Domino autoupdate.nsf for fast internal software downloads
Daniel Nashed – 18 February 2024 10:59:11
Domino Autoupdate has been introduced in Domino 14.0. It offers automatic downloads from My HCLSoftware download, which has been on early access in parallel and has been released at the same time.
My Engage session will go into detail about the functionality with tips and tricks and additional information round both features and the new Domino Download script (https://nashcom.github.io/domino-startscript/domdownload/).
But I want already provide some details about options available today with simple integrations.
Now that we have and internal repository centrally managed which can be also replicate to remote locations, it would make sense to leverage it for company internal downloads.
Each software document contains one attachment, which we would just need to located and generate a download link.
A download command could look like the following:
curl -LO -u user:password 'https://software.acme.com/software.nsf/download?OpenAgent&filePath=Domino_14.0_Linux_English.tar'
Simplified URL with Domino redirects
To simplify and hide the URL, a simple redirect rule could be added:
This would allow to download with this simplified URL.
curl -LO -u user:password https://software.acme.com/software/Domino_14.0_Linux_English.tar
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 0
100 1068M 100 1068M 0 0 140M 0 0:00:07 0:00:07 --:--:-- 152M
Domino 14.0 HTTP download performance improved for uncompressed attachments
The download rate in this example is real world performance between two Hetzner servers.
Both sides are connected with a fast network and have fast disks. At this speed not only the Domino server components are important.
Yes this is a Domino NSF based download using standard Domino HTTPS!
The AutoUpdate team did performance tests with those type of downloads via HTTP and found a bottleneck, which is fixed in Domino 14.0.
Performance of uncompressed attachment download has been dramatically improved.
The download of compressed attachments (LZ1 or Huffman) also improved, but not at the same scale because the back-end requires uncompressing buffering, which has impact on the HTTP download performance.
Best practice for Domino HTTP download performance
A best practice is to store attachments which need to be downloaed always uncompressed. Usually the attachment itself is already compressed.
What we also found out is that DAOS further improves HTTP download performance and attachment performance in general.
Example agent to find documents and generate a redirect
The agent just needs to parse the request, find the document and generate a redirect link with some simple print statements.
I plan to provide a simple "software.nsf database, which complements the functionality of autoupdate.nsf with functionality like this.
It would also provide a simple download link for software.jwt, which contains all the information about available software including the SHA256 checksum.
Option Public
Option Declare
Sub Initialize
Dim session As New NotesSession
Dim db As NotesDatabase
Dim WebDoc As NotesDocument
Dim doc As NotesDocument
On Error GoTo error_handler
Set db = session.Currentdatabase
Set WebDoc = session.DocumentContext
If ("GET" = WebDoc.REQUEST_METHOD(0)) Then
Call DownloadRedirect (WebDoc)
Exit Sub
End If
' Other requests are ignored
Exit Sub
error_handler:
Print "Content-type: text/plain"
Print ""
Print "Error processing request"
Exit Sub
End Sub
Sub DownloadRedirect (WebDoc As NotesDocument)
Dim KeyName As String
Dim db As New NotesDatabase ("", "autoupdate.nsf")
Dim
Dim count As Integer
On Error GoTo error_handler
KeyName = StrToken (StrToken (WebDoc.QUERY_STRING_DECODED(0), "&", 2), "=", 2)
If ("" = KeyName) Then
Call SendError ("Not Software specified")
Exit Sub
End If
Set Doc = GetDocByFormula (db, {(Form = "Software") & fileName = "} + KeyName + {"})
If (Doc Is Nothing) Then
Call SendError ("Software not found: " + KeyName)
Exit Sub
End If
If (doc.Status(0) <> "A") Then
Call SendError ("Software not available")
Exit Sub
End If
Print "Location: /" + db.Filepath + "/0/" + doc.Universalid + "/$File/" + KeyName
Print {Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="} + KeyName + {"}
Print ""
Exit Sub
error_handler:
LogError "Software - Error: " + Error()
Exit Sub
End Sub
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