We face the similar problem. Not sure whether SmarterTools got any idea on this?

We have also recently run into this problem. I also notice that the Display Name for the accounts when this happens gets set to N/A

 

Any idea what is happening here SmarterTools?

Hello.  Can I ask what version of SmarterMail you're both using?

Ensure there is no resident application that is locking or interfering with the smartermail files. Add the smartermail folder to the exceptions list in your antivirus etc

We already exclude the smartermail directories from virus scan. Has this or is this going to be addressed by SmarterMail upgrade? We are currently running 12.3.5318.

• C:\Program Files (x86)\SmarterTools\SmarterMail\*, and;
• C:\SmarterMail

 

We have seen this behavior several times during Smartermail upgrades

 

We did not see it during the most recent upgrade to version 12.5.5409

 

We typically stop the Smartermail services and IIS prior to the upgrade, perform the upgrade, and then run the password compliance report to determine if any passwords have been blanked out.

 

We have AV exclusions configured correctly.

 

 

 

 

Just had this happen on the latest SmaterMail Enterprise 13.2.5511 after applying windows updates to the server this morning and rebooting it.

 

Thankfully only 9 mailboxes across 3 domains out of 9,000 mailboxes across 2,500 domains got affected and where able to roll back the userConfig.xml files for these accounts from nightly backups that we had.

 

There is no AV software running on the server which is running Windows 2012 R2 and has only SmarterMail installed and IIS 8.5.

 

Is there anyway to avoid this issue as do not want to have to have this issue every time the server is rebooted?

Just ran into this same problem after upgrading from 13.3.5535 to 13.4.5598.  A user reported an inability to login.  Going to Sysadmin and viewing the user account, after clicking on "show password', the password field displays as blank.  Went to impersonate under Sysadmin and was able to login as the user and reset the password.

 

We're having the same problem; running version 13.4.5603;

There was a problem on the server, and after the reboot we lost 13 email-pwd;

the problem is, I am not able to reset the password, as it is not saved anymore;

how should this be done?

Which possibility is there to avoid this in the future? (it already happend three times! never had it before on older version, on an older server); this one is using a virtual hosting system;

Thanks!

 

 

ADDING:

**********

I found out how to reset the lost user data; there is a userdata-bak-file in the user's directory; the right userdata-config files is a file full of empty data; the bak is a readable xml-file; if I rename the bak-file to the cfg-file, the lost userdata and userpwd and userconfig is restored! at least this is good news!!!

You don't even have to stop and restart the service

Same here. Client told me he and his wife couldn't retrieve their email through IMAP. After loads of debugging and log crawling, it was just a matter of empty password + name changed to "N/A".

No idea what could have caused this, but it should never ever happen!

 

Using Smartermail Pro 12.3.5318 btw

Just as a side note, it seems like this is caused by a file in use.  I've only ever seen the issue post upgrades, but that's my guess.  Would file indexing possibly be the cause?

it happend 4-5 times in the last weeks; we found out it was each time after the new server had serious hardware problems; an unexpected reboot seems the problem for SmarterMail; we also found out that just people accessing with IMAP had the problems (not everyone!) but no one accessing with POP3; technical problems were solved and it has never happened since then ... let's hope for the best!

Same here, last night...  lost some userdata-config in Domains/Users/User/

 

 

 

Giovanni Zomer, what version of SM are you using?  Also, when the issue occurs again and before you rename the userConfig_bak.xml, can you send us a copy of the userConfig.xml file?  We would like to see if the file is corrupted or simply missing username / password fields.

We recently had the same experience when upgrading our SM servers to 14.x while AV, Backup software etc are given as reasons what I do know is that this was not an issue prior to the upgrade then after the upgrade the problem was "blank" userconfig.xml I say "blank" as while it seems empty the file maintained is current size. Anyway here is how we resolved the issue.
​
If you made a complete backup of your SmarterMail Domains folder before the upgrade. All you would need to do is download a file syncing program such as Free File Sync and copy all of the Userconfig.xml files from your backup directory to your SmarterMail domains. You can do this with the Smartermail service running and there is no need to restart the service once the copy is complete. This will restore all of the users passwords and user settings back to what they were before the upgrade, thus resolving the issue. If you do not have a backup the next best option would be to use the userConfig_bak.xml located in the same folder to replace the problem file.

Same issues as others have mentioned. As far as I can tell it occurs when SmarterMail Service is restarted (via a reboot or service restart) while the user has Outlook connected via IMAP.

 

It occurred for a few users on our system. The passwords were set to empty. When the user tried connecting their Outlook client they triggered the Password Brute Force alert. This puts them in a perpetual loop until I reset their account and clear the app pool to clear the IP block caching.

 

Here's our setup:

• SmarterMail Enterprise Edition Version 14.0.5647
• Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter (x64)
• ClamAV (only AV on box)
• RoboSync (runs at early morning hours - not when this happend)

Backup software should NOT be an issue.  Those config files are so small - I'm thinking it's possible that, for example, there was a "hang" in the backup process while ONE file was open. It's very unlikely that this would impact more than one user. And of course it would need to be that user's config file. Just my opinion of course.

Hello,

 

today I've also experienced the same issue (for the first time). I could not update user account using webmail. Only fix which worked without even restarting SM process was renaming userConfig_bak.xml  to userConfig.xml. If anyone from ST SM dev  team is interested in obtaining corrupted userConfig.xml file then just let me know. Corrupted file has the same size like bak file but it's completely empty.

 

Regards

Webio, can you create a sales ticket and attachment the corrupted file and the good bak file?  Please mention my name so it gets to me.  Thanks.

I have a SM 14.x custom build that should remedy the issue with blank passwords/usernames and the corrupted userConfig.xml file on user load.  In this custom build, if the program encounters an unrecoverable error while loading the userConfig.xml, it will attempt to load the userConfig_bak.xml instead.

 

If you are interested in trying this custom build, please contact sales@smartertools.com.