Skip navigation

Category Archives: Exchange

Free Brick Level backups on Exchange 2003/SBS 2003

I’ve seen so many people attempt to restore Exchange and fail using Microsofts built in tools, or come unstuck because they want to restore a single mailbox, that I thought I’d document the free method of backing up Exchange that we use, so that it will hopefully help others.

One of the tools available from Microsoft free is Exmerge.  It allows individual mailboxes to be individually exported to PST files, which can then either be re-imported back into Exchange or simply opened in Outlook.  Exmerge is available from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=429163ec-dcdf-47dc-96da-1c12d67327d5&displaylang=en

Extract and save to the Exchsrv/bin directory, and when the appropriate mailboxes have been selected, destinations set save the configuration.  This will create an exmerge.ini file.

This can then be scripted in a batch file and run as a scheduled task.  I create a folder on the local disk of the Exchange server (although this can be done to a mapped drive) for each day I want the backup to run.

My exmon.bat file reads:

D:\exchsrvrbinexmerge.exe -F C:\scriptsexmonexmerge.ini -B

Which runs the exmerge.exe, with the options specified in scriptsexmonexmerge.ini and runs the script as a batch job using the -B switch.

To clean the folder prior to running, I have a separate batch file that runs earlier on the same day that runs

del /F /Q /S z:\Exchangeexmon*.*

Subsequently to back up the PST files to a separate server I use the excellent BackupPC running on a Debian server.  Installation instructions for Debian are here: http://www.debianhelp.co.uk/backuppc.htm

The BackupPC box is confugured to access the SMB share that the PST’s are stored in, as well as additional file shares on the server.  BackupPC supports incremental backups and backups via a variety of methods (including SSH and rsync, as well as SMB).

It’s also possible to archive off historic backups for off-site using the archive functions within BackupPC.  As a free solution for backing up mailboxes and beiong able to recover easily (with version control) this is very effective…

Exchange 2003 Pop3 Service Hangs when starting

Following a reboot of our Exchange 2003 server, the Pop3 service stated it was started, but on trying to connect to port 110 using telnet it just popped up “connection to the host lost”.  When we attempted to restart the service it hung when starting – there were no events in the event viewer following the stopping of the service.

The solution was to kill the process in Task Manager (inetinfo.exe).  We found it immediately re-spawned and worked…

How to add a HTML email signature (including embedded image) to Outlook Web Access

Outlook web access does not allow the inclusion of images by default. However it is possible to embed the image within the signature.

First upload the image you wish to include to a web server and make a note of the full path. ie, http://www.yourdomain.com/images/companylogo.jpg.

Then create a new signature in Outlook and ensure the path of the image on the signature points to your webserver. You can find the raw signature files in “C:documents and settingsusername.domainapplication datamicrosoftsignatures” on Office 2007/XP.

You can then edit the raw signature in Notepad.This is an ideal opportunity to tidy up the messy html created by Outlook when designing the signature in the first place. Find the image src and edit to point to the full path of the hosted image

Send an email with the signature embedded to the users email address and open the email within OWA (in IE). Copy the signature then go into Options -> Email Signatures and paste in the signature.

Evolution Woes

Following a reboot (which is rare) I had problems connecting to our Exch 2003 server via Evolution in Intrepid – it simply wouldn’t authenticate. I deleted the mailbox account and tried to recreate, populating all the fields…..to be greeted with an “Exchange Account is Offline” message.

Following this I ran evolution from the command line – the output of which was:

e-data-server-ui-Message: Unable to find password(s) in keyring (Keyring reports: No matching results)
e-data-server-ui-Message: Key file does not have group ‘Passwords-Exchange’

I checked available keys in my keychain and the correct keys were there – along with appropriate passwords….

The I stumbled across the following bug report:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evolution-exchange/+bug/207723

Where I found this comment from Timothy Alexander:

“Something that worked for me was clearing the “mailbox name” under exchange settings, and reauthenticating on that page. The auth went through fine, and it filled out the mailbox again (exactly the same way) but after a restart of evolution it worked fine.”

I tried removing the mailbox name and clicking authenticate, was greeted with the usual errors, but following a restart of evolution it worked!

OpenChange – the Holy Grail of interoperability with MS Exchange/Linux

For a while I’ve been fighting the good fight with poor stability using the webDav Exchange connection in Novell evolution.  This has now been replaced with a more functional solution (proper native MAPI support) in Ubuntu 8.10 and will be soon in Fedora 10 with OpenChange.

Finally, Evolution is behaving as you might expect it to when connecting to an Exchange server – the improvements are immense, both in stability and functionality.

The OpenChange site is here for more information:

http://www.openchange.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

Hopefully this will be an end to using a buggy interface and the all to frequent crashes, along with the curse of occasional missing mail items.  I’ve only been using it for a day, but already I’m loving it!

Using Recipient Policy to Create Email Addresses

By default, Microsoft exchange uses the username when creating email addresses for users using Recipient Policy.

eg.

username@domainname.com

However, in many cases the standardised email address format is slightly different – for example:

firstname.lastname@domainname.com

This is actually really easy to edit in the Exchange System Manager using a few variables:

%g  = Given Name (First name).
%3g = means first 3 letters of Given Name
%s  = Surname (Last name).
%3s = means first 3 letters of sn.
%d  = displayname.
%m  = Exchange alias.

Once this has been edited, just right click on the Policy and click Update this Policy now.

Base64 encoder/decoder

I keep on finding and losing bookmarks of good base64 encoding and decoding sites, so thought I’d link to one here:

http://makcoder.sourceforge.net/demo/base64.php

Useful when trying to test SMTP-Auth on a mailserver and needing to encode usernames and passwords!
:)

Manually Purge User from Blackberry Professional Database

We’re just trialling the Blackberry Professional software here, but with a change of heart as to the test user attempted to delete the user to re-add another.  Unfortunately although the Blackberry Professional Software allows you to delete users, it didn’t successfully purge the user from the database.  This meant that we couldn’t add an alternative user (the software comes with 1 user licence to trial with).

The solution is to manually remove the user from the database.  This can be done using the OSQL command line utility.

osql -E SERVERNAMEDATABASESERVERNAME
1>use BESMgmt
2>select DisplayName from UserConfig
3>go

This will show the DisplayName of the user.  For the sake of this document, we’ll call the user “testuser”.

To delete the user, then enter:

1>use BESMgmt
2>delete from UserConfig where DisplayName=“testuser”
3>go

1>exit

That should remove the user.  On checking within the Blackberry Professional software there is now no longer a user, releasing the licence.
:)

Firefox 3 – Handling of unverified SSL certificates

Firefox 3 is now well and truly into it’s beta phase, and one of the headline features is the way that it handles invalid SSL certificates.

I first noticed this when building a test environment to trial a few different web-based CRM systems, and I’ve got to say that there are some big pluses to this.

SSL certificates are cheap now and really for any commercial site out there, there should be no excuses for not using a real certificate.  Windows Vista has proved that if you present users with a dialogue box enough times they will just habitually click through without second consideration, thus making them vulnerable to a plethora of security woes.  This is a big security step forward and will hopefully encourage businesses out there to pull their socks up when it comes to using valid certificates (the biggie is likely to be the ability to use self signed SSL certs in Exchange/OWA!)

There is a method of bypassing this (if needed for testing purposes).  For example, I am wanting to test a site in a lab environment, therefore my vulnerability to man-in-the-middle attacks is absolutely zero….

You can go to Preferences->Advanced Preferences->Encryption->View Certificates->Add Exception and then get and approve the certificate for your server…

Commentary with the Firefox developers is available here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=431827

….and a good explaination of the reasoning behind the fix here:

http://blog.johnath.com/index.php/2007/10/11/todo-break-internet/
:)

Adding Exchange Public Folders in Evolution

Bit of an awkward fix, unfortunately, as this involves having access to a Windows/Outlook setup, but to add a Public folder that exists on Exchange, it needs to be bookmarked as a favourite for Evolution to pick it up.

For example, we use a public folder for shared (company-wide) contacts here.  To add the folder I just log onto my account on a Windows machine, then added that public folder as a favourite.

After logging out of evolution and back in, I could then see these “public” contacts under the contact folder (CTRL+2).