Lotus Notes 6.5.4 client accidentally deleted mailfile

J

Jonny Two Shoes

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Hey all,

Just a heads up....I was shocked at what I did and didn't even think it was possible for security reasons.

I was troubleshooting a LNotes problem for a user and playing around on his client PC in the "workspace" area in notes I accidentally managed to delete his entire mailfile database off our server.

I intended to delete a local location instead to fix a problem.

Now firstly I am shocked I was even able to do this because how can a client PC be allowed to affect the server like this :/

Anyway just be carefull if any of you play around too much :p

Fortunately we were able to recover the user's mail database from a very recent backup at the time.

Please feel free to comment if I am correct or not regarding access rights for a LNotes Client to delete any database off a domino server, that is just wrong man!! :)
 
Yeah, you have to be extremely careful in the Workspace as to whether or not you working with a replication. Check to see if the .nsf file (usually name.nsf) is on the local system. The admin might be able to force a backwards replications from the server.
 
^^ I think that is exactly what must have happened, and then by deleting that I was deleting the wrong thing even though it appeared fine.
 
There's nothing worse than that feeling of your blood turning to custard when you lose a clients files :(
 
Jonny, what did you study and what's your job type? Sounds interesting.

I'm doing my N+ at the moment, but I've got a choice between a view directions, not sure what to do yet. I'm thinking of doing either CCNA or CCNP and maybe my Server+. Any advice?
 
Ha ha you will be shocked :p just look at my profile. I studied and got a Marketing and Business Management degree BComm and I ended up in the IT/MIS field.

Basically all I know in IT is self taught and is not that brilliant :p some quick research suggests you must do a CCNA before you can do a CCNP :p

I don't know much about server+ sorry man, but it seems more of a specialist area.

At the moment I am a PC Support Administrator working in the corporate IT world at a worwide company affiliate. This is not a good thing this corporate IT stuff :D my advice is to steer clear from the corporate world at all costs. It is good for experience though.
 
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Thanks man ;) appreciate it. There's hope for me :p
 
Pray to God you never have to work with Lotus Notes though, if I was to ever start up a blog it would be to highlight how crap it is compared to Outlook and the pain it causes me daily.
 
Fudzy said:
Pray to God you never have to work with Lotus Notes though, if I was to ever start up a blog it would be to highlight how crap it is compared to Outlook and the pain it causes me daily.
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lol ;) :D :p I dislike any Lotus application, my dad used to buy each edition of the stuff for work, I used to uninstall it and he got into a frenzy, those side bars and small buttons really don't do it for me ;)
 
Agreed :) I find Lotus Notes is alright for databases and meetings and the like, but as an e-mail server/client it is a big no-no IMO. I just have to live with it, if Chicago says, "Jump"... :rolleyes:
 
Jonny Two Shoes said:
Agreed :) I find Lotus Notes is alright for databases and meetings and the like, but as an e-mail server/client it is a big no-no IMO. I just have to live with it, if Chicago says, "Jump"... :rolleyes:
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Could you perhaps share some of the issues? We have a client that is apparently having their global holding company wanting to force Notes on them, and they're not very keen on it.
 
Many many users complain about the look and feel of LNotes, if you are going to be dealing with a lot of PC illiterates steer well clear of LNotes client. They all love Outlook and only know how to use that.

There are also quite a few well known programming bugs with our LNotes6.5.4 client. For instance one keeps telling you that there is new mail when there is none. It is also quite a difficult program to troubleshoot sometimes. It works with design templates and locations and permissions etc... all of which can give you are hard time.

Our LNotes server has a tendancy to do funny things now and then and is at times but seldom on the brink of crashing, can't say if this is a fault of the server or LNotes itself.

I am also constantly fixing problems on client PC's from the design templates going haywire requiring a reload/refresh to issues opening attachments (mostly ID-10-T problems :rolleyes:)
to users having issues replicating and archiving mail. LNotes is not very user friendly unless you know how to use a PC. If you are going to be using VPN you have to worry about switching between online and offline locations on LNotes and replicating if you would like to read mail offline. AFAIK outlook just saves it straight to your PC for later viewing if you file it.

I believe one can setup LNotes client to always use a automatic local based replica of the server mailfile. This will improve performance as a standard LNotes client server based setup performs quite poorly IMO and is slow. However this kind of setup takes plenty of extra troubleshooting and time.

If I had R1 for everytime I have re-installed an LNotes client :mad:

I can't say much for newer versions of LNotes though as we are still stuck on 6.5.4.
 
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Exchange is good, but also have the same issue with a monolithic database file which tend to grow HUUUUGE should the users not be restrained by system policies...

As a rule of thumb, your partition housing the Exchange database should be two to three times the maximum size of the maximum Exchange database size - as you *will* need the extra space to defragment or repair the Exchange database. So, for example, the maximum size is 20Gb, you'll need 40 to 60Gb of HDD space...

Also, said database need to be defragmented as well... running disk defragmenter does not defragment it.
 
The_Librarian said:
Exchange is good, but also have the same issue with a monolithic database file which tend to grow HUUUUGE should the users not be restrained by system policies...

As a rule of thumb, your partition housing the Exchange database should be two to three times the maximum size of the maximum Exchange database size - as you *will* need the extra space to defragment or repair the Exchange database. So, for example, the maximum size is 20Gb, you'll need 40 to 60Gb of HDD space...

Also, said database need to be defragmented as well... running disk defragmenter does not defragment it.
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Talk about space we often have serious problems with our users mailfile databases being well over 2 gig. Our server is also dangerously low on space.

Unfortunately even though we have a policy (recently implemented) that limits a user from exceeding 200meg before sending and receiving is stopped we are still having problems. People just don't know how to use notes to keep their mailfile size down. We sometimes have to give exceptions to certain users.

Show a standard user how to archive in Notes and they will phone you again about three times after asking about it. I don't know maybe I am just a useless teacher :( but when 90% of your users can't even imagine simply saving attachements and important stuff in Word or Excel and then deleting the mail then you know you have a problem :rolleyes: (even archiving regularly is too much to ask as well)

I know 200meg is not a lot but rules are rules and I have to follow them as well as enforce them and I have no problems keeping my own mailfile down, neither does my MIS colleagues who have been here for many many years.

So once again unless you work with PC literates who are prepared to get used to the tools of their trade stay the heck away from Notes :)
 
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The_Librarian said:
Exchange is good, but also have the same issue with a monolithic database file which tend to grow HUUUUGE should the users not be restrained by system policies...

As a rule of thumb, your partition housing the Exchange database should be two to three times the maximum size of the maximum Exchange database size - as you *will* need the extra space to defragment or repair the Exchange database. So, for example, the maximum size is 20Gb, you'll need 40 to 60Gb of HDD space...

Also, said database need to be defragmented as well... running disk defragmenter does not defragment it.
Click to expand...

You shouldn't generally need to defrag the database unless you do large amounts of mail deletion (or moves to other servers). The db is defragged internally every night, and the free whitespace is used first by expansion before the db itself increases in size. Exchange 2003 does seem to be much better at this than 5.5.

As for the monolithic database file - that was a nasty issue in Exchange 5.5; I can tell you it's no fun repairing a 75GB databse when it takes an entire day. In Exchange 200x, however, you can have 4 storage groups per server, each with up to 5 databases; 20 databases in total gives you a lot of flexibility when it comes to maintenance.
 
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