Simon Scullion

For some time now I have been using OpenDNS in preference to my ISPs DNS servers, or at least so I thought!

As it turns out, at what I suppose was the last time that I rebooted my router, it picked up the settings from my ISP again. I realised this a few days ago, and without further thought, set things back to OpenDNS.

Soon after I started to see problems with connection timeouts accessing my email, but also feeds in Liferea were not updating. Ubuntu’s software update wasn’t connecting either. It was strange, all I was able to do was browse the internet. I did a few network tests which were successful, and even ran an automated test available via my web-hosts Dreamhost which came up with nothing as I expected.

So tonight I went and checked my router configuration, and found a button to disconnect and reconnect. I gave it a go, and the OpenDNS settings were replaced with those of my ISP. Interesting I thought. So I went and tried my email, and you guessed it, down came the last few days unread emails. Liferea is filling up, and Ubuntu needs updating!

So what was the root of the problem? I have no idea! I tried googling, and a search on the OpenDNS forums, but didn’t come up with anything.

I have contacted OpenDNS support, with a link to this post to see whether they have any ideas. I’d prefer to be using OpenDNS!

Martin Ortega paid my blog a visit, and I was flattered he dedicated a post on his blog sidra400.com to mentioning my blog, including a screenshot! Martin lives close to me here in Asturias, its a small world this!

He is running his blog on the Domino Blog template, and has come up with some lovely designs, making me feel ashamed of my default Wordpress theme.

So, the least I could do is return the favour, gracias Martin!

Over the last few days, I have noticed a few other bloggers from the Lotus blogging community mentioning Ubuntu.

Ferdy Christant has published a good article on his recent move to ubuntu on his new laptop.

Stuart McIntyre has a post on his attempt at getting the Notes 8 Beta running on ubuntu.

I look forward to following them both, I hope they are having as much fun as I am!

Are there any others out there?

As it turns out, my Ubuntu bug turns out not to be, following a response with some instrustions.

It looks like the nvidia-glx and nvidia-kernel-1.0.9629 was installed from a 3rd party source that is not compatible with the ubuntu version numbering schema.

You can try to remove the nvidia-glx and nvidia-kernel-1.0.9629 packages and install the ones from ubuntu instead. But be careful you may end up on a shell without X.

Unfortunately I wasn’t careful enough, and I ended up with no UI having broken my video driver install! Help!

Not being too experienced with all this, a late night ensued. Having googled various error messages, tonight I managed to recover, reinstall the correct nvidia-glx package, and also clean out a few unnecessary ones.

So, back to business, and to be honest, I’m happy it wasn’t really a bug, Ubuntu rules!

So, tonight I managed to have another go at getting the Lotus Notes 8 client running under Ubuntu.

Disclaimer: I do realise this is not supported, and I agree with John and his rules of engagement, curiosity has just got the better of me!

Thanks to Nathan’s tip on the Beta forum, I manually created a notes.ini file which was missing from the install, and managed to launch the client!

Unfortunately it didn’t take me long to encounter NSD running but I realise I’m on my own with this, though my guess is there’ll be a few others than just Stuart and I!

I’ve been taking a load of screenshots throughout the process, and will try to get full write-up of my adventures so far. Stay tuned!

Back in Windows-land, I have had a quick play with the client too, and to answer Bruce’s question, I like, a lot! On first impressions, I think I’d go as far as to say that having to go back to the Notes 7 client now is going to be as enjoyable as working in Notes 4.6 was, prior to Saturday! Again, more detail to come.

On another note, Christopher Byrne made a good point in a comment over on Ed’s blog regarding a common tag for all this. I’m with him on using “Notes8Beta” for technorati.

The public beta of Lotus Notes and Domino 8 is now available!

Go and get it!

Having seen the demo and followed all the news over the last year or so, I am really looking forward to this install.

Lets hope the wait has been worth it, I’m sure it will have been.

As can be expected, Ed has more details on the release.

Being a linux newbie, I haven’t had much luck finding how to configure Firefox to use an external RSS client. Here’s how:

You can go under Edit->Preferences and choose the Tab Feeds.
There you choose Subscribe to the feed using and click on the button Choose Application and choose /usr/bin/liferea-add-feed

Thanks to Ralph’s instructions, I now have Liferea connected from Firefox on Ubuntu.

As I mentioned before, I am making the trip over to Dublin in May for the Irish Lotus User Group event.

What I didn’t mention and should have done, is say thank-you to Eileen and Paul, who, with the help of Kitty, Warren and Bill, have done an amazing job with no lack of effort to make this what it is.

So, thanks guys for what I am sure will be an amazing event! In addition to some great sessions, I am really looking foward to meeting so many of the people who’s blogs are a regular read.

Its already over a week ago that I was able to attend the LCTY event held in Madrid. This was the first of a six being held in major Spanish cities.

Having been lucky enough to attend Lotusphere back in 2003 I was not expecting anything on the same scale, but this was my first IBM official event here in Spain, and I went very interested to see what kind of energy the local IBM people would be able to convey in their presentations and messages.

I will try to find time to write a full impression of the day, as I have found it interesting to hear of the various reflections from other events from people such as Laurette, Stuart, and Bill, not to mention Ed’s keynote slides in English for me to compare with the Spanish version.

I have to be honest though and say I left a little disappointed. But I don’t want to just criticise, rather go into details and properly explain why.

More to come on the subject.