I faced Domino for Linux in February 2002. It happened because of unstable Domino R5 functioning on an Windows NT Server with powerful hardware resources. I read the “Understanding Domino for Linux” white paper and I decided to move our Domino server to Linux. My first Linux distribution was Mandrake 8.1. I know this French distribution is one of the easiest and friendly for a newbie. Now it has worked pretty well for more than 10 months without any interference. Cool :) A few months ago the chairmen decided to implement one more Domino server at our high school; we had no money to purchase a powerful server and I made up my mind to deploy it on Linux again with existing hardware. Now we have a very stable second one on SuSE 7.3 (I have studied this distribution already) with poor hardware (CPU: Celeron 400, RAM: 192MB, HDD: 20GB IDE).

As time permits, I hope to provide hints and tips for improving performance of Domino on Linux, and for configuring the environment on various Linux distributions.

If you plan to save your employer's money and get amazing stability (and save your time) you should think about Domino on Linux. This mini-HOWTO helps you to install and configure Domino on the Linux distributions supported by IBM Lotus Software (SuSE) and others (Mandrake). I describe specific prerequisites and quirks for each distribution. I do not want anyone to repeat my sleepless nights and all-day-long red eyes.

Mykola Buryak is the originator and current maintainer of this mini-HOWTO. Please send all suggestions for improvement, criticisms, or more-or-less related questions to me at <m.b.@gmx.co.uk> or <1upus@gmx.ch>. Please do not send me spam or hate mail.

Mykola Buryak has been employed by National Mining University, Ukraine, as Lotus System Administrator since September 2000. Before that time he was working as Computer/Network Technician there. He has 3 year experience with Web Development, 2 year in Lotus Domino/Notes Administration, 1 year in Linux and IBM DB2 UDB. In his spare time he teaches RUP and Python at the Geoinformatics Department, National Mining University. He holds an Hon. Masters Degree in Information Control Systems and Technologies and the following certifications for the present:

Mary Gardiner did an awesome job of editing the original version for style and consistency.

Additional thanks to Dan Scott and his DB2 Version 7.1 for Linux HOWTO which I got the document structure from.

Copyright (c) 2002, 2003 Mykola Buryak

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no invariant sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, with no Back-Cover Text. A copy of the license is included in Section 6, “GNU Free Documentation License”.

This document is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See Section 6, “GNU Free Documentation License” for more details.