Installing Lotus Notes 8.5.1 on 64-bit Ubuntu, for people who really hate themselves.

[reddragdiva]

This is a note for the benefit of Google searchers. There are others 1 2 who have suffered through the same. Not all of the below may be necessary, but it was enough to get it working for me.

WHY THE ARSING FUCK IBM COULDN'T JUST BUILD 64-BIT DEBS DEFIES SANITY, PARTICULARLY AS MOST OF THE APP IS ACTUALLY JAVA RUNNING IN ECLIPSE. BUT OF COURSE — THIS IS NOTES.

First, get your binaries from your blue-suited spirochete or your IT department, because you certainly can't just download them. The Windows binaries don't install properly in Wine. The Linux binaries are i386 and will not install on 64-bit without forcing.

I have mirrored the getlibs script to pull in 32-bit libs that are not installed by the ia32-libs package. Download and put it in your path.

Do this as root:

apt-get install libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprint2.2-0 ia32-libs ttf-xfree86-nonfree
getlibs -p libavahi-client3 libavahi-common3 libavahi-glib1 libbonoboui2-0 \
 libcroco3 libdbus-1-3 libdbus-glib-1-2 libeel2-2 libgnome2-0 \
 libgnomecanvas2-0 libgnome-keyring0 libgnome-menu2 libgnomeprint2.2-0 \
 libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeui-0 libgnomevfs2-0 libgsf-1-114 libgsf-1-dev \
 librsvg2-2 librsvg2-common libselinux1 libsepol1 libstartup-notification0 \
 libxkbfile1 gtk2-engines-ubuntulooks gtk2-engines-murrine \
 libgnomeprint2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnome-desktop-2-17 libesd0 \
 libnspr4-0d
dpkg -i --force-architecture ibm-lotus-notes-8.5.1.i586.deb

It should refuse to install for a lack of the right libgnome-desktop-2 version. (If it fails on anything else, install the missing bit as 64-bit then run the getlibs command again!) So force it (just to properly risk breaking the whole system):

dpkg -i --force-architecture --force-depends ibm-lotus-notes-8.5.1.i586.deb
dpkg -i --force-architecture ibm-lotus-activities-8.5.1.i586.deb
dpkg -i --force-architecture ibm-lotus-cae-8.5.1.i586.deb
dpkg -i --force-architecture ibm_lotus_notes_fixpack-8.5.1.i586.deb

You don't really want Symphony, which is a reskinned OpenOffice 2, and Sametime only lets people annoy you. Notes will pretty much not work properly until the fixpack is in place.

After you've done all this, sit down with a nice cup of deadly neurotoxin and try not to kill everyone everywhere.

Update: Per jld's suggestion below, if I did this again and had a ton of disk space I'd probably try debootstrap to put a 32-bit Karmic in a chroot. As it was, I got Notes to install on a 32-bit Lucid by first installing libgnome-desktop-2-11 from Karmic, then apt-get install libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprint2.2-0 ttf-xfree86-nonfree , then the Notes debs.

Comments

[http://www.google.com/profiles/118110806502753900665]

I used to work for IBM, making icons for custom installs of whatever it was we were making. I got used to Notes. I think that says it all, really.

[reddragdiva]

Definite tertiary Notes.

[jld]

If I were doing this I'd probably have had a little chat with my friends chroot(2) and debootstrap(8).

(Now, as for $ORK's outsourced timecard thing, which is theoretically a web-based Java affair, the less said about that the better.)

[reddragdiva]

If you were doing this, you'd be asking yourself just what in your life went so horribly wrong. I may look into that method as well.