The user failed to load after updating to SM Build 8657

Problem reported by Alexander Emmerson - 9/21/2023 at 6:58 AM

Resolved

After updating from Build 8451 to Build 8657 one of our user accounts is no more accessible. In the Users list an exclamation point (!) ist displayed beside the account. After klicking on that the following message is displayed:

"The user failed to load. As a result, mail will not function. Please refer to the SmarterMail Help for assistance resolving this issue, or click Remove to remove this user from the list. Note that the directory at d:\SmarterMail\Domains\medicum-mittelhessen.de\Users\... will not be deleted."

Is there any chance to recover the user account?

16 Replies

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Kyle Kerst Replied

9/21/2023 at 12:24 PM

Employee Post

Hi Alexander, sorry to hear you're seeing issues with this! This user has likely has a bad JSON file inside of their account, and once you restore a good backup copy the user should come right back online. To confirm what's going on you can remove it from the account list (using the screen you referenced above) then use something like jsonlint.com to validate the contents of the user's JSON configuration files found in the root of their directory on the server's hard drive. When you find the broken one, you can look in the user's Archived Data directory to find a valid backup copy. If this file has been broken for some time you may need to pull a good copy from your own long term backups. Once you get it restored, you can use ...>Attach User (on the Manage page) to reattach that user account and get them back online. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or get stuck!

Kyle Kerst

Lead Internal Network/System Administrator

SmarterTools Inc.

smartertools.com

Employee Replied

9/21/2023 at 12:46 PM

Employee Post

Hi Alexander,

I created a support ticket so we can review this with you.

Employee Replied

9/21/2023 at 5:11 PM

Employee Post

Hello,

The developers were able to resolve the issue that caused the Failed to Load users. This has been released in Build 8644, which was just released. You shouldn't see this behavior occur again. Please upgrade and it should resolve the errors. If not, please backup the user account on disk, click the Remove button from within the Failed to Load user. Then, go to the Domains grid, click on the Actions menu, and choose Attach User.

I hope this helps!

Kind regards,

Gabriele Maoret - SERSIS Replied

9/21/2023 at 10:56 PM

Hi Andrea! The new release is 8664, not 8644..

Gabriele Maoret - Head of SysAdmins and CISO at SERSIS

Currently manages 6 SmarterMail installations (1 in the cloud for SERSIS which provides services to a few hundred third-party email domains + 5 on-premise for customers who prefer to have their mail server in-house)

kevind Replied

9/22/2023 at 5:48 AM

Gabriele wrote:

Hi Andrea! The new release is 8664, not 8644.

This is another good reason to just make it build date instead of build #. 🙂

https://portal.smartertools.com/community/a95545/smartermail-versions-numbering.aspx

Brian Bjerring-Jensen - VonBjerring GmbH Replied

9/22/2023 at 7:30 AM

Exactly :)

Alexander Emmerson Replied

9/26/2023 at 7:56 AM

Hi all,

thank you for your excellent support regarding smartermail.

Today I wanted to carry out the steps described to restore the defective user account. I saw that the error disappeared and the mailbox worked again without us making any changes on the IT side. Yesterday the error was still there. Very strange...

For further analysis, I sent Andrea the config files of the user profile (before Update) by email.

In my opinion the ticket can be closed now.

ellisfr Replied

8/31/2024 at 1:03 AM

I have the same problem, yesterday night we upgraded SM from old build 8451 to latest build 9007.
This morning we saw several accounts in various domains with the error "The user failed to load" in the accounts list in webmail.

After checking all the json files of an account with this error, they are all marked as valid by jsonlint.com

What else can I try ? (I just opened a ticket about this)

ellisfr Replied

8/31/2024 at 3:08 AM

OK, problem solved, by detaching the account from the alert window and then attaching the user again, without changing anything else, users were restored correctly.

Exception for the users who were admin of their domain (had an "You may not detach yourself" alert), I had to modify the accounts.json to remove their admin status.

David Bartholomew Replied

9/11/2024 at 7:03 AM

We upgraded last night to Build 9014 (Sep 5, 2024) and have many users with this same error message. I have a few users with the admin and I'm wondering the steps to fix this as identified in the previous message.

I noticed that it seems to have moved some domains in to /domains/domains and when I reattach it doesn't find them. Do I copy the domain back into /domains ?

ellisfr Replied

9/11/2024 at 7:57 AM

What I did was going to domains/mydomainname and edit the accounts.json file (make a copy first) to make sure it was set to :

"primary_domain_admin":"root","domain_admins":["root"]

That means I removed the user name of other admins if there was any.

I think I had to do something after, like creating a user and removing it so SmarterMail reload the settings.

(you can also stop/start SmarterMail if this is an option for you).

These are all dirty hacks, it maybe better to open a ticket and get a clean solution.

Nico Smit Replied

9/30/2024 at 12:47 AM

Hi, should we first stop the service before editing accounts.json ? What's the best option?

ellisfr Replied

9/30/2024 at 3:12 AM

If you can, yes, I think it is better to stop the service first, so you are sure your new settings are loaded when you start the service again.

Nico Smit Replied

9/30/2024 at 3:44 AM

Did that exactly and seems to be working! Do you knowing a easier way to search for similar accounts with this issue? Thx!

ellisfr Replied

9/30/2024 at 5:48 AM

To identify accounts with problem, I did it manually, by parsing all domains accounts list to see those with the exclamation mark.

And if I wasn't able to detach/attach the account, I checked if it was an admin account and modified the accounts.json to remove them from "primary_domain_admin":"root","domain_admins":["root"]

mh Replied

7/26/2025 at 10:52 AM

Just popping in to say thanks, this thread helped when some mailboxes didn't load when migrating from Windows to a docker and detach+attach seemed to resolve. A few had to rebuild, but this thread definitely helped

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