I am using smart upgrade to upgrade 100 clients from Release 8.01 to Release 8.5. All installs are a multi user install. The problem I’m experiencing is after Notes closes for the upgrade to begin, nothing will happen for about 2 minutes and then I get the below error:
‘Unable to access Lotus Notes file C:\Program Files\IBM\Lotus\Notes\nnotes.dll. Please close all Lotus Notes applications and try again’
I am using the SURunas utility as the users have restricted access to their machines. They are only members of the users group.
If I add the users to the Power users group then the upgrade runs fine.
I have noticed that the sminstal.exe process is running as the local user and not the admin account specified in surunas.
I don’t want to give the users poweruser rights but the local users group only has read access to the nnotes.dll file.
Is it the case that the user has to have power user rights on the machine for smart upgrade to work?
Hi, I am getting the exact same error when testing out smart upgrade from 8.0.2 to 8.5. How did you find out which user account is running the sminstal.exe process?
If you look in task manage on a machine that has just started the upgrade process then you should see a process called: _minstal.exe. (not sure why it has dropped the s!)
You can then see what username is running that process in task manager.
I can get the smart upgrade process to work if add that account into the Power users group, but I would have thought you shouldn’t need to.
Saw the _sminstal.exe process in task manager and the user account running it is the test user account that I am trying to upgrade. Is this correct? Or is it more correct to say that the account that’s supposed to be running this process should be the account that was bound to the surunas kit?
the sminstal process will launch as the current users and then launch the surunas executable which will then launch the setup.exe install kit as the admin user. As long as that last setup.exe/msiexec is running as the admin user the install should work correct.
As long as that last setup.exe/msiexec is running as the admin user the install should work correct.
I am thinking that you are referring to the admin user account that was used in the packaging of the surunas kit. The problem here is that the upgrade via surunas never pushes through unless the user we are upgrading has admin rights to the machine. I have raised a PMR with IBM and was advised that the users have to be added to the Power Users group (at least) to successfully upgrade via surunas. Any other thoughts?
Subject: ‘Unable to access Lotus Notes file C:\Program Files\IBM\Lotus\Notes\nnotes.dll. Please close all Lotus Notes applications and try again’
This error means something is still accessing nnotes.dll and has nothing to do with rights… Maybe you rebooted after changing to power user and that cleaned up the accesser…
Try using Process Explorer when you get this error to see what process is still accessging nnotes.dll
I suspected that IBM would say the user would need as least power user rights. A bit of an oversight if it does turn out to be the case. Have you heard anything back from your PMR yet?
Yes, that’s what IBM has advised us to do - add the users to the power users group to give them the basic read/write permission for the install to push through. Kind of defeats the purpose of the surunas though.
They actually said surunas is working as designed as mentioned in this technote:
Doc #: 1199690 “Smart Upgrade works only with an Administrator account”
I have been doing a bit of testing and it appears that it is only the nnotes.dll file which the logged on users needs write access to.
I therefore modified the access to this one file to allow the ‘Users’ group write access to it. I then ran smart upgrade as the logged on user and it all worked fine. I want to test on a few more machines first, but if it works I’m looking at creating a group policy obejct in AD to give the ‘Users’ group write access to nnnotes.dll.
Not sure if this is feasible for yourself but I will let you know how I get on.
I tried giving the users group write access to the nnotes.dll file but my upgrade (for some reason) still does not go through. When I tested this, I saw a dialogue box that said that the ‘upgrade was successful’, however when I launched Notes, it was still version 802. Are you using a customized installer kit (customized using installshield) or an installer kit that was directly downloaded from IBM?
tried using the webkit and the switch and the write permission on the nnotes.dll file. it did push through with the install but it wasn’t a silent installation.