Getting stated with IBM Notes 9 on Ubuntu 12.10 or 13.04 x64

Mat Newman  May 12 2013 16:08:34

IBM Notes 9 installs without any problems on both 12.10 and 13.04 x32 flavour.  However, the x64 version has a few tricks that you need to repair before you can run the installation files.  Over on Usablesoftware's blog there's a nice reference to the steps required to get IBM Notes 9 installed.

With the fantastic assistance of Jason Hatch from IBM, I learned that the only thing required to get Notes 9 running on x64 was to remove some dependancies from the control file in the IBM supplied Deb's and then run the -force install option to ignore the architecture requirements.

So the process is fairly straight-forward for x64:
1.        Unzip the Notes 9 deb files to your a location of your choosing ( I'm going to work with ~/Downloads/Notes9 ),
2.        Edit the Control file and remove the x32 reliant dependancies which x64 WILL NOT install,
3.        Install the repacked Notes9.deb file with the modified control file.

Step 1: Unzip the .debs

I'm assuming you know how to extract the installation .debs from the downloaded IBM supplied install file.

Step 2: Edit the control file

Ok, this is where it gets a little tricky, how does one unpack a .deb, edit a control file and then remake the edited package?

After hunting around on the Internets I found a nice little batch script that will do exactly that; it will;
1.        Extract the debs,
2.        Launch the .control file in the text editor of your choosing, and
3.        Once you have EXITED the editor,
4.        Remake the .deb file

One thing to make note of here, before you run this script, since it launches a text editor and listens for the application to close completely, you need to make sure that no other text editor windows are running during this process, otherwise the script will wait for (in my case GEdit) to exit all windows completely.

I've attached the EditControl.txt file HERE.  When you download it, rename the file as EditControl.sh, and mark it as executable.  To make the following instructions seamless, please put EditControl.txt into the path I mentioned above ( ~/Downloads/Notes9 ), along with the Notes 9 .deb's

What do you need to replace?

Within the .control file there is a line called Depends. Many of these are libraries that are required on the x32 platform, which canonical have implicitly denied any ability to install on the x64 flavour of Ubuntu.  This section needs to be replaced with the following:

Depends: coreutils, procps, libart-2.0-2, libasound2, libatk1.0-0, libbonobo2-0, libbonoboui2-0, libc6, libfontconfig1, libfreetype6, libgcc1, libgconf2-4, libgtk2.0-0, libglib2.0-0, libgnome2-0, libgnomecanvas2-0, libgnomeui-0, libgnomevfs2-0, libglib2.0-0, libice6, libjpeg62, liborbit2, libpam0g, libpango1.0-0, libpng12-0, libpopt0, libsm6, libstdc++6, libx11-6, libxcursor1, libxext6, libxft2, libxi6, libxkbfile1, libxml2, libxp6, libxrender1, libxss1, libxt6, libxtst6, libz1

Jason Hatch from IBM Singapore supplied me with the original list, which I've further refined with some trial and error to the above. Thanks Jason!

Step 3: Install Notes 9

With the edited .control file, your installation will be pretty seamless and IBM Notes 9 will run straight out of the box.

Ok, so given that you have gotten your hands on the IBM Notes 9 Ubuntu install package, put it into your ~/Downloads/Notes9 folder and extracted it to place all the .deb's there, along with the EditControl.txt file, which you have renamed (using you file manager) to EditControl.sh and marked it as executable (Right-Click, Properties, Permissions, tick: "Allow Executing file as a program"), you're ready to begin:

Putting it all together:
1.        Open a Terminal,
2.        cd ~/Downloads/Notes9
3.        EditControl.sh ibm-notes-9.0.i586.deb
4.        Within the text editor window that will launch, over-write the DEPENDS entry with the text above under the heading "What do you need to replace?"
5.        Save the file, and EXIT the text editor (refer to my Note above)
6.        Wait for the EditControl script to repackage the .deb, and then continue with the install commands next:
7.        sudo dpkg --force-depends -i ibm-notes-9.0.i586.modfied-2013-05-05T08\:13\:47.deb
8.        sudo dpkg --force-depends -i ibm-activities-9.0.i586.deb
9.        sudo dpkg --force-depends -i ibm-cae-9.0.i586.deb
10.        sudo dpkg --force-depends -i ibm-feedreader-9.0.i586.deb
11.        sudo dpkg --force-depends -i ibm-opensocial-9.0.i586.deb
12.        sudo dpkg --force-depends -i ibm-sametime-9.0.i586.deb



That's it, you now have IBM Notes 9 installed on both 12.10 and 13.04 x64, you're good to go.

Hope this helps, YMMV. Enjoy!

Follow-up:

Since I first wrote this blog entry I've had some time to work with the client and there are a couple of 'quirks' I've noticed using this install method on an unsupported OS.  Yes, remember Ubuntu x64 12.10/13.04 are not a supported platform for IBM Notes 9.

• Modal Dialogs: Every now and then I have to 'drag' the title bar on a dialog to activate it before I can click any of the options within a dialog, for example, File - Replication - Replicate (which I do use quite a lot) needs me to drag the title before I can choose any of the options,
• Sidebar: Every now and again Notes 9 'forgets' what plug-ins and widgets I have opened as side-bar panels, and I have to open them again,
• Mime email: HTML formatted email sometimes is not rendered correctly in the client configured using this method, opening the same message on 13.04 x32 and iNotes, and they render fine.
• Toolbars: Sometimes reset themselves and have to be re-positioned.
• Unity recognition of warning prompts: "You've got mail" and other warnings like: New Sametime Chat windows configured NOT to "Bring Window to front on new chat", get "lost" in Unity, and unless you're paying attention to the extra "glowing led's" on the unity bar or utility like "docky" tend to get missed.

So at some point, I - probably like you - hope that IBM can find a work-around for these and eventually come up with support for the x64 versions of our favourite OS.

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