Beware of non US characters in mail file names when using Traveler 8.5.3+

Based on a customer problem we’ve recognized that IBM has introduced a “bug” into Lotus Traveler 8.5.3+. Maybe it’s not a bug - but it may bring you problems.

I’m pretty sure that my fellow readers agree with me, that it isn’t a good behavior to use non US characters in file names (like German Umlauts). But you’ll find that “in the wild” (aka “in production”) sometimes. And if you find that in mail files it will lead to non-working synchronization of Lotus Traveler 8.5.3+.

Why? Well, it seems that IBM has changed the behavior of how they store internally the mail files. Due to the non US characters the server isn’t able to resolve the right mail file. You can get around that with setting the following notes.ini parameter

NTS_MIN_BUILD_NUM_CHANGED_DB=1000

What does this notes.ini parameter mean? It tells the Traveler server that the current Domino build number is 1000 - and that skips the “new” way of how Traveler stores/handles the mail files. Pretty easy if you’re aware of the problem. You can’t (in some way) blame IBM for it. Use good file names - that always lowers the risk of non-working software!