Daniel Nashed's Blog

What you should know about Domino "res" files on Linux and AIX

res files actually come from Windows and are used to translate strings for UI and errors.
Those res files are usually linked to the Windows binary.

Linux and AIX also use "res" files in a res/ directory below the binary directory.

The files are essential for a server. All the core code string resources are in strings.res.
Most Domino native servertasks also use string resources.
C-API SDK applications can also use string resources, but usually use hard coded strings and not need external res files.

• When installing Domino the locale of the root user is used.
• When running Domino the locale of the "notes" user is used.

Those two locales should be the same. If there is a mismatch, no error texts might be displayed.

"en_US.UTF-8" is truncated to "en_US" and then searched on disk.


Special logic for English locales

• There is specific logic in the internal start script to map English to the system locale "C" (you can see the logic copied below)
• The system locale "C" is the "POSIX" locale and is a special case.
• The directory is also the fallback if no locale is found.

But the following logic is only used for English at run-time and install time.
For other languages the full locale de_DE.UTF-8 is used to install the res files.

But it turns out that at run-time only the first 5 chars of the locale (e.g. de_DE) are used to lookup the resource directory.


Potential problems

In case you had other settings for the root/notes user at install time than the previous install, it can happen that you install into for example the de_DE.UTF-8 directory and the run-time uses the "C" directory.

This would cause potentially wrong res files to be loaded.
Using the wrong res files will not have new string resources added in the new version.
In addition it will show the wrong Domino version, because strings.res ordinal 1 is the Domino version.

It took until now to find out about the details and I had to trace the system calls to find out.
This isn't new at all and I had questions from admins about locale issues.

The Domino container project always uses the POSIX locale during installation.
That means the resulting directory is always called "res/C".
But beside adding the full locale the container project now sets the short locale without UTF-8 for English and German.

When you run a Domino native installation outside a container, you should be aware of those details.
A future Domino version might address this in the installer. But today you should be aware of those details.
In case your Domino version is not updated, you might need to check the "res" files.

Here are the details from a trace and the Domino internal start script called instead of the binaries.

I hope this explains how it works and what to look for when you run into a mismatch.

Today's server all uses UTF-8 locales, which causes effects we might not have seen in earlier versions.

I hope this helps to solve one or another ticket.

-- Daniel



Logic in internal start script -- invoked to start all servertasks

if [ -z "$LANG" ]; then
     LLANG="C"
else
     LLANG=$LANG
     case ${LLANG} in
             POSIX   |\
             posix   |\
             en_US*  |\
             En_US*  |\
             en_GB*  |\
             En_GB*  )
             LLANG="C"
             ;;
     esac
fi
export LLANG


Logic in the installer perl script

# if LANG isn't set or we're in English, move to res/C.  Otherwise, use the language name
if (
  (! $ENV{'LANG'}) ||
  ($ENV{'LANG'} =~ /^posix$/i) ||
  ($ENV{'LANG'} =~ /^en_us/i) ||
  ($ENV{'LANG'} =~ /^en_GB/i)
  )
{
  $langpath = "res/C";
}
else
{
  $langpath = "res/$ENV{'LANG'}";
}

--- systrace ---

access("/opt/hcl/domino/notes/latest/linux/res/en_US", R_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
access("/opt/hcl/domino/notes/latest/linux/res/C", R_OK) = 0
access("/opt/hcl/domino/notes/latest/linux/res/C/strings.res", R_OK) = 0
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/opt/hcl/domino/notes/latest/linux/res/C/strings.res", O_RDONLY) = 3


Here is what we are adding in the container project

C
de_DE -> C
de_DE.UTF-8 -> C
en_US -> C
en_US.UTF-8 -> C

• Comments [0]