7.3 Pre-installation steps

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7.3 Pre-installation steps

Be sure to read and refer to the following documentation:

• The release notes that come with your Domino distribution CD for the latest information on the product. Notice that there is a special section about Domino for Linux on zSeries.

• The install guide, also on the CD, to become familiar with the entire install process.

• Chapter 2, "Planning" on page 13. Be sure that you have the Domino clients on your desktop, as listed in 2.5.2, "Software" on page 19.

If you followed the Linux installation instructions in 6.5.4, "Complete the graphical installation process" on page 106, then you should have a non-root user (for example, domserva) defined to run the Domino server, but not a group (for example, notes). The Domino server will not start with a UID of 0. If you have not created the Domino server user ID, you can use the useradd and passwd commands to do so.

You can verify the user ID with the id command. For example:

    # id domservb    uid=500(domservb) gid=100(users) groups=100(users) 

Create the group called notes with the groupadd command and make it the Domino user's primary group using the usermod -g command. For example:

    # groupadd notes    # usermod -g notes domservb 

Verify the changes by using the id command:

    # id domservb    uid=500(domservb) gid=500(notes) groups=500(notes) 

We recommend that you have notesdata as your home directory for your Domino user account. If you log on with the Domino user ID, you are already in the notesdata directory when you start and configure (that is, by editing notes.ini) If this is not the case, you can use the usermod command to change it:

    # usermod -d /domservb/notesdata 

Set it to be owned by the correct group.

    # ls -ld /domservb/notesdata    drwxr-xr-x 11 domservb users      4096 Sep 30 16:29 /domservb/notesdata    # chgrp notes /domservb/notesdata    # ls -ld /domservb/notesdata    drwxr-xr-x 11 domservb notes      4096 Sep 30 16:29 /domservb/notesdata 

Create a profile with the following command:

    echo "DOMINO_LINUX_SET_PARMS=1" >> ~domservb/.bash_profile    env | grep DOMINO    DOMINO_LINUX_SET_PARMS=1 

Verify that you have enough disk space available to install the server. The Domino server requires 870 MB for the executables and 480 MB for the notesdata directory. You will also need 650 MB for the TAR file. Note that this is only for the minimum installation; for your environment you will need more, according to the size of your production data. Type the command df -h to display your available diskspace.

Ensure that you have connectivity from your workstation to the Linux server by issuing a ping command to the server IP name: For example:

    ping domservb.itso.company.com 

If this is not the first server installation, make sure that you have connectivity to the domain administration server that will supply the Domino directory.

You will need a Lotus Notes 6 administrator client with the remote server setup program in order to set up your Domino server.

Change the default Linux kernel values

Some kernel files contain default kernel parameters that should be modified for the Domino environment. Note that these are system-wide values; there is no mechanism for changing them specifically for the Domino server application. These values are recommended based on experience in scaling Domino for Linux on zSeries with large numbers of mail users in a lab environment, finding bottlenecks, and tuning these kernel parameters to overcome them.

/etc/security/limits.conf

This file in the Linux kernel limits the number of file descriptors that any one process can open; the default is 1024. This limit is not useful for Domino scalability, as it limits the number of users who can be connected to the Domino server. This default must be overridden by modifying the file /etc/security/limits.conf. Edit /etc/security/limits.conf as root and add or modify these lines:

    *     soft  nofile   20000    *     hard  nofile   49152 

where the "soft" value specifies the new default file descriptor limit (ulimit -n), and the "hard" value specifies the maximum file descriptor limit that may be set by the user.

Tip 

If you change these limits by using an asterisk, as described above, the limits apply to all users, and you will no longer be able to log in using ssh. (We believe that is a bug in SuSE SLES-8 SP2.) You can instead add lines to this file for individual users. For example, our Domino server user ID is domservb and we changed the /etc/security/limits.conf as follows:

    domservb soft nofile 20000    domservb hard nofile 49152 

Note 

If you want to start your Domino server at Linux boot time or automatically using a script, make sure the values above are set properly.

The users must login after /etc/security/limits.conf is saved in order for the change to take affect.

/proc filesystem

The following parameters are contained in the /proc filesystem. /proc is a virtual filesystem which is actually a window into kernel memory. Many of the files under /proc directories exist only to view and or set kernel parameters.

Table 7-3 lists the parameters to change, the recommended value, default value, and a description of the parameter. To set the recommended value from a root user terminal session, enter each setting as:

    echo recommended-value > parameter-file-name 

Table 7-3: Linux kernel settings

Parameter	Recommended value	Default value	Description
proc/sys/fs/file-max	131072	196608	Maximum number of file handles allowed for each process
proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_fin_timeout	15	60	Time to hold a socket in FIN-WAIT-2 state if it is closed by Domino
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_max_syn_backlog	16384	1024	Maximum number of connection requests that are remembered, but have not received acknowledgment from the connecting client
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_tw_reuse	1	0	Allow reuse of TIME-WAIT sockets
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_local_port_range	1024 65535	32768 61000	Expand the range of port values

For example:

    echo 131072 > /proc/sys/fs/file-max 

Unfortunately, these changes are not permanent; the /proc filesystem is reloaded with default values during each boot. In order to avoid (re)setting /proc parameters after each boot, Domino will set them for you at Domino startup, but only if the environment variable DOMINO_LINUX_SET_PARMS is set to "1", as in:

    export DOMINO_LINUX_SET_PARMS=1 

Set this variable in the .profile of the Domino server user ID.

Note 

If you plan to start your Domino server at Linux boot time or automatically using a script, make sure the values above are set properly.

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