Ant Drewery

Having been recently taken over we’re now working on transitioning data and systems to the new company. As a result there are a large number of email redirections in place whilst the users and applications move across to the new organisation. The vast majority of redirections are handled in a controlled format using contacts in Active Directory and the delivery options on user objects. However, despite our best efforts we do suffer the occasional mail loop. This is usually when a user has set an OOF message on their mailboxes in both organisations and also set a rule to forward and auto-reply. (Note: We need auto-replies and OOF messages enabled between the two Exchange organisations). The detrimental effects are limited through the use of mailbox limits but that can still leave us with thousands of messages to clean up once the loop has been stopped. To help us with this task we use ExMerge.

Run the wizard and choose Extract or Import (Two Step Procedure). On the next screen choose Step 1: Extract data from an Exchange Server mailbox.

When you get to the Source Server screen enter the appropriate Exchange server name then hit the Options button:

 The first tab you want is Import Procedure and choose Achive data to target store. This option will extract the data from the mailbox rather than just copy it:

Next go to the Folders tab and restrict your export to the Inbox (if required):

Now you need the Message Details tab so that you can restrict your export to only the looped messages. In the example below I’m removing messages with "Out of Office" in the subject:

Now hit OK and complete the rest of the ExMerge wizard to select the mailboxes you want to extract from and the destination for the resulting PST. Double check the contents of the PST before you delete it!

Technorati Tags: ExMerge, Exchange 2003

We run Clearswift’s MIMEsweeper for SMTP 5.2 as our SMTP gateway. We have 4 policy servers (2 x Tampa, 2 x Crawley) connected to one configuration server (Crawley). I’ll spare you my rant about Clearswift and MIMEsweeeper but suffice to say I won’t be recommending it to anyone who needs a reliable messaging hygiene solution for a high volume enterprise environment. (FWIW, I’ve been working with MIMEsweeper since 1998 and until its current incarnation have always been a stong supporter of the product.)

We’ve had a plethora of issues with MIMEsweeper version 5 but one in particular keeps re-occurring. Despite having applied their hotfix, every few weeks MIMEsweeper’s spam solution, SpamLogic, takes on a mind of it’s own and starts trapping an unacceptable amount of false positives. When this happens the SpamLogic databases need to be reset to their default configuration. To do this connect to each policy server in turn and do the following:

• Go to the c:\Program Files\Clearswift\MIMESweeper for SMTP\Data\SpamLogic folder.
• Rename spamlogic.db to spamlogic.old.
• Copy spamlogic.bak to spamlogic.db.

This way the original spamlogic.bak is preserved as you’re going to be needing it again in the future! Once you’ve completed these steps restart the MIMEsweeper Security Service.

You can disable the SpamLogic auto-training feature at anytime but then your databases will remain static and your detection rates drop as the type of spam evolves.

Technorati Tags: MIMEsweeper