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Admin Alert: QNOTES Ownership Improves Domino Performance
by Joe Hertvik
After you install and configure a Lotus Domino server on OS/400, you may find its performance is slower
than you expected (or were promised by your business partner). While it's still fairly common for customers
to order AS/400 and iSeries servers that are undersized for the desired workload, you can tweak correctly
sized machines to competently handle Domino. One of the tweaks for improving Domino performance is to
ensure that all objects in your /notes/data directory and its associated subdirectories are owned by
the QNOTES user profile.
On Domino for OS/400 servers, it's common to FTP files back and forth between a PC development
environment and a Domino server's /notes/data directory. Using FTP, uploaded files may be owned
by the AS/400 user profile used in the FTP transfer instead of by QNOTES. If QNOTES doesn't have
control over the necessary Domino files when those files go live, there can be performance problems. Here's
why.
QNOTES was created specifically for use by Domino for AS/400 servers. When Domino objects aren't
owned by QNOTES, this can cause excessive authority checking, which will affect Domino's performance
because of the added system overhead. So after uploading or creating new files on a Domino server, make
sure your files are owned by QNOTES. If they're not, change them to QNOTES ownership.
First, check your directories for QNOTES file ownership by using the green-screen Edit File (EDTF)
command to list who owns each file and directory in your server's /notes/data directory. You invoke
this command by using the following syntax:
EDTF '/notes/data'
If many concurrent Domino servers are running on your iSeries or AS/400, the /notes/data
directories for those servers may reside in different IFS locations. Make sure to use the proper IFS location
for every Domino server you wish to check. Also, be careful when using the EDTF screen, because some of
the available options on this screen allow you to remove files or to recursively delete a directory.
If you find any files that aren't owned by QNOTES, you must change the file owner to QNOTES in order to
eliminate the performance penalty associated with excessive authority checking. To do this, use the Change
Owner (CHGOWN) command, as follows:
CHGOWN OBJ(/notes/data) NEWOWN(QNOTES)
You will need to repeat this procedure for any subdirectories listed under your /notes/data directory,
as well as change ownership for those files to QNOTES, if necessary. This should be done after file changes
or after installing a third-party product, such as Trend Micro's
ScanMail for Lotus Notes. (ScanMail is usually installed using the QSECOFR user profile,
which subsequently owns the ScanMail objects in each Domino server directory.)
Excessive authority checking is a known problem with Domino for AS/400 servers, but there doesn't seem
to be any other tool for quickly changing object ownership in a /notes/data directory along with its
associated subdirectories in one fell swoop. If IBM is
offering a more comprehensive way to do this, I'm not aware of it.
It's also important to understand that checking ownership for the /notes/data directory isn't a task
that will be done only when you initially create a Domino server instance. As your developers move more
files to an AS/400, it's important to occasionally check and readjust directory object ownership to QNOTES
so that your Domino server will continue to run smoothly.
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