Domino @ Symetrik Design » dircat

Where to set where an agent runs.

david — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 07:27:06 +0000

A few months ago, I setup a “Directory” server. This server is meant to be the administration server for names.nsf, it also serves as an LDAP service for our corporate phone directory, it also runs the directory cataloger service, and it is our registration server (where all the admins register new users and update groups). This keeps things nice and tidy and all updates happening in one location.

If you use Directory Catalog (dc.nsf), there is an agent that you can turn on that runs once a week at 2:00AM on Sundays that gives some statistics on names.nsf versus dc.nsf, the fields that are used in dc.nsf, the size, etc. etc and then sends that report to the administrators group or group of your choosing. To receive the report you simply supply a group name in the ” Send Directory Catalog reports to:” field in the Directory Catalog configuration document (configuration view of dc.nsf).

For months, I couldn’t figure out why this agent was running on the old server which used to run the dircat task instead of the new directory server.

By accident, I discovered where that configuration was hiding. I should have known this, but sometimes it’s not always obvious.

Duplicate groups in Ambiguous Name Dialogue box.

david — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:08:25 +0000

I have been getting duplicate names in the Ambiguous Name dialogue box when addressing a message.

I’ve got my personal NAB, a local replica of our NAB, and a local dc.nsf on my machine. All of them are listed in the NAMES= line of my notes.ini.

I could not explain why the groups would appear this way. One group would have a mail domain and one group wouldn’t. One group would contain the members if you showed the member list, and one group looked like it was condensed (probably from the dc.nsf).

One of the guys on my team found this post.

We added our Domino domain name to the “Mail Domain” field in the group document and all was fixed, no problems when an Internet user send a message to the group, and no duplicate entries in the Ambiguous Name dialog box.

About the directory catalog

david — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 07:50:18 +0000

The directory catalog is supposed to be used for mobile users so that they can address mail to users or groups remotely without having to have a replica copy of the huge NAB on their laptop. For some organizations, this is not a big deal, they can just create a local replica of the NAB if it’s small enough.

For other organizations the NAB is 1GB plus in size, and managing that on a local replica for all users, and even the possibility of security vulnerabilities can be a big issue.

Other environment use dc.nsf so that their users can search via first name instead of last name. (seriously, it happens).

Let me explain how it works:
Set it up on 1 server only. This is done in the server document, under the server tasks tab, under the directory catalog sub-tab.
In the dc.nsf, configure it so that aggregation only runs on that server. This is set by opening dc.nsf on the server you want it to run, select the configuration view, open the configuration document and supply the server name in the ” Restrict aggregation to this server:” field.
Once the dc.nsf is created, you can manually create replicas on the servers you want to exist with the admin client.

If the dc.nsf becomes corrupt or out-of-date for some reason, run these commands to manually update it on the server where the task runs.
To manually update the directory catalog, use these commands:

tell dircat quit
load dircat dc.nsf -r (rebuilds the dc.nsf then shuts down)
load dircat (required because the previous command shuts down the task when finished).