you could lose hours or days trying to figure out what "File already exists" actually means.
Category: Notes 8
Technorati: IBM Lotus Notes+8
Comments :
1. Christian Voigt20/09/2007 20:09:26
Homepage: http://www.scenic-alpha-quadrant.de/
But that's what Notes is all about 
File already exists
Entry not found in index
...
2. Gregory Engels20/09/2007 21:41:51
Homepage: http://inotes.de
have you tried to look at the debug console what exactly was the problem with the bookmark.nsf? By setting the Notes.ini settings
Client_Clock=1 and Debug_Console=1 ??
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