Domino ../linux/startup script evaluates Red Hat 5.3 as Red Hat 3

You upgrade your operating system from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.1 to 5.3. After that, the following errors occur when you start a Lotus Domino server, and you are returned to the shell prompt:

"/usr/bin/whoami: error while loading shared libraries: libc.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
expr: error while loading shared libraries: libc.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Could not backup notes.ini
stty: error while loading shared libraries: libc.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory"

This error occurs because the Domino startup script incorrectly evaluates the 5.3 version number in the file /etc/issue as RHEL 3.0. This causes the Domino startup script to set the UNIX environment variable of LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.19 that is meant for RHEL 3.0 only. Setting this variable makes Domino 7 and 8 servers detect a kernel version that it was not designed for, thus the error occurs.

This issue is now fixed in Lotus Notes and Domino 8.0.2 Fix Pack 2, 8.5 Fix Pack 1 and 8.5.1.

Fix details: SPR #KBRN7N9RWH

Refer to the Upgrade Central site for details on upgrading Notes/Domino.

If you have not yet upgraded, as a workaround, comment out the following section of the shell startup script in the binaries (/opt/ibm/lotus/notes/latest/linux/startup) :
Comment out the section in bold below by adding a '#' symbol at the front of the line.

------------------------section from script---------------------------------

# SPR #KBRN5T2R8U
# Flag needed to force JVM to use dynamic stacks on RHAS 2.1 - no affect on other distros
# Bug in JVM behavior that if we set this on RHAS3.0 it causes problems when should not, so
# making it RHAS 2.1 specific - ugly though. Also need to set LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.19 on RHAS 3.0
#

# version=`cat /etc/issue | grep -i "red" | egrep "Enterprise|Advanced" | awk '{print $7}' `
# version3=`echo $version | grep "3" | sed -e 's/.*3.*/3/'`
# version2=`echo $version | grep "2" | sed -e 's/.*2\.1.*/2.1/'`
# if [ ! -z ${version3} ]; then
B# if [ ${version3} = "3" ]; then
# LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.19
# export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL
# fi
# else
# if [ ! -z ${version2} ]; then
# if [ ${version2} = "2.1" ]; then
# IBM_USE_FLOATING_STACKS=1
# export IBM_USE_FLOATING_STACKS
# fi
# fi
# fi