Lotus Notes 6.5.4 on Fedora Core 4

I have finally managed to get the Lotus Notes to work under Linux. I'm hoping that the following instructions will help someone solve this problem with less pain and frustration then I had to experience.

The good news is that it is possible to get Notes working under FC4, the bad news is that you need to install it under Windows first and then copy the files across. This was not a problem for me as I'm using a dual boot laptop, but it may be a problem for others.

In hindsight the majority of my problems were with Wine and the fact that there are a number of different recommendations on the web about which version people should use. Basically there are 3 different recommendations:

• to use an old version 20041014 (which in many people's opinion is the most stable)
• to use the most recent RPM for the target platform
• to use the latest stable source release

I've tried all three of these at least once in different combinations and have found that I had best results with the LATEST SOURCE release (currently 20050628).

To install Notes properly:

1. download the source tar file from http://www.winehq.com/site/download.
2. extract it with tar zxvf
3. cd and execute ./tools/wineinstall
4. copy files from Lotus/Notes directory on the Windows partition to ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Lotus /Notes
5. Copy over files from "Documents and Settings/All Users/Application Data/Lotus" on the windows partition to ~/.wine/drive_c/Documents and Settings/All Users/Application Data/Lotus
6. Copy over files from "Documents and Settings//Local Settings/Application Data/Lotus" on the windows partition to ~/.wine/drive_c/Documents and Settings//Local Settings/Application Data/Lotus
7. All the files you've copied will need to be owned by you so if they are currently owned by root go to ~/.wine/drive_c and run chown -R : *
8. Finally copy mfc42.dll and msvcp60.dll from Windows/system32 on the windows partition to ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system
9. Run Notes by executing: wine "C:\Program Files\Lotus\Notes\nlnotes.exe"

NOTE1: DO NOT follow the install instructions from the wine documentation!!! This will build and install wine properly BUT it will not configure it. It seems that they have changed the procedure so that wineinstall script does everything but have not updated the documentation to reflect this.
NOTE2: You HAVE TO run wineinstall as a standard user (i.e. not root), otherwise wine will be installed but the configuration will be owned by root and you won't be able to use it.
NOTE3: Steps 5 & 6 are optional and only required if you've actually used the Notes installation under Windows and would like to preserve your mail history and other databases.
NOTE4: If the Notes window shows up with the error: "You cannot use the Administration program while the Domino Server is running. Either shut down the Domino Server (but keep the file server running) or choose the icon labeled 'Lotus Notes' instead." This is because of incorrect file permissions on the files you've copied from the Windows partition. To resolve it just go to the 3 locations you've copied files to and execute: chmod -R +rwx *

Let me know if you have any problems,

Vlad

PS. Here are the main articles that helped me debug my installation problems:
Notes 6.5.1 on Linux and Wine
How to Use Lotus Notes on Linux with Wine
wine-bugs mailing list: [Bug 2643] Can't get Lotus Notes 6.5.2 running