Installing Lotus Notes 8.5.1 on 64-bit Ubuntu in a 32-bit chroot.

After the stunning success of the previous attempt (installing the 32-bit debs directly in the 64-bit OS, with a lot of faff and kicking; said installation is the one I use every day in the office), I tried an Ubuntu 11.04 AMD64 virtual machine with Notes in a 32-bit chroot. This is slightly laborious, but much, much easier.

Do all the following as root, except as specified.

apt-get install debootstrap schroot

We'll set up the chroot to run Karmic, to save faff. Put this in a file called /etc/schroot/chroot.d/karmic_i386_conf (changing the username from fun to whatever username you're using):

[karmic_i386]
description=Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic for i386
directory=/srv/chroot/karmic_i386
personality=linux32
root-users=fun
type=directory
users=fun

Now make the chroot and fetch the distro:

mkdir -p /srv/chroot/karmic_i386
debootstrap --variant=buildd --arch i386 karmic /srv/chroot/karmic_i386 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/

Check it installed:

schroot -l

karmic_i386 appears in the list? Good! Run it:

schroot -c karmic_i386 -u root

Your home directory is the same in the chroot, e.g. I untarred the Notes install files into /home/fun/Downloads . Change to that directory then attempt an install (which will fail) then fix (which pulls in all dependencies) and finish the installation, and a few other necessary things:

dpkg -i ibm-lotus-notes-8.5.1.i586.deb
apt-get -f install
dpkg -i ibm-lotus-symphony-8.5.1.i586.deb
dpkg -i ibm-lotus-activities-8.5.1.i586.deb
dpkg -i ibm-lotus-cae-8.5.1.i586.deb
dpkg -i ibm-lotus-sametime-8.5.1.i586.deb
dpkg -i ibm_lotus_notes_fixpack-8.5.1.i586.deb
apt-get install xauth xterm evince

To use Notes, you need X11 forwarding from the chroot to the main system. Each time. I set up two scripts (the first to run in the main system, the second to run in the chroot).

/home/fun/notes.sh:

#!/bin/bash
xauth list > ~/xcookie
schroot -c karmic_i386 -u fun /home/fun/notes2.sh

/home/fun/notes2.sh:

#!/bin/bash
xauth add $(cat /home/fun/xcookie)
export DISPLAY=:0.0
/opt/ibm/lotus/notes/notes

Don't forget chmod a+x notes.sh notes2.sh .

The first time you run it, run notes.sh from the main system (to save the cookie) then notes2 from inside the chroot so the usage terms can come up in an xterm):

schroot -c karmic_i386 -u fun

/home/fun/notes2.sh

Thereafter, invoke Notes as notes.sh in the main system.

Helper applications will work if you install them in the chroot (xauth having been taken care of by notes2.sh). We installed Symphony (and all the other faff) above so you can read emailed Word documents, and evince for PDFs. Go File->Preferences->Web Browser and tick "Use the browser embedded in this client".