Have you tried clearing the field and removing the deadline just to see if the SM will pickup any kits ?

Hi Declan,

Yep … done that … I even tried a separate policy just for them. I also created a special kit just for my R7.0.1 CCH2 clients with the “Source” field set to “Release R7.0.1 CCH2″ (notice the double-space there … that’s how it’s written in the notes.ini of those clients). I tried clearing the notes.ini (completly except the 1st two lines to re-do a clean setup). I tried deleting the policies stored locally in the names.nsf. I deleted and re-created the bookmarks.nsf (just in case it was something funky in there). I tried so many things that it’s not funny … and when Lotus told me “Yeah, it’s a known bug”, I wasn’t surprised.

Thanks for your comment!

Marc

Have you tried using a .bat or .cmd file that executes both installs one right after the other and a single kit to upgrade them to Release 8.5.1FP1? Send me a note and I’ll help you get this working.

Hi John,

Thanks for your reply, it’s *extremely* appreciated! Thank you!

Here are my thoughts: the .bat or .cmd file wouldn’t get downloaded and executed … Smart Upgrade really dosen’t want to *see” anything to upgrade to. Even if you go on the user’s machine, click on File -> Tools -> Notes Smart Upgrade … we get the “No matching kits” errors. And, if I open the Smart Upgrade Kits database on the server from that same machine, we can see the kits in the database. I have even done screensharing sessions with IBM support folks in regards to this and they double-checked everything … all clear. I’ll email you the PMR if you want to take a look at it if you are bored out of your mind.

I even tried “tricking” Notes, by changing the Release number in the notes.ini and removing the CCH2 part at the end of the release number … no luck either … that didn’t work. And this isn’t a case where I’m trying to push the “Notes Client” only package down to a machine that has the Notes, Admin and Designer client either.

So I guess the issue is really deep in the code somewhere where the Smart Upgrade stuff lives. Maybe if someone could tell me which DLL Smart Upgrade lives in, I could replace it from a plain R7.0.1 install (i.e. replace the one on the R7.0.1 CCH2 machines).

However, the bat file idea is great. Someone posted a comment on another post (one about Smart Upgrade) on how to create a package that would deploy R8.5.1 FP1 in one shot. So the batch file running 2 back-to-back SURunAsWizard Packages could do the trick … I’ll test that out on my test machine(s) when I get back into the office tomorrow.

Thanks again for your comment, it’s very appreciated!

Marc

Thanks for your guidance. Your guide helped me a lot. The only little thing now is to have the report. The smart upgrade from 7.0.2 to 8.5.1 work but I do not get or do not know how to get the details and reports. I have added the entry in the Desktop policy for the mail-in database. What else do I need to do or create.
thanks

Ben

Hi Ben,

Thanks for your comments. If you’ve got the Smart Upgrade Tracking db created, the Mail In database doc that points to the SU Tracking db and you’ve got the Mail-in name in the policy … That should work no questions asked.

Check if you can send an email to the tracking db. Maybe there’s a routing issue. If you run multiple domains, maybe you’ll need to put in the policy the mail-in db name with an @domainname at the end just so the clients aren’t confused as to which domain the report needs to go.

Good luck,

Marc

Hi Marc,

I am working on preparing single smart upgrade kit for LN 8.5.1 and FP2 using batch file. But I end up in error. Same error what you were getting. setup.exe is trying to execute from system32 folder instead of temp folder where it was downloaded. Did you get any update from IBM?
Thanks,
Nirmal

Thanks all work now.
please continue your good Bolg!

Ben

are your aware of the SPR RREN79SP2A from IBM.
If you edit an existing Desktop Settings document after upgrading the design of your Domino Directory to 8.0.x, various desktop policy settings may be unexpectedly pushed to Notes clients. Usually this issue becomes evident only after users report one or more of the following symptoms:

– unexpected changes to replication schedules
– encryption of saved/sent mail
– scan unread messages is turned on
– using Smart Upgrade, an explicit policy configured for a single user impacts several users

Very important read.

and … this issue also
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21427073

Hi Benoit,

Thanks for the comment … that’s a very good tip. However, in my case, I might have dodged the bullet in a very odd way: I created a brand new policy from scratch that I assign to the people that I want to upgrade to R8 … that is what might have saved me from all these weird things.

Thanks for sharing however … someone might need this!

Marc

Hi Nirmal,

I have tried a few things but nothing works so far. I’ll open a PMR with Lotus Support to see what I can do and I’ll keep you posted.

Marc

Leave the Deploy Version blank in your policy, as a matter of fact you don’t even need a policy. Here is what I always do and it always works. Create the kit that you want, be sure to set the source and destination version on the kit document. On the Administration tab of the kit document, add LocalDomainServers to the allowed users and servers. Use this field to control who gets the update vs a policy. Also be sure on your kit that the versions appear exactly as they do in the Help,About Lotus Notes, typically “Release 7.0.2 CCH2″ minus the quotations. Destination would be Release 8.5.1. This alway seems to work for me, I always had issues if I tried to use the policy, it just seemed to complicate things. The only gotcha here is, the smart upgrade db needs to be on the users home mail server in order for this to work. You can have more than one smart upgrade db too, just be sure to point each server to it’s respective db, unless you only have one mail server, then it’s very easy.