History not Visible in Gatekeeper

[Bob Tucker]

We are using Wingate 6.0.3 Build 1005. This was recently updated from a previous build of Wingate 6.0. History was visible in Gatekeeper until a day ago, but it has now disappeared. How can I get it back short of having to reinstall?

[labull]

Bob,

Try the instructions below.

Larry

[Bob Tucker]

Dear labull,

Thank you for your assistance. I read this same advice on several posts, and it does work. Thank you again.

The problem seems to come back after a short hiatus. I recently upgraded the Wingate server to a 2.8 GHz Xeon/512 MB RAM/XP SP2 box. (Previuosly, it had been a 7 year-old PII HP Server). I have been running the new box for about a week without a hitch. In the last 12 hours, History has begun to disappear, and it seems to want to disappear again sometime after I delete the DBF and CDX files. Something is corrupting these files, and I would like to track it down. I suspect it is my ocnfiguration as that is always getting some changes - most recently due to SPAM. I notice the SMTP log has some anomolies that began to occur at roughtly the same time as the history problem. I found the following entries repeated approximately 1000 times in the current SMTP log:

09/30/04 23:50:29 Error: Message 0000001730 could not move .msg file error 2
09/30/04 23:50:29 Error: Message 0000001730 msg file not found, rcp file moved to dead

I found the 0000001730.msg file in "holding" and the associated rcp file in "postin". I killed the SMTP Server service, delted both, and restarted the SMTP server. I am hoping this solves the problem. Normally, SMTP has not been a problem as the Wingate mail server simply serves to forward all interneal email to our Exchange server on the internal network. I do not know what would have caused the problem with SMTP.

[labull]

Bob,

One thing you can check for is Anti-Virus realtime protection of the WinGate directories.

If it is enabled you could try excluding them and see if that helps.

Let us know how it goes.

Larry

[Nev]

Dear labull,

Thank you for your assistance. I read this same advice on several posts, and it does work. Thank you again.

The problem seems to come back after a short hiatus. I recently upgraded the Wingate server to a 2.8 GHz Xeon/512 MB RAM/XP SP2 box. (Previuosly, it had been a 7 year-old PII HP Server). I have been running the new box for about a week without a hitch. In the last 12 hours, History has begun to disappear, and it seems to want to disappear again sometime after I delete the DBF and CDX files. Something is corrupting these files, and I would like to track it down. I suspect it is my ocnfiguration as that is always getting some changes - most recently due to SPAM. I notice the SMTP log has some anomolies that began to occur at roughtly the same time as the history problem. I found the following entries repeated approximately 1000 times in the current SMTP log:

09/30/04 23:50:29 Error: Message 0000001730 could not move .msg file error 2
09/30/04 23:50:29 Error: Message 0000001730 msg file not found, rcp file moved to dead

I found the 0000001730.msg file in "holding" and the associated rcp file in "postin". I killed the SMTP Server service, delted both, and restarted the SMTP server. I am hoping this solves the problem. Normally, SMTP has not been a problem as the Wingate mail server simply serves to forward all interneal email to our Exchange server on the internal network. I do not know what would have caused the problem with SMTP.

If you have 'Keep copies of sent mail' enabled:

Compare the number of the highest file in the 'Sent' folder and the SMTPUID in Wingate's mail registry.

Make the SMTPUID = the number of the highest msg file eg: 45678 = 00045678.msg

If that's the issue.

Nev.

[Bob Tucker]

Thank you for the suggestion. I am not maintaining copies of sent mail. I reinstalled Winagte and re-entered the configurtion manually rather than updating the registry as I had done. All seems to be well again. The Wingate SMTP server does DNS-vetting against the SORS and Spamhaus databases and does some anti-spoof detection before passing all email to our older (version 5.5) Exchange server. All inbound email is simply passeed to the Exchange server, and with the exception of whatever glitch happened to cause the single problem I had, this has all owrked flawlessly. I keep adjsuting the email configuration to deal with SPAM, and I am sure that I shot myself in the foot somewhere along the way recently.

[labull]

Bob,

My email set up is exactly the same. Email is virus scanned and about 1500 pieces of junk each day are blocked before it reaches my exchange server.

Works great!

Now, as to shooting my self in the foot? I'm lucky to have any toes left!

Larry

[Bob Tucker]

Dear labull, Thank you so much for your assistance. I am in Asia (Bangkok). Since the CAN-SPAM act went into effect in the U.S., we have seen a 20-50 fold increase in SPAM. Apparently, spammers in the U.S. believe that bouncing SPAM around outside North America and Europe will make it anonymous. As I understand it, the tactics have changed due to the CAN-SPAM act. Most of the email we receive is deliberately addressed to people who do not exist at the company that I work with. i.e., tens of thousands of emails arrive each day with addresses such as george@company.com - where there is no George. This generates non-delivery status notifications to the "senders" of those emails. The non-delivery status messages are sent to the "senders" - who are, of course, the intended recipients. I understand that as this form of spamming via NDS messages is not explicitly addressed in the CAN-SPAM act, spammers in the U.S. think they can get away with this for some years to come. This is overwhelming the bandwidth at some smaller ISPs here and slowing things down even at the larger ones. We were dealing with more than 100,000 junk emails daily. These SPAM emails came via roughly 20,000 connections daily from SPAM servers and hijacked servers. We had no real Internet for more than a week due to this. Vetting via the SORBS, Spamhaus, and SPEWS databases limits SMTP connections to SPAM servers to about 1500 per day. These are largely open relays that have not yet been detected by SORBS and Spamhaus. In addition, unfortunatley, we cannot get rid of about half the SPAM attempts - as these are directed through our backup MX at our ISP. Spoof detection gets rid of the majority of these. We are left with about 500 phony emails getting through each day. These generate NDS messages - which are the SPAM in this case. I doubt things will improve here is Southeast Asia until there is effective control of SPAM on the Internet as a whole. Microsoft wants email IDs which, of course, Microsoft could control. No one else wants that, so it would seem unlikely anything will really improve with respect to worldwide SPAM control for years to come. I suspect the situation here is not at all unique.