March 20, 2008
Now that Apple will support Microsoft push/pull technology, we have made the decision to try the iPhone
. Problem is that since the new iPhone 2.0 software won’t be out until June, I had to get IMAP working on our Exchange server to keep us going.
Problem: At times, I get the error “There is no replica for that mailbox on this server” when trying to access my Exchange server through IMAP on my iPhone. I don’t always get it but sometimes I do and it’s annoying.
Solution: It looks like that if you have a wireless access point and if your iPhone is attached to it, it will use that connection first to download the mail. That makes sense because it’s usually a faster connection than then AT&T network. The problem with using the AP in our network was that I didn’t have a rule in our firewall to re-route the IMAP request. Once I did that, my email synced fine and didn’t get the error again.
Problem #2: When I am on the AT&T network, the iPhone seems to get stuck when trying to sync. I connects to the server and sees how many emails needs to be downloaded but it just sits there saying “downloading 1 of x amount of emails.” At this point, I don’t know if this is an iPhone/AT&T network issue or a server issue. I am more inclined to think that it’s not the server because I’m able to connect through other IMAP clients just fine.
Solution #2: None yet, I’m asking anyone who reads this, if you have an idea or something that might help, leave a comment. I would greatly appreciate it.
Posted in Exchange and Outlook, iPhone 
No Comments »
February 13, 2008
Problem:
My backups were getting pretty big and I needed to make sure that what I was backing up was really necesarry. I’m using BackupExec 9.1 and the logs let me know a bit on the size of what I’m backing up but what I really needed to know is what folders sizes were. Within Windows, you can check the properties of that folder to see the size but trying to do that on hundres of folders is really time consuming. I needed a way to see folder sizes at glance and be able to browse and compare folders.
Solution:
I found a program called FolderSizes that helped me a great deal. I was able to specify a drive or UNC name path and FolderSizes analyzes it and then gives you a report on what it finds. THe nice thing is that you can browse thorugh the folders and it will update the information as you browse. With this program, I was able to identify about 5 gigs worth of data that didn’t need backed up any more and a few gigs that didn’t even need to be on the server anymore. It will run on your workstation so you can find some bloat on your local drives as well. There are a lot of programs out there that will do the same thing and I think a program like FolderSize is a must tool for system adminsitrators.
Website: http://www.foldersizes.com
Posted in Software, System Support No Comments »
February 12, 2008
Problem:
Had a network that reinstalled it’s Exchange server. Actually, their whole domain. Their active directory went corrupt and they didn’t have a backup of the active directory so a reinstall happened. Anyway, Exchange was reinstalled and they could recieve email but not send. All the SMTP virtual server settings looked good but nothing. They would recieve the following errror:
“There was a SMTP communication problem with the recipient’s email server. Please contact your system administrator. Relaying not supported…”
Solution:
The trouble was with the server IP. An additional IP address had been added to the server. That IP address needed to be added to the “allowed outgoing address” section of the spam filter.
Posted in Exchange and Outlook No Comments »
February 7, 2008
Had some users that had to be able to access the Exchange Server on their phone. Their phone doesn’t support push/pull and they insisted on POP and SMTP. I warned them on the security issues regarding opening their server up to be an SMTP relay but they still wanted to proceed.
Problem:
I enabled POP3 and was able to download mail just fine. My problem came with being able to send mail even though I had “SMTP server requires authentication.” I tried from 4 different clients and was not able to send email. I got numerous errors in my clients. See below:
- The message could not be sent because one of the recipients was rejected by the server. ‘550 5.7.1 Unable to relay for email@domain.com, Port: 25, Secure(SSL): No, Server Error: 550, Error Number: 0×800CCC79
- Sending’ reported error (0×800CCC92) : ‘Your e-mail server rejected your login. Verify your user name and password in your account properties. Under Tools, click E-mail accounts.
- Task ”server.com” - Sending’ reported error (0×800CCC0F) : ‘The connection to the server was interrupted. If this problem continues, contact your server administrator or Internet service provider (ISP).
- No error but would always get the login screen evertime I tried to authenticate to the server to send mail.
Those are the errors that I can remember. But in some aspects none of them were related so I was all over the place troubleshooting this. I also had an ISA machine at the edge so I’m messing with that as well. I opened up the relay completely to make sure that I could at least do that. Once I confirmed the relay was OK I tightened security back down and the same errors arose.
Solution:
First, there weren’t any message boards that were helpful in my 10+ hour search for a solution. Most were just saying get rid of exchange or make them use OWA. I knew it was rights but not sure how. So with the suggestion of a collegue, I created a new user from scratch. I copy the template that we had made for past user creations. What do you know, it worked. I don’t know what right the other users are missing and not sure if I care right now (brain damage). Since only a handful of users are the problem, I have no problem re-creating the users for them. I will try deleteing the user but not the mailbox and then re-marrying the new user to the mailbox and see how that goes. I’ll keep you posted.
(2/13/08) Update: We deleted the user and re-created it. We then reconnected the new user to the old mailbox via system manager and we were able to use both pop and smtp as well.
Posted in Exchange and Outlook 4 Comments »
January 30, 2008
Needing a design to showcase their team building exercises, BuildATeam, LLC asked us for a simple solution that could grow as they add more information on their programs. We chose the a template that has worked very well for us in the past, (armorbags.com/atkins-business-svc.com). We created a banner using pictures and a logo they provided. With only a few pages created at this time, BuildATeam now how their web presence with the ability to grow in the future.
Posted in Designs No Comments »
