LDD Today

Ask Professor INI

More on memory management and other questions
Although Ask Professor INI is presented as a monthly column, in some respects, it also serves as a forum. In addition to Notes.ini questions, readers on occasion also send in very useful information—to describe a mystery variable that stumped Professor INI, to provide additional information about a point we covered earlier, or even to correct a mistake that may have appeared in this space (even professors don't know everything). Professor INI greatly encourages this sort of interactive dialog. We've taken some good-natured ribbing from colleagues over the years who have accused Professor INI of being obsessed with the Notes.ini file and all its myriad wonders. However, Professor INI knows all too well that no one has all the answers for so large and dynamic a topic, so all contributions and clarifications you can provide are welcome. (A Business Partner even sent in an entire Notes database of Notes.ini information he had collected recently.)

This month Professor INI talks a bit more about managing memory with PercentAvailSysResources before answering several questions you've sent us over the past few weeks.

More on managing memory with PercentAvailSysResources
The August 2003 installment of Ask Professor INI included a brief mention of PercentAvailSysResources, one of the more widely used and discussed, undocumented Notes.ini variables in existence. PercentAvailSysResources helps control memory management in Domino releases through R5.0.11. Reader Scott Hopper of IBM pointed out that there's more to say about this variable than we've previously covered. This variable (originally introduced to allow quick adjustment for multiple partitions and to deal with problems on small memory and mixed-use machines) defines the percentage of physical memory that Domino uses to calculate how to size certain memory allocations.

For example, suppose you're running Domino on a server with two partitions with different workloads, and you want one partition to use 60 percent of the resources and the second to use 40 percent. To do this, set PercentAvailSysResources=60 in the first partition's Notes.ini file and PercentAvailSysResources=40 in the second partition's Notes.ini.

In large memory systems, PercentAvailSysResources can also be used to:
This variable defines the maximum size of the NSF buffer pool. This size also determines the values for other substantial memory uses.

For more information on PercentAvailSysResources, see Scott's Performance Perspectives column, "Configuring Domino 5 for AIX/pSeries in large physical memory environments," published in the January 2003 issue of LDD Today.

And now a few questions...
The remainder of this column provides answers to a few questions readers have submitted recently.

Q. Where can I get a definitions list of all Notes.ini entries available for the Notes 6 client?
As we mentioned in our very first Ask Professor INI column, there is no complete compendium of Notes.ini variables. The Notes and Domino documentation is a good start, but it doesn't take much searching through your Notes.ini file before you begin discovering variables for which there is no documentation. Some of these are deliberately undocumented—they're temporary variables designed for quick-fix or debugging purposes, and they're dynamic, so changing them is meaningless (and potentially dangerous). On the other hand, at least some uncovered variables probably should be included in the documentation.

Since our first column nearly three years ago, a number of sources providing Notes.ini information has appeared on the Web. For example, the Notes.ini reference provided by DRCC offers a great deal of Notes.ini information, including descriptions of undocumented variables. You can use this reference in conjunction with a free tool called Configuration Manager for Notes from Wolcott Systems Group. This tool lets you view a sorted list of variables in your Notes.ini file. You can select a variable, and then click a provided link to view information on the variable in the DRCC Notes.ini reference. (You can also use this tool to compare two Notes.ini files. This allows you to see the differences between a Notes.ini configuration that's working and one that isn't.)

These and other Web sources can help augment the Notes/Domino documentation (although as with any Web content, complete accuracy cannot be guaranteed in every case). However, Professor INI is unaware of any complete, definitive list of all client and server variables. (Given the mercurial nature of Notes.ini variables, which can come and go without warning from one release to the next, it probably would be very difficult to keep such a list up-to-date.)

One final note: The first Ask Professor INI column mentioned the Admin Best Practices forum as a good source of Notes.ini information for Business Partners. This forum is no longer available. However, much of the information it contained has been incorporated into the product documentation.

Q. I have a program called Random Event Sounds (no longer produced that I can find), and it worked quite well with R4.6. It randomly picks sounds at intervals that the user can specify. I would like to make it work with R5 or Notes/Domino 6. I tried adding the line Incoming Mail Sound=RES2000.exe to my Notes.ini file, but that doesn't work. Any idea how I can get Notes to use the RES2000 as my mail sound?
You're on the right track, but there are a few things you may want to check. First, be sure to specify the complete pathname of your sound file in this setting. It's possible Notes simply can't find the file. Also, you mention that you're trying to get your sound file to work in both (or either) R5 or Notes/Domino 6. The Incoming Mail Sound variable doesn't work in R5; instead, use the NewMailTune variable. Also, be sure you're changing your client's Notes.ini file rather than the server's. (This may sound overly basic, but it's an easy mistake to make.) If you are running Notes/Domino 6, you may want to avoid fooling with Notes.ini altogether and instead, set this through the Play a Sound field on the Mail tab in the User Preferences dialog box (File - Preferences - User Preferences - Mail).

Q. I have a client experiencing very slow response. I looked at the Notes.ini file and found Console_Nupdate=80 300 7 22 29 691 367. What is the purpose of this on a client machine?
Professor INI can find no reference for Console_Nupdate (or any other similarly named variable). Can another reader help shed some light on this mystery?

Q. We are receiving the following error messages with Lotus Domino R5.0.11:

Thread=[01118:00164-167076]
PANIC: Cannot attach to shared memory region, due to insufficient access (probably owned by another user or group)
Fatal Error signal = 0x0000000B PID/TID = 1118/167076
Freezing all server threads ...

This technote describes fixing this problem in Domino 6 by using the ConstrainedSHM=1 variable. Does this also apply to R5.0.11?
The variables ConstrainedSHM and the related ConstrainedSHMSizeMB are available in Notes/Domino 6.x and R5.0.12 or later. These variables are not available in R5.0.11 or earlier. You should contact your Lotus Support representative to determine the best course of action to rectify this problem. (Note that third-party addins can be a big contributor to this error, so make sure your representative knows which ones you are using.)

Q. I know that desktop.dsk can be put in another location than the Notes\data directory and pointed to in Notes.ini with the desktop variable. Is this also possible with mail.box, smtp.box, and bookmark.nsf?
This question seems to pop up in one form or another fairly frequently (twice this past month alone). In two previous Notes.ini columns, we explained that there is no variable for specifying the location of your bookmark.nsf file as there is for desktop.dsk. The same is true for mail.box and smtp.box—Professor INI is not aware of any Notes.ini variables for controlling the location of these.


Do you have a Notes.ini question? Send it in to Professor INI. We'll answer as many questions as we can in future "Ask Professor INI" columns. Keep in mind, however, that we may not be able to answer every question, nor can we quickly respond to requests that require immediate attention. If you need an immediate response to a question, we recommend you post it in the Notes/Domino 6 Forum or Notes/Domino 4 and 5 Forum where someone from the general Notes community might be able to help, or contact Lotus Support Services.