#Domino Server
Posts tagged #Domino Server · 15 posts
- The Two Jobs of dircat: You Think It Only Builds the Directory Catalog — Since Domino 12 It Also Runs Entitlement Auditing
See dircat (Directory Cataloger) in show tasks and most people think 'directory catalog' — aggregating multiple Domino Directories into one lookup-friendly directory. That's its day job. But since Domino 12 the task quietly took a second one: aggregating each server's entitlement data into entitlements.nsf, a licensing-compliance audit with nothing to do with directories. This covers dircat's real job (condensed vs extended catalogs, and why DIRCAT5.NTF isn't CATALOG.NTF), its hidden second role since Domino 12, and how one task with two jobs bites.
2026.09.25 - Who Is the Domain Administration Server? One Domino ACL Setting Behind Entitlement Aggregation, CertMgr, and AdminP
An additional server cold-boots and floods the console every 5 seconds with 'Error connecting to server…', trying to reach every server in the domain. The culprit wasn't entitlement config at all — it was a single ACL setting that had quietly made this server the 'domain administration server.' This piece covers how many meanings 'administration server' has in Domino, what actually decides the domain-admin identity, which subsystems it silently drives (domain-wide entitlement aggregation, CertMgr, AdminP), and how to split those responsibilities apart.
2026.09.24 - Wiring Domino IQ RAG to a Remote Model: certstore Trust, the API Key, and the HTTPS Endpoint
Domino 14.5.1 FP1 added a Remote mode to RAG — the site's FP1 roundup already covered what changed. This piece doesn't repeat that; it fills in the wiring: how the Remote-mode configuration document is filled out, the HTTPS-only endpoint and API Key, and the step that trips people up — the remote AI server's trusted roots go into certstore.nsf, not the JVM truststore that the DRAPI path consumes.
2026.09.23 - Why Deleted Documents Come Back: Deletion Stubs, the Purge Interval, and Two Ways They Resurrect
You delete a document and days later it's back — not a haunting. In Domino a delete doesn't erase the document; it leaves a deletion stub, a marker that lets replication carry "this one was deleted" to the other replicas. Stubs get cleaned up on the purge interval (default 90 days). Documents "resurrect" for one of two reasons: the stub was purged before it replicated, or the same document was edited on one replica and deleted on another and the edit won. This piece explains the mechanism, both causes, and the settings that prevent it.
2026.09.19 - updall, fixup, compact: Which One to Run When a Database Is Broken, Bloated, or Its Views Are Wrong
Domino's three database-maintenance commands are the easiest to reach for blindly: run fixup because a view is stale, run fixup because the file got fat, run compact because it won't open — and get nowhere. Each treats a different illness: updall handles indexes (views / full-text), fixup repairs corruption (documents / structure), compact reclaims space (bloat). This piece sorts them by symptom, plus the official escalation order for corruption: updall first, then fixup, then compact -c.
2026.09.18 - Domino Server Troubleshooting: Before You Restart the Whole Server, Run These Console Commands
Something's off with the server — a feature stopped working, a task looks stuck, memory or disk is tight. The reflex is to restart the whole server, but that's blunt and wipes the scene. This piece organizes the most useful Domino console commands by the problem you're facing: show tasks to see what's running/stuck, show server for overall health, restart task <task> to restart just the one misbehaving task (e.g. restart task http, not the whole box), tell http show thread state to find a stuck thread, and dbcache show/flush/disable for the database cache. Look first, then decide what to touch.
2026.09.17 - XPages File Upload Failing: The xspupload Temp Folder Wiped by Windows cleanmgr — Root Cause and Fixes (Including the 14.0 Fix)
The XPages file upload control does nothing — no client-side error, the page is fine, the file just doesn't upload — while the server console throws IOFileUploadException 'The system cannot find the path specified'. The root cause: Domino's upload temp folder xspupload is gone, often because Windows Disk Cleanup (cleanmgr) wiped the temp files while Domino was running. This piece ties the official KBs to real practice: the symptom and root cause, why the folder disappears, and the fixes — from the 'cycle HTTP every night' band-aid to notes_tempdir, a programmatic check-and-recreate, and upgrading to 14.0 where the defect is fixed.
2026.09.12 - The ODS Developers Rarely Notice: Domino's Database Format Versions, and What Actually Triggers an Upgrade
You write LotusScript / XPages all day and probably never think about a database's ODS (on-disk structure) version — until a feature like LargeSummary needs a certain ODS, or you move an old database between servers and aren't sure whether its ODS follows. This article covers the ODS-to-release mapping from a developer's angle, the most counterintuitive point (upgrading the server version does not upgrade the ODS), and exactly what triggers an ODS change and what governs it — then answers a concrete case: an R9 ODS51 database, new-copied from an R12 client to an R12 server, does its ODS change automatically?
2026.06.21 - 'Field is too large (32K)' Is Lying to You: The Real Wall Is Usually the 64K Summary Buffer
An XPages save failure: the message says '32K', but every field checks out under 32K (the biggest is 26K) and it still won't save. Because the number the error names is usually not your problem — the wall you actually hit is 'a document's combined summary data is capped at 64K'. This article builds the summary / non-summary mental model and the two size limits first, then explains why ODS and LargeSummary are two different things, then forks the fixes on one question: should this data be summary at all?
2026.06.21 - Containerizing HCL Domino 9.0.1 Outside HCL's Official Scope — A Community PoC and 5 Pitfalls You'll Hit
HCL only ships container images for Domino 10.0.1 FP3 and newer — if you're still on 9.0.x and want to containerize for dev/test, migration rehearsal, or legacy preservation, the official path doesn't exist. This article walks through a community feasibility study: RHEL UBI 7.9 base, two-stage build, ~1.48 GB image that runs Domino 9.0.1 FP10, joins an existing Domino domain, and brings HTTP/NRPC/LDAP/IMAP/POP3/SMTP up cleanly. The PoC also documents 5 critical pitfalls HCL docs don't cover (Perl namespace bug / FP installer rejects -silent / J9 JVM heap too small / setup-complete marker uses the wrong variable / password-protected server.id stdin block), each with the actual error message and workaround. Full Dockerfile and troubleshooting live in the bryanHsiao/build-hcl-domino9-container repo.
2026.05.22 - Two Paths to HCL Domino on Container — Pull a Pre-built Image or Build Your Own
Packaging Domino into a container is older than people often realize — the community was already doing it in the IBM V9 days, and HCL has officially shipped pre-built Domino container images for download since V10. Today HCL covers both ends: download a pre-built container image TAR from My HCLSoftware Portal and docker-load it for fast onboarding, or clone HCL's open-source domino-container project on GitHub and run the interactive build.sh menu to build your own custom image — picking exactly which modules (Domino / Traveler / Verse / Nomad / REST-API / Leap / Domino IQ / OnTime / C-API SDK / LP) plus add-ons you want baked in. This article explains how to choose between the two paths, how customizable build.sh really is, typical deployment scenarios, and how to get started.
2026.05.21 - Domino IQ RAG: A Built-In Pipeline That Wires Your NSFs Straight Into a Local LLM
Domino 14.5.1 adds RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) support to Domino IQ, running the LLM, embedding model, and vector database all on the Domino server itself — local execution, with NSF ACL and Readers fields enforced natively. This guide walks through prerequisites, the two-phase dominoiq.nsf configuration, updall vectorization, calling LLMReq from LotusScript, and why this is a different species from the OpenAI + Pinecone pipeline.
2026.05.05 - Domino IQ: What It Means to Run an LLM Inside the Domino Server
Domino 14.5 introduces Domino IQ — an AI inference engine baked into the Domino server backend, callable from LotusScript via NotesLLMRequest / NotesLLMResponse without ever leaving the box. This guide covers the architecture, hardware requirements, install flow, the two-phase dominoiq.nsf configuration, the Command and System Prompt document model, and why this trade-off works for existing Domino shops where bolting on OpenAI doesn't.
2026.05.05 - Domino V12 lets notes.ini hold multiple HTTPAdditionalRespHeader entries
Older Domino releases let you put exactly one HTTPAdditionalRespHeader in notes.ini — a second line silently overwrote the first. HCL added a numbered convention (HTTPAdditionalRespHeader01, 02, …) in V12.0.x so you can ship a full security-header baseline through notes.ini alone, which is the only path that still works when HTTP won't start and the Internet Site documents are unreachable.
2026.04.28 - HCL Domino 2026 Release Highlights
HCL Domino 2026 (version 14.5.1) was officially released on March 19, 2026, introducing new features like Domino IQ, AutoUpdate, and OIDC support.
2026.04.27