Safety copies in mailbox not being replaced/removed

[Gary_Trinder]

Environment
EV6 SP1 running on Windows 2000 SP4 Server (recently upgraded from EV5 SP5)
Outlook 2003 SP1
Exchange System Manager 2003
Exchange Environment 5.5 but starting to migate to 2003 environment recently created.

Problem consists of:

User manually archives an item. The item is created in the vault (I have checked this, both using Archive Explorer and also searching for the relevent DVS file).

Backup successfully completes but the safety copy is not removed, hence mailbox size doesn't go down, hence grief from the users.

We backup using IBM TSM which relies on a batchfile which creates the IgnoreArchiveBitTrigger.txt before it restarts the StorageService. I can see by the modified, created details that this is happening.

I have also tried manually creating this file and then restarting the StorageService and still nothing happens.

I have also found the DVS file and removed the archive attribute from it as TSM doesn't know how to do this and then waited 24 hours and nothing happened.

Nothing in the Eventlogs to show an issue.

Called Sysmantec Tech Support and they have asked me remove Outlook 2003 SP2 which was previously installed and re-install with SP1 which I have done. They have also asked me to remove ESM 2003 and install ESM 2000 but unfortunately you don't seem to be able to remove this without hacking the registry which I don't really want to do unless I have to!

Has anyone else had this or can anyone suggest anything to test for. Have not run any Dtrace's yet as not sure what to run it on/against. Is there any advanced logging I can switch on that will hopefully show what is not working.

After the upgrade to EV6 SP1 performed by Symantec Consultant it all worked fine (we had other issues that were resolved) this has only started happening this week.

Regards
Gary

P.S. Sorry if this has been posted before I went back about 10 pages and couldn't see anything similar, but I'm only human and may have missed something.

[Micah_Wyenn_2]

Try setting your safety copy settings to "immediately after archive". See if the shortcuts disappear then. If so, the problem is in the archive bit flips...if not...well, at least we have place to start.

[Michael_Bilsbor]

Hi,


To use that mechanism, you need to set a registry key to enable that feature. Are you doing that?

[Gary_Trinder]

Yes, I have the necessary registry key, but thanks for the suggestion. As I said it all worked fine until about 5 days ago.

Regards
Gary

[Michael_Bilsbor]

Hi,

Is the trigger file getting renamed when you start up the Storage Service. That's one of the first things it does.

Also, you haven't moved the vault store or something has you as it will check the file does exist before it send the post processing request back to the agent.
It's worth enabling dtrace for the StorageFileWatch process that could give you an idea of where the problem lies.

[Gary_Trinder]

Hi

Thanks for this suggestion. It's 01:04 in the morning here so I thought it wouldn't do any harm to set this on. I wouldn't normally do this for obvious backup reasons.

The first item I vaulted worked. The second item I selected didn't and I got the following windows error pop up in my Outlook

"Could not process the selected items"
"Reason. The request timed out"
"OK" Button

After clicking on the ok button the item's icon/form changed back to the normal read item icon/form

P.S. I see I have have two different people assisting me, I'll continue to reply to each separately, but if you see something that one has suggested that you don't want to do as it may affect the test you suggest you had better let me know as I'm fairly new to EV and I have only recently digested the book.

Regards
Gary

P.P.S. I'll switch the setting back to "After Backup" before I go to bed.

[Gary_Trinder]

Hi

Yes the file is getting renamed and looking at the eventlog and the created date and modified date of the file properties I can see that it is created and accessed in the same minute that the StorageService is started.

I/We have not moved the vault store.

I'm going to switch the dtrace StorageFileWatch on

Regards
Gary

[Gary_Trinder]

Hi

I switched the dtrace on as suggested and then manually vaulted an item. Waited for the error mesage,clicked ok, stopped the dtrace and results below. I'll switch the dtrace back on and then set the remove safety copy back to after backup and then go to bed and have a look in the morning to see if there is any more information.

Thanks again for the assistance

Regards
Gary

DTrace trace log


Enabled Trace options

Id Name Detail Include Events
57 - StorageFileWatch Verbose Yes

-----


Display Filter:
Include strings:
EV-
EV:
EV~

Exclude strings:
CMMStream
DBFramework
DirectoryConnection
DirectoryVault
-----

[Michael_Bilsbor]

Hi,

When you enabled the dtrace you needed to stop and restart the storage service so that it'd do another scan of the items awaiting backup.

Does the usage report say items awaiting backup?

If you have items pending backup then you don't need to do anything like manual archving or whatever to kick it off.

[Gary_Trinder]

Well thanks for all the help thus far.

After doing the Dtrace's on Friday night and checking lots of other settings the problem seems to have gone away.

When I looked,on Saturday morning, at the results of the Dtrace I couldn't see any errors and when I looked at my mailbox and the ones of the users that had reported the issue all the emails were gone and in their place were the shortcuts.

I'm relieved in one way, but still confused as to why it was happening. From what I can tell nothing I did on Friday that should have resolved this.

I am more than happy for the post to be closed/resolved and want to thank those who posted to it for their help. If anyone reads this and has the time or inclination to want to dig down further then please email me, because I would still have liked to have got to the bottom of the problem especially because it seemed to be such a strange issue.

Regards
Gary Trinder

Gary.Trinder@eu.sony.com

[DRC_2]

what is the registry key setting to get this to work?

[bob_cratchet_2]

To enable StorageFileWatch to use the ignore archive bit mechanism, create the following registry value:

FileWatchEnableIgnoreArchiveBit

This is a DWORD value registry key created under:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
\SOFTWARE
\KVS
\Enterprise Vault
\Storage

When set to 1, this registry key enables the StorageFileWatch mechanism

See this doc for full instructions.

http://support.veritas.com/docs/273151