Submitting a copy of a place to IBM Support for troubleshooting

Sometimes, problems you report to IBM Support are not reproducible using a new place on a test system. In these cases, providing IBM Support with a copy of the place experiencing problems can assist in problem determination and resolution. Often, these problems are related to system configuration or place content. How can you create a copy of your place?

Below are the instructions to use to collect the necessary place files and submit them to IBM Support. If you have private data within a place, you can submit a skeletal copy with the place structure but no data.
Table of contents:

• Collecting the minimal place files required - Main.nsf and Contacts1.nsf
• Collecting complete place files
• Collecting a skeletal structure to exclude private data
• Submitting the copy of the place to IBM Support

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Collecting the minimal place files required - Main.nsf and Contacts1.nsf

For many problems, the place files you need to collect are as follows:

• Main.nsf
• Contacts1.nsf

Copy these files from the QuickPlace\ placename\ directory on the server, compress them (such as a .zip file), and follow the instructions below for submitting the copy of the place to IBM Support.

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Collecting complete place files

There are some unusual scenarios where not having the complete place disguises the true problem in some not-so-obvious ways. For example, the following are difficult to diagnose without the full place:

• Error in search.nsf resulted in problem where user could not create a new room
• Main room or subrooms indicate subroom exists but no PageLibrary exists for the subroom
• Running qptool register with the place name not used by user (as opposed to register place using the name that the user used) automatically fixes some problems and may mask what user is seeing

To provide the complete place, you copy the contents of the entire directory (Path = QuickPlace\ placename\) and its subdirectories, as follows:
\placename

Contacts1.nsf
Main.nsf
PageLibraryxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.nsf -- all of them
Search.nsf
Search.FT -- and everything under it

If the place is very large, supply as much of the place as possible.

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Collecting a skeletal structure to exclude private data

If your place contains private or confidential data that you do not wish to include, you can use the procedure below to make a skeletal copy of the place. IBM Support will attempt to reproduce the problem with the place provided; however, there may be cases where the full place is needed depending upon the nature of the issue.

Before you begin, make sure a backup copy of the place exists.

1. Open the file named nlnotes.exe from the server program directory to launch a Notes session. This uses the server's ID to access the server data. Ignore the "Illegal Function Call" and "Unable to locate Program" error messages.

2. Open Main.nsf for the place in question:

File --> Database --> Open
Server = Local
Path = QuickPlace\placename\Main.nsf

3. Make a Notes copy of Main.nsf:

File --> Database --> New Copy
Server = Local
Title = COPYMain.nsf
File Name = COPYMain.nsf
Create full text index for searching = not checked
Specify What to Copy = Database design and documents
Access Control List = checked

This step creates a copy of the database but with a different ReplicaID, so clustering or replication of the original place is not affected.

4. Close all tabs within nlnotes.exe, then open the COPYMain.nsf file.

NOTE: When performing any of the following steps, make sure that you are doing so on the COPYMain.nsf file by validating the name in the title bar of the nlnotes application window. This verification is very important, as you will be deleting data. You must ensure you are deleting from the copy of the Main.nsf and not the production version.

5. In the lefthand content pane, access the System --> QDK view.

6. Click the h_Type column to sort documents.

7. Find and select all documents with an h_Type=0 and a blank h_SystemName. These documents are pages posted by users.

8. Mark the selected documents for deletion.

9. Refresh the view by pressing Control + Shift + F9.

10. Compact the database by entering the following command on the server console:

load compact COPYMain.nsf

11. Gather the COPYMain.nsf and the original Contacts1.nsf to send to Support.

The resulting place contains only the following content:
- the modifications made to the Welcome page
- existing folders and folder structure (names and hierarchy will be maintained)
- list of members
- custom forms
- links to subrooms

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Submitting the copy of the place to IBM Support

To submit the files to IBM Support, refer to the instructions in "Using ECuRep to exchange information with IBM Technical Support for Lotus software" (#1138787). Other options for submitting files are documented in "Exchanging information with IBM Technical Support."