Newest KB Articles

Managing Disk Space in SmarterTrack

Wed, 13 May 2026 18:03:49 GMT

SmarterTrack uses two types of storage: database storage and file storage.

The database holds the contents of tickets, KB articles, live chats, and more.
File storage contains items such as ticket attachments, images used in KB articles and canned replies, files uploaded to tickets, and so on.

By default, SmarterTrack already does a great job of keeping file storage lean. It eliminates duplicate files by looking across all areas of SmarterTrack and storing single instances or recurring files, images, etc., and then automatically purges files when their associated tickets, chats, or KB articles are deleted. Even so, storage can still add up over time. But that's where SmarterTrack's built-in automation features come in handy.

As an administrator, you can configure SmarterTrack to automatically close, lock, and then delete tickets based on a time frame that works for your team. For example, you might automatically close tickets after 14 days of no customer response, lock them a few days after that so users can no longer reply, and then permanently delete them after a year. All three settings can be customized, can be enabled or disabled independently, and are configured on a per-department basis — giving you granular control over how each team manages its tickets. Just remember: the longer you store tickets, the more disk space you’re using.

To access these settings, log in as a System Administrator and navigate to Settings -> Departments, select a Department, then go to its Tickets tab.

Canceling a Hosted SmarterTrack Site

Wed, 13 May 2026 15:16:09 GMT

When your time using Hosted SmarterTrack comes to an end, you'll want to cancel your account. Simply removing agents or stopping the use of Hosted SmarterTrack is NOT the same as cancelling: you will continue being invoiced and making payments until your site is actually canceled.

As an aside, if you're using a trial of Hosted SmarterTrack, once your initial 30 days is complete, you will not be billed for anything unless you actually subscribe. A trial of Hosted SmarterTrack does not require any payment information prior to the trial starting. As such, at the end of the trial the site simply stops working unless you actually subscribe to a Hosted SmarterTrack plan.

How do I cancel my account?
If you decide not to use SmarterTrack anymore, you can follow these steps to cancel your subscription:

Visit the SmarterTools website and click on the account icon in the upper right.
Once logged in, select Hosted Services from the dropdown menu.
Find the URL for the appropriate site and click Cancel Site (or End Trial if you are canceling your free trial).
Review the information and click Yes.

Conserving Disk Space in SmarterTrack

Tue, 12 May 2026 14:47:55 GMT

SmarterTrack uses two types of storage: database storage and file storage. The database holds the contents of tickets, KB articles, live chats, and more. File storage contains items such as ticket attachments, images used in KB articles and canned replies, files uploaded to tickets, and so on. SmarterTrack already does a great job of keeping file storage lean — it eliminates duplicate files (so the same image used in multiple KB articles is only stored once) and automatically purges files when their associated tickets, chats, or KB articles are deleted. Even so, storage can still add up over time. And, just as disk space increases, SmarterTrack's performance can decrease. Therefore, managing disk space is a maintenance task that administrators don't want to miss.

That's where SmarterTrack's built-in automation features come in handy. As an administrator, you can configure SmarterTrack to automatically close, lock, and then delete tickets based on a time frame that works for your team.

For example, you might automatically close tickets after 14 days of no customer response, lock them a few days after that so users can no longer reply, and then permanently delete them after a year. All three settings can be customized, can be enabled or disabled independently, and are configured on a per-department basis — giving you granular control over how each team manages its tickets. Just remember: the longer you store tickets, the more disk space you’re using.

To access these settings, log in as a system administrator and navigate to Settings > Departments, open a Department, then select the Tickets tab. Here's what you'll see:

Utilizing these settings, and having some strict (though still viable for your business) rules around how tickets are disposed of, can go a long way towards helping you conserve disk space which, in turn, helps keep SmarterTrack performing well.

Enabling Message Archiving

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 16:37:25 GMT

Message archiving is a SmarterMail Enterprise feature that allows a business to store all email traffic for a domain — either incoming messages, outgoing messages, or both — in a separate location on the mail server. When archiving is set up, messages are automatically archived as soon as they hit the spool and before they are handled by any spam and/or content filters. This means that all messages are archived, not simply those that are delivered to a user's mailbox. The exception to this rule is messages rejected due to SMTP Blocking. If a message is rejected due SMTP Spam blocking, it will never hit the spool and, therefore, will not be archived.

By default, SmarterMail does not archive any messages. To specify which domains are archived, the system administrator first needs to enable it, then create general archiving rules. Rules can be set up for the system as a whole, so all domains are archived, in the system's General settings, then archiving rules can be enabled, disabled, or modified for individual domains on a domain's Options tab.

Enabling Archiving

First, the domain administrator needs to enable Message Archiving. To do this:

Log in as the system administrator.
Navigate to Settings -> General.
Find the Message Archiving (Enterprise Only) card.
Click the Enable link to enable the archiving feature.
Once enabled, click the Settings link. This allows a system administrator to set default rules for where the archive is stored, and how long messages are archived before they're purged.

That's all there is to it. Next, it's possible to disable archiving for a specific domain or edit the default settings for a domain. For example, if a specific business requires message data to be stored longer than the default rules that were set up, this can be adjusted specifically for that business.

Editing a Domain's Message Archive

Individual domains can have Message Archiving enabled, disabled, or edited by a system administrator on an as-needed basis. By default, even if Message Archiving is enabled at the system level, Archiving is NOT enabled for any domains by default, so it needs to be enabled by a system administrator for each domain individually. When Archiving is enabled for a domain, only the system administrator can edit its Settings. Domain administrators only have the ability to search the Message Archive, not edit settings.

As the system administrator, navigate to the Manage area.
Select the domain you want/need to edit.
By default, you should be on that domain's Options tab. If not, select it.
Find the Message Archiving (Enterprise Only) card for the domain.
Click the Enable link -- this enables Message Archiving for that domain.
Once enabled, click the Settings link. This opens a modal that will allow you to manage or change any default settings that were created. Once you're satisfied with the Settings, click the Enable button.

Message Archiving is now set up for that domain.

Disabling Message Archiving for a Domain

When you disable Message Archiving for a domain, any archived EMLs or ZIP files remain. SmarterMail does not have a nightly clean up routine that will remove archived data if Archiving is turned off. Therefore, these will need to be manually deleted from the server or moved off the relevant data drive. In addition, even if "Months to Keep" is enabled, that stops running, so that timeframe is never hit by SmarterMail.

If Archiving is disabled for a domain, and then re-enabled using the same data path, any previously archived data is still there, and still searchable.

Using dotTrace on Linux

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 18:51:02 GMT

This KB article will detail how Server Administrators can utilize DotTrace for troubleshooting purposes. DotTrace is a tool that allows a server operator to take a recording of a process's memory and execution flow, which assists in the troubleshooting of lockups, crashes, and slowdowns without a clear and immediate cause.

Please note that this records SmarterMail processes, and takes a rolling snapshot of the server's RAM as a result. As a result, it can be performance-intensive and take up a fair amount of disk space. Please capture this trace during a time of low usage if possible. Also, please ensure that you have >32GB of free disk space (possibly more, depending on how many mailboxes/domains you have).

1. Download and extract dotTrace

- Go to (https://www.jetbrains.com/profiler/download/?section=commandline) and select Linux x64 under the download dropdown. Then, when you are taken to the next page, copy the Direct Link (right-click > Copy Link), and use wget on your Linux server to get the archive containing dotTrace. Example:

 wget "https://download.jetbrains.com/resharper/dotUltimate.2025.3.3/JetBrains.dotTrace.CommandLineTools.linux-x64.2025.3.3.tar.gz?_gl=1*n8as81*_gcl_au*ODg2ODg5NDcwLjE3NzQ0NTIxMzA.*FPAU*ODg2ODg5NDcwLjE3NzQ0NTIxMzA.*_ga*MjY2OTE3NjQ5LjE3NzQ0NTIxMzA.*_ga_9J976DJZ68*czE3NzQ0NTIxMjckbzEkZzEkdDE3NzQ0NTMyODIkajEwJGwwJGgw"

2. Extract the DotTrace console tools

- Create a directory to store the dotTrace files in

sudo mkdir -p JetBrains

- Extract the archive to the folder

sudo tar -xvzf <archive.tar.gz> -C JetBrains

- Navigate to the folder

cd JetBrains/

2. Execute dotTrace

- Get the numerical PID of MailService with pgrep.

pgrep MailService

- Run DotTrace with sudo - make sure you save to a path

sudo ./dotTrace.sh attach <PID found in last step> --save-to=/home/<USER>/<CHOSEN TRACE NAME>

- Give DotTrace ~15 min to run, or until the service crashes. If it is running after ~15min, type CTRL-C once to terminate and allow DotTrace to save a snapshot.

3. Collect the DotTrace

- Zip the file, deleting the original, to clear up space. Once you have this file, you can send it to us via e-mail, or a link to your File Storage/any other cloud storage platform.

zip <trace filename>.zip <CHOSEN TRACE NAME> -m

Moving SmarterMail Data to Shared Storage

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 20:37:55 GMT

There are times when moving SmarterMail domain and user data from internal storage to some type of shared storage just makes sense. For example, if you want to eventually set up SmarterMail Enterprise for failover, or, more commonly, if you want some redundancy in your domain, user, and message data by using a Raid10 NAS.

The process for doing this is relatively simple. However, the steps, below, assume your share is ready to be put into production. In addition, the more reliable way to do this is while having the SmarterMail service stopped. The process can be started with SmarterMail running, but administrators need to ensure whatever they're using to move data from the primary server over to the share has some type of Volume Shadow Copy (VSS) capability. Then, once the initial move is complete, a second will need to be performed to acquire more recent data, spool items, etc. This second move MUST be performed while the SmarterMail service is stopped.

The process, below, is being performed with the SmarterMail service stopped and with the understanding that the data is being moved to Network Attached Storage (NAS).

1. First, stop the SmarterMail service. This prevents any file locks or data corruption during the move
2. Next, copy the domain data to your NAS share. Copy the entire Domains folder from your current location (Windows Default: C:\SmarterMail\Domains | Linux Default: /var/lib/smartermail/Domains). If moving all domains, copy the entire Domains folder. If moving specific domains, you can copy individual domain folders.
3. Update the domain paths in SmarterMail. This entails editing domains.json (Windows Default: C:\Program Files (x86)\SmarterTools\SmarterMail\Service\Settings\domains.json) and update the path for each domain to point to the new UNC path (e.g., \\NAS-Server\SmarterMail\Domains\domain.com).
4. Configure service permissions for UNC access. This is the critical step that often causes issues:

- Open Windows Services (services.msc)
- Find the SmarterMail service
- Go to the Log On tab
- Change from "Local System account" to "This account"
- Enter credentials for a domain/network account that has full permissions on the NAS share
- Click Apply and restart the SmarterMail service

5. Finally, verify and test the migration. Start the SmarterMail service and verify domains load correctly, test login and mail delivery across multiple domains, and check logs for any access errors.

Important Considerations

Permissions are critical: The most common issue when using UNC paths is permissions. The account running the SmarterMail service MUST have full read/write permissions on the NAS share. This typically won't be an issue on domain-authenticated networks but can cause problems in workgroup environments.
UNC paths vs. mapped drives: You must use UNC paths (e.g., \\server\share\path) rather than mapped drives (e.g., Z:\path) because mapped drives are user-level and won't be available to the service.
Performance: NAS storage will be slower than local storage due to network latency. For high-volume mail servers, this could impact performance.
Archiving: You can also configure message archiving to use NAS storage, and each domain can have its archive in a separate location if needed.
Alternative per-domain configuration: Instead of moving all domains at once, you can move domains individually by updating just their specific paths in domains.json.

SmarterTools Account Types Explained

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 23:51:08 GMT

Whenever someone purchases a SmarterTools license, they create an account on our website. Within that account, they can assign various other permissions for people within their organization. Below is a list of these account types and their permissions.

Account Holder

This is, generally, the name and email address of the person or organization purchasing the SmarterTools license. The email address can be a personal address (e.g., my.name@example.org) or a departmental address (e.g., purchasing@example.org.) This login has complete control of the account and its details, can view licensing information, can submit support tickets, and more.

In addition, they can set their communications preferences:

They can receive all emails SmarterTools sends. (Invoices, marketing emails, maintenance emails, etc.)
They can choose to receive critical emails and account updates only. These are emails sent by SmarterTools that are marked as "Critical" in our internal mailing list system.
They can unsubscribe from all emails.

They can then select the type of Partnership emails that are sent, if they are an active SmarterTools partner:

When an invoice is created.
When a summary invoice is created. (Where applicable.)
When a lease is assigned. (Where applicable.)

Authorized Logins

Authorized logins can also log in to the SmarterTools account using their own information. These users can be granted access to specific areas of the account, but do not have access to the account as a whole. Primarily:

They can activate licenses.
View and pay invoices.
Perform reseller functions. (Where applicable.)
Perform lease provider functions. (Where applicable.)

From an communications perspective, then, the can receive the following email alerts:

When an invoice is created.
When a summary invoice is created. (Where applicable.)
When a lease is assigned. (Where applicable.)

Regarding emails from our internal mailing list system, Authorized Logins will receive all emails marked as "Critical" as well as all marketing (non-critical) emails. This is in addition to the email alerts selected, above.

Primary Contacts

Primary contacts can not log in to the account. However, they can receive certain types of communication from SmarterTools. This includes the ability to receive:

Standard invoices.
Summary invoices.
Important notices.

Regarding emails from our internal mailing list system, Primary Contacts will receive only those emails marked as "Critical" unless they opt out of "Important Notices". This means they do not get "marketing" emails.

Adding an Exclusion for SmarterMail's Installer When Using SentinelOne

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 20:13:55 GMT

When using Sentinel One (S1) antivirus/behavioral monitoring systems you may notice it flag the SmarterMail installer as it includes our move to .NET 10. These new .NET packages are recent enough that S1 will flag the installer for review. If this happens, you can utilize the Incidents page in S1 to add an exclusion for the installer and the components it installs.

Once you’ve located the blocked incident, click on the blocked application itself on the list (SmarterMail installer) to open the threat details view. Here you can click the Actions menu at the top right corner and select Add to Exclusions to exclude the installer from further scanning:

In the above screenshot, we already have the necessary exclusions added and so our SHA signatures are shown in red. New exclusions will not display in red unless you’ve already added tthem and are just awaiting agent synchronization of the new rule.

SmarterTools has reached out to SentinelOne and we are working with them on remedying this situation. However, this may take some time. For now, the exclusions will resolve this issue.

SmarterMail Domain Rename Process

Thu, 13 Nov 2025 15:32:03 GMT

In all versions of SmarterMail (High Availability, Enterprise, and Professional) it's possible to rename a domain. For example, if a business rebrands itself, renaming their domain in SmarterMail saves mail administrators from doing a mass migration of data from one domain to another. They simply rename the domain, let SmarterMail do all the work, then add their former domain as a domain alias. Regardless of the reason, the renaming process seems simply on the surface, but it does occur in a couple of different stages.

The first stage updates the domain itself. This includes any existing domain alias mappings and domain Message Archive settings. Once this is done, the administrator will see a toast indicating it.

The next stage is a bit more complex as it entails work being done in the background, and it begins after the first stage is complete. This includes:

Updating GAL entries in the domain to modify the primary email address so it reflects the renamed domain.
Reviewing all appointments in user and domain calendars. If an appointment is in the future, or if it is a recurring appointment with future occurrences, the organizer and affected attendees are updated as necessary to reflect the domain change. This may include sending updated meeting invitations, in the following scenarios:
- If the owner of the calendar is the Organizer, an updated appointment is sent to any attendees who are NOT part of the renamed domain.
- If the owner of the calendar is an attendee and the Organizer is NOT part of the renamed domain, and the user has previously sent a response for the meeting, and updated meeting response is sent to the Organizer.

Once this second stage is complete, the administrator will see a second toast stating that the domain was renamed and that all background tasks have completed.

Renaming a Split Domain

In SmarterMail High Availability (HA), it's possible to split a domain across several different nodes. This allows hosting companies, ISPs, and enterprise organizations to support a virtually unlimited number of mailboxes for a single domain. However, there are times when that domain name changes, and that name change needs to be handled across a SmarterMail HA cluster. In SmarterMail HA, a domain only needs to be renamed on a single node. That change, then, is communicated to other nodes that host that domain to make sure they're all active. If not, an error is returned and the domain cannot be renamed. If all nodes return as active, the rename occurs and is propagated across all nodes hosting their portion of that split domain.

SmarterMail, LDAP, and Active Directory

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 20:51:04 GMT

Non-SmarterMail Authentication Providers come in two configurable categories: Active Directory (AD) and LDAP. The difference between these two options is more in the authentication process rather than functional differences.

Both providers operate using the LDAP protocol, but the SmarterMail Active Directory authentication provider requires Kerberos/NTLM authentication provided by SSPI (Win) or GSSAPI (Linux) and assumes an Active Directory searching structure. LDAP Providers also operate using the LDAP protocol, but utilize basic authentication and don't assume an Active Directory structure. You can connect to a Microsoft Active Directory using either connector although using the LDAP Provider will require TLS/STARTTLS to connect to Active Directory using basic authentication without explicitly enabling it for the domain.

Basic authentication provided for an LDAP Provider configuration must be a supported fully qualified distinguished name (i.e., cn=admin,dc=testing,dc=local), and supports cn= or uid= scheme usernames as preferred by the target directory. Users added from an LDAP providers will be required to be under the configured Base DN so if "ou=admins,dc=testing,dc=local" is configured as the Base DN, the authentication provider will only resolve users that belong to the "admins" ou. No configured Base DN assumes all users at the root of the server are to be resolved.

Active Directory Providers require service credentials be configured for either Kerberos on Linux or NTLM on Windows for a user/service account capable and authorized to query the directory. Active Directory Providers work similarly to LDAP Provider's Base DN configuration but with just an "Organization Unit" field specific instead of general Base DN. This works functionally identical to the LDAP Providers with the addition of the "Domain Name" configuration, as the rest of the Base DN is assumed from a combination of Organizational Unit and Domain Name.

As a final clarification, OpenLDAP tends to be case-sensitive with properties by default and Active Directory is not. This can cause problems as sometimes "OU=" does not equal "ou=". A list of the currently supported properties for each tested provider are included below.

Updates to Our Integrations

LDAP and AD Connections will automatically use the SmarterMail username to attempt to query an authentication provider based on the configured Base DN for LDAP and the Organizational Unit for Active Directory.
- Prior to these changes, an OpenLDAP connected authentication provider required the username to match exactly what it expected in order to verify that the user exists (i.e. cn=Testing User,ou=people,dc=testing,dc=local) and that functionality didn't work with the refresh token which attempted to search for a user specifically by ‘samaccountname’ which is a property that is only available in an Active Directory LDAP connection.
- SmarterMail uses a search-first process for AD and LDAP user verification and authentication based on searching for either a samaccountname OR a uid for the specified user. (Where uid is the OpenLDAP equivalent to samaccountname.) As a result the previously required "Active Directory Username" during new-user creation utilizing an authentication provider isn't explicitly required anymore for either Active Directory or OpenLDAP connections.
SSL/TLS configurations settings have changed, fixing cross-platform TLS and STARTTLS connections across all tested platforms (Debian 13, Windows Server 2025, MacOS) for both Active Directory and OpenLDAP connections.
- Previously, aggressive certificate chain verification settings and no connection timeouts caused cryptic hangs and failures for both Active Directory and LDAP Connections. The only protocol client in SmarterMail that supports additional chain verification is SMTP Out that has settings that allow it to be disabled, and this authentication provider has been changed to match the majority of the other clients that don't do explicit additional chain verification. This should allow customers leveraging self-signed and/or internal ca certificates to leverage connection encryption more intuitively.
- The certificate requirements for an authentication provider server are as follows:
  - The certificate for the provider server must be issued by CA trusted by the host running SmarterMail and match the DNS-resolved SNI Hostname entered into the "Authentication Provider" configuration.
- Additionally, any LDAP connection to an Active Directory provider will deny connections using basic authentication unless the connection is using TLS/STARTTLS unless the server providing the LDAP connection and domain is specifically configured to.
Linux dependency packaging resolution changes have resulted in hardcoded version-specific references to "libldap-2.5.so.0" being replaced at the OS level with non-version named alternatives ("libldap.so.2").
Language strings in the "new-user" modal to correctly resolve to LDAP_ACCOUNTNAME for LDAP providers instead of showing ACTIVE_DIRECTORY_USERNAME for both provider types.
Feedback is now included on the "directory-service-provider" modal to indicate that a request is processing.

SmarterMail Supported Directory Attributes

Here's a comprehensive table of the current attributes supported for authentication providers.

Right click and select "Open Image in New Tab" to download this table

AD Specific Attributes

`samaccountname` and `userprincipalname` are Active Directory-specific with no direct OpenLDAP equivalents. `samaccountname` is commonly referenced as `uid` in OpenLDAP implementations and Smartermail is configured to resolve users by whichever property is available depending on the target platform. `userprincipalname` is utilized as a mail address source in addition to the `mail` property and doesn't affect it's usage as an authentication source.
Password-related attributes (`pwdlastset`/`pwdChangedTime` and `lockouttime`/`pwdAccountLockedTime`) require the **ppolicy overlay** to be loaded
- These properties are present and populated in an Active Directory environment by default but require and extension in OpenLDAP to provide it's closest-equivalent.
- Smartermail could be altered to support the OpenLDAP extension properties but currently doesn't. As a result, directory integrated password last set and lockout time variables are not populated.