Problem: Lotus confirms Crash identified in Notes, Domino and MTA with date conversions

Products affected: Domino Server 5.x, Domino Server 4.6x, Domino Server 4.5.7, Domino Server 4.5.6, Notes Client 5.x, Notes Client 4.6x, Notes Client 4.5.7, Notes Client 4.5.6

A crash occurring with dates following the year 2000 and prior to 1950 has been identified. This crash has been reported in some cases as follows: h When using Simple Action agents to send a message that includes a copy of a document h When using the NotesDocument.RendertoRTItem method in LotusScript h With the Domino 4.6x SMTP MTA h

Link to story:

http://www.support.lotus.com/sims2.nsf/c7835bf039c01dc285256688006fae9b/35b578b76f3ec78e85256859007173ec?OpenDocument

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), January 07, 2000

Answers

There are several Lotus Notes reported glitches. One other one recently posted to the Lotus web site involved something called Quincy (not sure I am spelling that right, I am not personally familiar with the intracacies of Lotus Notes). There are many corporations, especially consultancies, that rely heavily on Notes. Caveat users.

-- Bud Hamilton (budham@hotmail.com), January 07, 2000.

Additional Info: http://www.infoworld.com/articles/ec/xml/00/01/07/000107eclotus.xml

Date-related crash affects Lotus Notes, Domino By Stephanie Sanborn

The Y2K bug did not leave Lotus Notes clients or Domino Servers completely untouched: Lotus has identified a crashing problem related to dates following the year 2000 or prior to 1950.

According to a Technote posted on Lotus' technical support Web site Friday, there are reported crashes while using Simple Action agents to send a message that includes a document copy when running LotusScript using the NotesDocument.RendertoRTItem method, or with the Domino 4.6x SMTP Message Transfer Agent (MTA).

Lotus' Technote states that most crashing cases occur when sending an e-mail that includes a copy of a document that "tries to force a post- 1999 (or pre-1950) date value into a text field... As the document is being copied into the new message, a conversion takes place that results in a crash. This issue can occur if the date value in the text field is prior to 1950 or any year after 1999, not just the year 2000."

Affected products include Domino Server version 5.x, 4.6x, 4.5.7, and 4.5.6. along with Notes client versions 5.x, 4.6x, 4.5.7, and 4.5.6.

The crashing could occur on the Notes client or Domino server, depending upon which product was running the affected agents. Lotus noted that if the server executes the agent, the Agent Manager task on Domino can crash, and if the agent is executed by a user, the Notes client can crash.

In the case of the RendertoRTItem, Agent Manager can crash if a user is running LotusScript with RendertoRTItem as a scheduled agent. However, the Technote explains that "if the LotusScript agent is run manually, the Notes client does not crash. Instead, the date/time values in the rich-text field displays garbage characters at the end of the field."

Lotus does have a fix for the crashing problem in the works that it expects to release in an upcoming Quarterly Maintenance Update. In the meantime, users can avoid crashing predicaments by changing a form's field definition from a text field to a time/date field, or by using the @Text function to make sure returned values are text values. An alternate option is to not include a copy of the document in the message being sent, and using a document link if appropriate.

Lotus Development Corp., in Cambridge, Mass., is at www.lotus.com.

Stephanie Sanborn is an InfoWorld reporter.

-- Jennifer Bunker (jen@bunkergroup.com), January 08, 2000.