July – 2010 – B4Z.co.uk

I have recently experienced an issue on several deployments of Microsoft ForeFront Threat Management Gateway in conjunction GFI MailEssentials 2010. When installing GFI MailEssentials on a server running ForeFront TMG, a configuration error occurs in the MailEssentials config.mdb file which incorrectly points the spam definition updating entry to “C:\Program Files\” opposed to “C:\Program Files (x86)\”. Due to this, updates for spam modules such as Phishing and SpamRazer do not download correctly and as a result you may experience the following error:

Despite the error stating the problem occurred due to a “network error”, it certainly is not and several hours of testing with ForeFront TMG’s own monitoring utilities and WireShark proved this theory correct. To resolve the issue, please perform the following actions:

1. Stop all GFI MailEssentials services and the Message Queuing service on the server running GFI MailEssentials 2010.

2. Click Start, and select Run. In the Run dialog box type the following without quotations “iisreset /stop” , and click ok

3. Navigate to the folder “C:\Program Files (x86)\GFI\MailEssentials” and copy the config.mdb file to a workstation that has Microsoft Access 2003 or higher installed.

4. Open the config.mdb file in Microsoft Access and open the table named “au_profiles”. In this table locate the “localpath” entry and change this to be “C:\Program Files (x86)\” opposed to “C:\Program Files\”

5. Save the amended config.mdb file and then copy this to the “C:\Program Files (x86)\GFI\MailEssentials” directory on your server, choosing to overwrite the existing file.

6. Click Start, and select Run. In the Run dialog box type the following without quotations “iisreset” , and click ok.

7. Start all GFI MailEssentials services and wait for, or manually update your anti-spam module definitions.

So, let’s say you have a 40 GB hard disk attached to a virtual machine that is your line of business application role holder. As time has gone by this forty gigabyte basic disk, which holds your operating systems primary partition, is slowly running out of space and gaining any back is become an increasing difficult task. If you don’t want to convert your basic disk to a dynamic configuration, or are not familiar with diskpart.exe, you can use this handy Dell utility to perform this process in seconds. This is particularly useful for virtual machines as you can simply increase your virtual disk size, rescan your Guest OS disks through it’s Device Manager so that the unallocated space is presented, and then run the Dell utility to expand your primary partition. An example output of the utility is shown below:

Using the utility requires no system downtime and there is no need to move your system page file to a separate hard disk. You can download the utility here and it’s associated read me here.

Please note, this utility was originally created for Dell Disk Array’s and should be used with caution in a physical environment.

Month: July 2010

ForeFront TMG & GFI MailEssentials – Updating Issues

VMware – Adding Unallocated Space To Windows Partitions