Thanks so much for this. Its the best information I’ve ever been led to over this subject matter.

We were able to set it all up with your instructions. However, it seems that some computers in my environment seem to react differently to the smart upgrade notification. We setup a date for which they must upgrade by. Some clients when notified display the amount of time remaining, some do not. And some clients, even though we add them to the group we set up to deploy out to, do not recognize there is an upgrade available. We may end up having to visit each desktop individually after all.

Hi James,

Thanks for the nice comment! What you could try for the fun of it would be to write a button with some lotusscript on it to set the InstallType to 6 and clear the SUwhatever variables such as SU_INPROGRESS, SU_NEXT_UPDATE, SU_FILE_CLEANUP,SUT_NEXT_UPDATE and SU_DELAYS_DAYS.

If you want, I could post the code for that in another post.

Thanks again,

Marc

Hey Marc,
I just got off the phone with IBM with a fix to our problem. It seems that clients that have been upgraded to 8.5.1 are missing the parameter InstallMode=1 from their notes.ini. Without this parameter it will cause “havoc” (IMB’s word) with the client. In this case causing the client to report that it is a “basic” client rather than a “standard” client. Thereby missing the kit that is available for them. What I did was set up a desktop policy that added this to everyone’s notes.ini and that did the trick! Oh, and the case of the client not displaying the time remaining was a goof on our end. I added the group “Everyone” to the master policy, but unbeknownst to me, that person was not a member of the “Everyone” group and so was not receiving the master policy, go figure. Added them to the group and now they are seeing the time remaining as they should. Thanks again for your wonderful presentations. Site bookmarked!

Hi Marc,

Ah ah ))

I’ve the same addiction to the tracking database !
feel very happy when I see a lot of “succeed” and so sorry when there is only failed or cancelled entries!

Hi Marc

still reading your blog, and following you on the everyday road to Lotus 85 in your company !

following a PMR I have, support told me to use the /w in the command line when using SURunAs as described here

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/domhelp/v8r0/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.help.domino.admin85.doc/H_USING_THE_SMART_UPGRADE_RUN_AS_FEATURE_OVER.html

for me it comes in french, but I guess it’s because of the regional settings, you should get it in english

do you have any feedback about this /w, as I consider you have more experience with SU than most of the people at Lotus support.

Thanks
Guillaume

Hi Guillaume,

It’s funny you mention that one, i.e. the “/w” parameter because I wasn’t having any luck when I was using it. After reading the documentation it made me think that the /w param was there for people with slow computers, i.e. to make it “wait” a bit after the Install Shield had finished running to give the computer a bit of time to catch up. And if I remember correctly, when I used it, my SuRunAs package wouldn’t work at all. One thing that I do remember was that I tried so many darn combination of switches for the SuRunAs command that in the end, when speaking with John St. Germain, we agreed that I should give up on trying to use so many different params and to use the most simplest line I could use, which turned out to be the /s /v”ALLUSERS=1 TRANSFORMS=LotusNotes851.mst /qb+!” line that I wrote about in presentations on the previous blog entries.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Smart Upgrade but man, sometimes it feels like brain surgery.

Oh and don’t worry, je peux lire et écrire en Français mais je préfère quand même utiliser l’Anglais pour le blog pour être sûr de rejoindre le plus de gens dans la communauté.

In other news, I will need to post something later down the road about my issues upgrading R7.0.1 CCH2 clients over to R8.5.1 FP1. Not a huge thing but we found a workaround this week … which in turn causes another issue for the rest of my users. I’m really tempted at times to call Smart Upgrade “Dumbgrade” but then I remember that it’s currently saving me a ton of time and effort by doing a lot of the work for me automatically and I calm down.

If you wonder what CCH2 is about, it was about some really strange thing happening with DBLookups that was broken that we really had to get fixed and the fix was in the Client Cumulative Hot Fix 2 for R7.0.1.

Apart from that, I have another post in the works about Eclipse getting totally 0wned by something stupid … more on that later either this week or next week when I have a minute to get Patrick to review my draft.

I hope my small comment about /w helped you (?) a bit … good luck with your Smart Upgrade!

Marc

How to create same thing, but for basic version, and already for FP2? Thank You in advance.

Hi Dimitru,

Sorry to say this, but I have never tried to package the Basic version but I’m 90% sure that the steps would be exactly the same. Well, almost the same, except for the part about tweaking the jvm.properties files and modifying the file to allow clients to automatically login to Sametime. If you need that, in the Basic version, the Sametime settings are in the notes.ini so you would simply add the settings there via the InstallShield wizard during the package creation (at the step where you tweak the notes.ini).

However, and to the best of my knowledge, you can’t put the FP2 in the package at the same time. Sorry. It really needs to be a 2 step process. You’ll end up doing 2 Smart Upgrades in a row on your clients basically.

But, you can open a PMR with Lotus Support to see what they have to say about it.

Do keep in mind that you might get some answers from people out there who will say “Yes, it’s possible to install it on a machine, then put FP2 on top of it and *then* take a snapshot of what got installed and write something and/or put it into a very well made installation wizard to deploy it …” but the goal of my post and the goal in my company is to use Smart Upgrade because it’s what’s supported by Lotus Support and it’s free, i.e. included out of the box so I can’t go into that and I have no idea about which tool could do such a thing.

Thanks for your comments!

Marc

Thank You. At the moment I’ve tried to create a kit for Upgrade from 7.0.x to 8.5.1 (basic) and use a full install of it using a type like: Any to 8.5.1, but for some with 7.0.x it works, but for some with 8.5, tell that is “no matching kit”, and same thing appear for downloaded Kit for PA “upgrade 8.5 to 8.5.1″. Where is the “key” for this question? ))

Hi, and thanks a lot for this “SU for dummies” !

I thought i’ll never be able to make it works, but here you come !
I follow your instruction, and create 2 package, one for LN851 and one for LN851FP2.
I configure policy, SU and SU Trackert, and test were good in certain cases, but not in every case.
I want that all clients move to an actual version (6.5.x ou 8.5) to 8.5.2 FP2, and that didn’t work.

For example, i have an user with an LN85 client.
I have configured 2 kits : One from release 85 to release 851, and one from release 851 to release 851 FP2
If I set the desktop policy to Release 851, the SU process occured, and user LN’s client is updated to Release 8.5.1
After that, i set the desktop policy to Release 851 FP2. So the user LN’s client is updated to Relase 8.5.1 FP2
So it works.

But i want to upgrade in one time. From 8.5 to 8.5.1 FP2.
And that don’t work.

If someone use LN 8.5 and his policy is set to Release 8.5.1 FP2, we will have the message “no matching kit”.
So, do we have to upgrade all clients to a version version without the FP, and after, install the FP ?

Your help will be very appreciated !

Clement

Hi Clement,

First and foremost: thank you for your comments, they are very appreciated.

Secondly, I’m still learning things about Smart Upgrade almost every day … so I’m also a “dummy”.

Finally, if I understood your question correctly, you cannot go to from “Release 8.5″ to the “Release 8.5.1 FP2″ in 1 shot. Well, in theory that is. Mr. John Paganetti of Lotus (he commented on this particular topic) suggested that in order to do that you:

(a) Create the whole “tweaked” package for the R8.5.1 installation (with SURunAsWizard that gives you a file nearly 500 megs).
(b) Create the package for the 8.5.1 Fix Pack 2 (with SURunAsWizard, that gives you a file about 90 megs).
(c) Create a batch file that calls the 1st package and then the 2nd package.
(d) Upload that batch file and the 2 kits from “a” and “b” into the Smart Upgrade Kit document and use that to upgrade your clients.

I have not had the chance to try that approach yet in my company. Right now, I am “forcing” people to go to R8.5.1 first via policy and then, again via policy, to get the Fix Pack 1 for R8.5.1. Yes, they are not happy about the “two parts” upgrade … but at least it’s “hands-off” and it does not require any intervention on our part (which was the goal).

Let me know if this answered your question or not … and good luck!

Marc

Hello
That what i thought : Having two separates packages launched by an unical batch file.
However, we can only put one file in Smart Upgrade Database.
So, let’s have a package, with all in one.

But (always a but), there is a problem.
I want to use SURunAsWizard to create a global package, with the full client, the FP, and the batch.
For the full client, i modify the setup.ini to launch the mst file > Ok
For the FP, i don’t do anything.
And my batch is very simple :

_____
ln851frpkg\setup.exe
lotus_notes851FP2_win.exe /d /s -s -a /v” /qb-!”
_____
I test this succession manually, with an user with administrator rights, and it’s ok.

Now, go to SURunAsWizard, to create the big pack.
- Set the administrator user to used
- Add all files in my directory (ln851frpkg folder\*.*, lotus_notes851FP2_win.exe and LN851FP2_FR.cmd
- Set LN851FP2_FR.cmd to be launched
- No parameters
- Compilation in progress.

Next step : SUDb
I put the SuRunas.exe file in the Smart Upgrade Database, and configure to go from 8.5 to 8.5.1 FP2.
On my test client, the Smart Upgrade Process occured.
1 – The SuRunas.exe file is downloaded in %USERPROFILE%\application data\Smkits\…
2 – It ask me if i want to install it (i click on yes proudly)
3 – Lotus Notes closes, the SU process continue. At this time, SuRunas.exe is extracted to a temporary folder (%USERPROFILE%\local settings\temp\SuRunasXXXX\… where XXXX is four digits)
When all the file are here… nothing happen, and Lotus Notes is launched.
Ouch, didn’t worked.
On the MyDocuments\LotusInstall.log, i see that all file are extracted, and then that it launch the batch file :

___________________________
Detached resource file to C:\DOCUME~1\yyy\LOCALS~1\Temp\SURunas212\FICHIERS\InstLotus\LN851FP2_FR.cmd
Setting current directory to C:\DOCUME~1\yyy\LOCALS~1\Temp\SURunas212\
COMMAND: C:\DOCUME~1\yyy\LOCALS~1\Temp\SURunas212\FICHIERS\InstLotus\LN851FP2_FR.cmd -a /s
USERNAME: yyy
DOMAIN: xxx
*****Stopping SURunAs logging*****
___________________________

So, nothing here to see what is the problem.
I put a pause in my batch file, and finaly, i know why.
The path as changed, and i’m back at “c:\windows\system32″
So when the first package try to be launched, we have an error, because it can’t be found. Logical.

I assumed that the batch file is launched using “Executed by…”, and so, it changed the path.

Don’t know what to do. The problem is that the files are firstly extracted to a temporary folder, without a fixed name (SURunasxxx). So i don’t know the place where i could find my packages.
I don’t find in documentation a way to give the SURunAsWizarda path for the temporary files.

Any ideas ?

And now, it’s time to go back home, with a stop in tavern. It’s friday.

Clement

Hi Clement,

Sorry for the delay in my reply, I was traveling last week on business so I couldn’t reply.

I see that you’ve done your homework … what you are trying is very thorough!

I have an idea that I will need to try. Here it is:

(a) Put all your tweaked files into a folder, for example “LotusNotesR851″. That directory has the setup.exe and all the other files that are in the installation package.
(b) Create another directory under that called “FP2″ so that you have “LotusNotesR851\FP2″. In there you put all the files for the Fix Pack2.
(c) Take your batch file and put it in “LotusNotesR851″.
(d) Tweak your batch file so that the 1st thing it does is to run the setup.exe for the R8.5.1 installation. In my case, setup.exe line would be setup.exe /s /v”ALLUSERS=1 TRANSFORMS=LotusNotes851.mst /qb+!” (see page 106 of my SnTT on Smart Upgrade … on that topic, I advise against using the /d or -d … I had too many problems with that … see page 106 of my presentation).
(e) Then, the 2nd line line the batch file should be for the Fix Pack 2 … and the cmd line could be .\FP2\setup.exe /S /v”/qb+”
(f) Then run the SURunAsWizard and package all those files together and tell the SURunAsWizard to run your cmd file instead of the setup.exe

Like I said, I really need to test this myself before I can vouch for it … but maybe you’ll be quicker than me to test this out.

Marc

Re-Hello Clement,

I just tried and I created a batch file to run both setups.exe … unfortunately, I run into the exact same problem as you: i.e. the setup.bat is executed from C:\Windows\System32 … so it has no idea where the setup.exe file is in the temp folders. I might open a PMR on this next week if things quiet down on my side (it’s insane right now).

Marc

hi marc, me again. i decided to try smartupgrade for fp1 instead, but i encountered an error while packaging the surunas kit: “failed to add resource s: ld”. when i click on ok, it then displays a prompt which says “failed to attach c:\temp\lotus_note851FP1_win\deploy\install.properties”. i can run the fixpack fine manually. help. please

thanks,
mardell

ok… got it… i tried using surunas wizard for 851 – worked fine. was able to create an surunas fp1 packge… will try using this wizard to test smart upgrade from 802/85 to 851 as well. thanks!

Hi Marc, Did you get any reply from IBM or found any solution for the samee?