so the conclusion is it isn't going to be a million miles off.

Hence the request was aimed at those who might have done this before and encountered and resolved the issue or someone who can explain how to usefully debug the installation process through logs etc.

My guess is that there's something about the secure nature of CentOS that I've forgotten to switch off (I've done SELinux) that might be interfering with the install somehow.

Problem is I just don't know where to start. I tried through the install script but it is beyond my knowledge.

Jochen - that's a confirmation it's me not doing it right - which I can live with for now.

Irina, I've checked the log, and on this round the log covers two attempts to install (which is correct ) but it's about 250K long. I also don't have a capture of what I entered, so...

I'm going to clean install CentOS again and step through carefully recording what I do. If it's the same I'll have something to share, if not I might be in luck. Whichever way I'm becoming more familiar with the console interface. :-)

Is the comment about being the Notes user to install rather than root important? I suspect I was trying to do this as root each time.

Rick.

Well, I'm now at server setup stage. I suspect that I was misreading the question about data directories, because I noted this time through that an incorrect answer can result in data directory updates only.

Unfortunately I do have one remaining issue but hopefully this is down to subtleties of file permissions.

when running the server I got:

    [notes@kembel dominodata]$ /opt/ibm/domino/bin/server
   Could not backup notes.ini

   As Jochen's permissions solution seemed a little more comprehensive than the others I'd seen I had applied it, i.e.

   [notes@kembel dominodata]$ cat ~/ensure_permissions
   #!/bin/bash
   chown -R -h notes:notes /opt/ibm/domino
   chown -R -h notes:notes /local/gallifrey/dominodata
   chown -R 550 /opt/ibm/domino
   chown -R 700 /local/gallifrey/dominodata
   chown root:notes /opt/ibm/domino/notes/latest/linux/bindsock
   chmod 4550 /opt/ibm/domino/notes/latest/linux/bindsock
   chown root:root /opt/ibm/domino/notes/latest/linux/tunekrnl
   chmod 4550 /opt/ibm/domino/notes/latest/linux/tunekrnl

but there appears to be something wrong as I couldn't create a file:

   [notes@kembel dominodata]$ echo "fred" >aaa
   -bash: aaa: Permission denied

The permissions appear to have been set according to this as they are:

   [notes@kembel dominodata]$ ls -l notes.ini
   -rw-r--r-- 1 700 notes 180 Oct 11 09:58 notes.ini

   [notes@kembel dominodata]$ ls -l *
   -rw-r--r-- 1 700 notes  1658880 Nov  1  2012 activity.ntf
   -rw-r--r-- 1 700 notes  2883584 Nov  6  2012 admin4.ntf
   -rwxr-xr-x 1 700 notes   634975 Jul  1  2010 afrikaan.dic
   -rw-r--r-- 1 700 notes   327680 Sep 17  1999 AgentRunner.nsf
   -rw-r--r-- 1 700 notes   327680 Aug 20  2008 alog4.ntf
   -rwxr-xr-x 1 700 notes   448087 May 27  2009 arabic.dic
   -rw-r--r-- 1 700 notes   411648 Sep 12  2008 archlg50.ntf
   -rwxr-xr-x 1 700 notes   690753 Jul  1  2010 aus.dic
   -rw-r--r-- 1 700 notes   262144 Nov  1  2012 autosave.ntf
   -rw-r--r-- 1 700 notes   135680 Nov 25  2002 billing.ntf
   -rwxr-xr-x 1 700 notes      905 Aug 21  1996 binary.gif
   -rw-r--r-- 1 700 notes  5505024 Feb 15  2013 bookmark.ntf
   -rwxr-xr-x 1 700 notes   490948 Jul  1  2010 brasil.dic

although I note it's not displaying the notes group in this list.

permissions on directory itself are:

   [notes@kembel gallifrey]$ ls -l
   total 4
   drwxr-xr-x 9 700 notes 4096 Oct 11 09:58 dominodata

...which made me wonder if in fact the notes in the list is the group and not the owner, which would explain why create/backup fails.

indeed it is...

   [notes@kembel gallifrey]$ stat dominodata
     File: `dominodata'
     Size: 4096            Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   directory
   Device: fd00h/64768d    Inode: 1310723     Links: 9
   Access: (0755/drwxr-xr-x)  Uid: (  700/ UNKNOWN)   Gid: (  500/   notes)
   Access: 2013-10-11 10:29:50.616849019 +0100
   Modify: 2013-10-11 09:58:16.269437232 +0100
   Change: 2013-10-11 10:24:43.813035572 +0100
   [notes@kembel gallifrey]$ stat dominodata/notes.ini
     File: `dominodata/notes.ini'
     Size: 180             Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   regular file
   Device: fd00h/64768d    Inode: 1318071     Links: 1
   Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--)  Uid: (  700/ UNKNOWN)   Gid: (  500/   notes)
   Access: 2013-10-11 10:29:10.401435287 +0100
   Modify: 2013-10-11 09:58:13.635318360 +0100
   Change: 2013-10-11 10:24:43.682034608 +0100

...so why?

...having manually changed the permissions again on the data directory using chown notes:notes ... the server program is running.  Would like to understand why it didn't set the first time tho' using the script. Is it the symlink stuff that might affect it?

Rick