Notes 5 Install via ODIN under OS/2 Warp Client

Brief notes
Firstly let me give credit where credit is due:

The whole ODIN development team who are achieving so much without commercial support. Their efforts to add WIN32 compatibility to OS/2 are nothing short of amazing ! Well done to all involved.

Secondly, I leant very much on the advice of Oliver Mark of IBM Germany, who not only runs this configuration but also promotes the fact that it all works.

History
Lotus Notes was originally a product developed for and on OS/2, only when Windows NT (which runs to this day on the OS/2 Kernal code) was developed, did Lotus produce a Windows version of the server. Lotus developed for multiple client platforms right up to version 4.6 at which point they stated that they would cease their proprietry client and with the help of   the Domino, web enabling components, would develop a Java (cross platform)    client, in line with the way the industry was going. This effort has failed.

To this day and despite major advancements in JAVA and several other products working very well under JAVA, Lotus seem unable to put the neccessary code together. Instead they have taken the easy way out and broken their promise and produced another proprietry client - Version 5. This client is ONLY available for 32 Bit Windows platforms though. Not Linux version, no MAC version and no OS/2 version. Notes is still being developed as a server on all previous and some new platforms.

Applications are also being developed that will only work with the Notes 5 Client. These normally don't have any features that could not have been supported under a 4.x client, the programmers are basically being lazy and taking the defaults instead of engaging brain !

So we are left with having to run the Win32 Notes 5 Client via an emulator if we want to use applications written in this short-sighted "dumb" way. On the MAC platform, they use a plug in hardware windows emulator card (a feature soon to come to OS/2), under Linux WINE is often the choice. Under OS/2 ODIN (Which incorporates some WINE code) is the choice we have.

Pre-requisits

 * OS/2 Warp 4 (or MCP) at latest fixpack level.
 * Latest version of ODIN (currently 19th July 2001, but new daily and weekly releases are coming out all the time) - only use a weekly "release" version as the others are really Alpha versions. I will put this up on our server, for newer versions download from http://www.netlabs.org/odin/. You'll also need the Warpin installation utilty package from the same location.
 * Install Warpin and then use it to install ODIN.
 * Copy of Notes 5 Win32 Client. I will put a corporate licenced copy on our server (note this in an "installed" version - see below for why). Location of these files is: \\ssg28p01\f$\download\notes5

How to Install Notes 5 under OS/2 Warp.
Firstly -  *D*O*N*T* INSTALL !!!!!!

You cannot run the Lotus install procedure successfully through ODIN (thanks Lotus guys for crappy coding again). You have to install BUT DO NOT CONFIGURE The Notes 5 code under a Win32 OS then copy the complete \NOTES directory and sub-directories over to your OS/2 machine / partition. This is why I have put an INSTALLED version of Notes 5 on our server (zipped) rather than a full installation copy.

Copy this zip file into a suitable directory - say D:\NOTES5 for instance, unzip it and then edit the notes.ini file to fit your notes info - eg references to your home notes server and your ID file name (you can take this file from either your Win32 Notes5 or OS/2 Notes 4.x running setup) - the actual drive name and path where you unzipped etc. Search on "Your" and you will see all the items you need to change.

OK, now you can start Notes. There are two ways to run programs under ODIN If you added the win32k.sys option in config.sys when installing ODIN, you can simply start the executable as if it were an OS/2 program, ODIN will intercept and run it through its runtime convertor. The other option is to provide the executable to the ODIN program pe.exe as a parameter.

This is the method I prefer as it allows you to modify things like path and libpath to avoid conflicts with Notes os/2 dll files that may have the same name as the WIN32 ones. I have created a notes5.cmd file that includes such modifications and this is also now on our server (note if you haven't installed to D:\NOTES5 you'll need to edit this file before it will run).

If you already have a Notes 5 (or 4.x) desktop layout that you want to keep with this new installation, simply copy the desktop5.dsk and/or desktop.dsk files into d:\notes5\data (again presuming you installed to d:\notes5).

Now you are ready to role !!

Note: I have found the following "issues" and there may well be more - (use at your own risk).

1. VERY SLOW - probably 4 times slower than native Win32

2. Loses focus often and can cause the whole system to hang.

3. Graphics and headings missing or corupt. You just get a black box on the icons and w insted of workspace etc. Seems to be more on the Notes 4 desktop if you use that. If you stay with the Notes 5 mail etc. these graphics seem OK, so it could be a Notes 4/5 compatibility issue.

4. escape key doesn't work to exit windows. - Workaround - file / close from menu bar (note the ctrl+w shortcust for file/close also does not work).

5. Clipboard is not shared with OS/2. You can cut or copy in Notes 5 but if you try to paste to (e.g.) the system E editor, nothing comes out.

I don't know if different versions of Notes (the one I have is 5.0.5) or a different version of ODIN might fix these and other, yet undiscovered problems, as I said - USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Ed Durrant 21/7/2001.

P.S. This email text is also stored on the server for reference as notes5-os2.txt and this note is sent to you from Notes 5 running under ODIN, under OS/2 Warp !!

Regards, Ed Durrant IBM Global Services Australia

@echo off rem This command file will run Notes 5 under ODIN using pe.exe. rem I am running it as a command file so that I can change the path rem to avoid notes picking up same named DLLs from Notes 4.x whose rem libraries are in the config.sys path statements. d: cd \notes5 set path=.;%path% set beginlibpath=.;%libpath% c:\odin\system32\pe.exe d:\notes5\notes.exe E:\tools\t22\w98\modem>notepad notes5-os2.txt