unable to open notes on EV server

[jaj]

hi I just tried to open notes on Vault server which says database is in use by another process. From domino server I used dbflush to see if that helps.

Is this normal? any way to open notes on ev server?

[Arjun_Shelke]

AFAIK, notes will be used by tasks running on EV Server for communication with domino servers. And thats the reason, you cant open the notes client. If you desperately wants to open notes on EV Server

(its not recommended though, you should not use notes client on EV server for general usage)

then you can stop the task and open the notes, which should open fine. But stopping the tasks, such as archiving, journaling and provisioning will freeze.

[jaj]

Do you mean I will need to stop all EV activities/operations? I am not desperate enough to stop archiving though :p

[Paul_Honey]

Jaj The notes client installation on the EV server is required to provide the IBM C API that various EV services / tasks utilize. The error message you report is the classic notes response when more than one process / activity is trying to access NSF files locally in the notes client DATA directory, in your case, that will be the EV Services and their open notes session via the IBM C API and also the notes client sesison that you are trying to initialize Hence, our recommendation is never to open / use the notes client on the EV server as it's sole reason for being there is for the provision of the IBM C API to EV services / tasks, and utilizing the notes client in a separate user initiated session can only introduce the risk of conflict and contention. We have certainly seen issues in the past where such conflicts could result in NSD activity and corruption of the notes installation / local NSFs. For troubleshooting purposes, it may sometimes be absolutely necessary to open that notes client on the server, and stopping the EV services / tasks will usually release the locks on resources to allow this, but, as you say, you do not want to do this in normal production running state, and should simply use a notes client installed elsewhere if at all possible Regards Paul

[jaj]

But I was wondering if I login to server using any other user account and try to access the notes, will I still get that error? I mean the notes installation was multi-user, does it still conflict?

[Paul_Honey · Accepted solution]

Jaj There is less likeliehood in that situation of a conflict as you will be using a separate distinct data directory for your alternative login A couple of possible issues with this approach though: 1. You will still be sharing the Notes program directory and binaries, so potential for conflict there as the EV services will still be running and requiring access to the IBM C API 2. When we first released, we always mandated that the Notes client on the EV server should only be installed in Single User mode to avoid issues with session initialisation and consequent conflicts. I see our docs have since been updated to say the following: "If you installed the Notes client with the Multi-User Install option, log on as the Windows account that the Enterprise Vault services will use. This is normally the Vault Service account." I'm not entirely sure why we changed our stance here but I think the reasoning behind the above statement remains the same in that you should only login as the VSA to ensure that the notes client is installed and configured uniquely and solely for the benefit of the EV services that require it Basically, as I stated before, it is possible to open the notes client on the EV server, sometimes without any tweaking required and sometimes with tweaking to workaround the error you started the thread with. But doing so introduces the potential for conflict with the processes that require the notes client / IBM C API and the explicit reason why it is installed on an EV server. So our best practice recommendation is to avoid doing so unless absolutely necessary and, if necessary, be aware that unexpected issues can subsequently occur within the EV processes. Can I ask what is the use case / reason that you need / want to open the client on the EV server anyway? Regards Paul