An ACL management trick

First my disclaimer: You won't be getting into anything you don't already have too much access to.

Ever need to open up a database because you realized that the Notes database, by default, does not give you the appropriate access or someone has created a new database and not placed the proper administrative groups into the ACL? This will allow you to work around these problems without having to scramble to the server room to fire up the client on the server.

What will you need? Access to the file system on your Notes server. This is also a good tip for you if you are the administrator, if someone has access to your file system over the network then perhaps you need to evaluate security. Of course most places, people who can browse to a directory on the server can also physically access the server.

Bring up the "Open Database" dialog box. Enter the path to the file or browse to it if you've got the drive mapped. Typically the path will look something like this:

Click on Open to open that database. This will treat it as if it is

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a local database and give you manager access. If a consistent ACL is enforced you may not have as much luck, but that is a sign that it's a database with a well defined ACL already, typically ACLs that will need your attention will be those of new databases or default databases (log.nsf, catalog.nsf, etc.)

Now if you use this method and try to open the database while someone else (or the server) has it in use you will get the following error message:

The database is currently being used by someone else. In order to sare a Notes database, all users must use a Domino server instead of a File server.

This can be remedied by going to the server console (via the Admin client if you will, remember our goal is to do this without getting up from our desk) and entering "drop all" and "dbcache flush" into the console. Once these have been entered you can then try to open the database again. On a busy database, you may run into problems if you run your drop/cacheflush and wait to long to try opening the database, then chances are someone will have it in use again.

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