Symetrik Domino Consulting

When working on some new partitioned servers today, I saw this on the console of all three servers.

06/18/2008 04:41:03 PM Router: Connection from server NOTESVN1/DOMAIN not used; Server not found in Domino Directory.
06/18/2008 04:41:03 PM Router: Connection from server NOTESVN1/DOMAIN not used; Server not found in Domino Directory.
06/18/2008 04:41:03 PM Router: Connection from server NOTESVN1/DOMAIN not used; Server not found in Domino Directory.
06/18/2008 04:41:03 PM Router: Connection from server NOTESVN1/DOMAIN not used; Server not found in Domino Directory.
06/18/2008 04:41:03 PM Router: Connection from server NOTESVN1/DOMAIN not used; Server not found in Domino Directory.

I couldn’t quite figure it out because the 3 partitioned servers I was building/working on had nothing to do with this new cluster that another team member had just built for our Vietnam office.

I double checked the spelling in the connection documents from those VN servers, double checked the server documents for those VN servers, and even went as far as looking for Replication / Save conflict documents. I did find a replication / save conflict document from one of our new Singapore cluster mates servers to one of our hubs that didn’t appear in the connections view, and a 3 person document replication / save conflict documents, but nothing to do with these Vietnam servers.

I looked through the R4/5, R6/7, R8 discussion forums at IBM/Lotus and not one single entry for “Server not found in Domino Directory.” When I looked at the Lotus Support Search, I found a technote relating to not having an ISpy document saved witht eh canonical name. This reminded me once of not having the default mail template on a server, so the ISpy database could not be created, and a similar error occurred. We use OpenNTF1.7b template, so the server had had the mail6.ntf template removed and then we later went to enable ISpy and the default template listed in notes.ini was still mail6.ntf, so it could not create the ISpy database.

I then closed my NAB, and held CTRL-SHIFT while clicking on the workspace icon for the directory. This displays hidden views, and I went through each view one by one until I found that all of the connection documents from those VN servers started were listed under NOTESVN1/DOMAIN instead of CN=NOTESVN1/O=DOMAIN. ah hah! That was it.

A simple edit and save fixed the problem. I’m not sure why this happened, but the team mate who was working on those servers mentioned something about using an agent to copy the connection documents from one server, and update the source.

The morale of the story: If very strange things are happening on your server, and you can’t find the error message anywhere on the Lotus discussion forums try these steps:

1. Look for replication save conflicts for servers, configuration documents, or connection documents.
2. Be aware that sometimes replication save conflict documents do not show up in views, so build yourself and admin view which displays all of them and periodically (daily if you have the resources) go in and delete them.
3. Look in the hidden views and make sure that the canonical name is used for all of your important documents such as servers, connections, and configuration documents.