iPhone / no sync of calendar and contacts

[Jeremy James]

Anyone got new info on this problem?

since there is no new connector out yet i am still regularly being contacted by users where i sxmboxexp their contact folder, wipe it, and reimport it. sometimes restarting tomcat also helps, dont ask me why, i am fed up of digging through tons of exceptions in the logfile

am frustrated! next to the active sync issues fighting with issues with the blackberry connector for a different customer. opened a support ticket two weeks ago, except "we'll contact you soon!" messages no results yet. great.

what for did my customer pay a few thousand euros for a enterprise license? i could as well set up a VM on Centos and let a SBS run with exchange!

[mxx]

We also have this problem. We are using notify on demand until this gets resolved..

[anybody]

My Activesync clients (1x iPhone, 1x Nokia E51, 1x Nokia E52, 1x Nokia E71) have mostly stopped working over the last couple of months. All mobile users are very disappointed and I can't really help them. Scalix Activesync seems to be extremely buggy and is easily irritated by calender entries or emails that it doesn't like.

And there don't seem to be any updates coming that would fix this. Scalix 11.5 was supposedly "coming soon" last fall and is still nowhere to be seen. Outlook 2010 support is nowhere to be seen. And no Activesync updates on the horizon.

Has development stopped? Or are they just trying for get as many customers as possible to pay 1000€ for their support incidents as possible by leaving bugs intentionally open by not releasing new versions?

But even paying 1000€ wouldn't really help me:
The last time I submitted a bug to them (when I still had support points from the initial purchase) I did the WHOLE work of isolating when the bug occurs and documenting the bug so they could then easily fix it. What did I get for this ? Absolutely NOTHING.

They declared it fixed and I had to wait for MONTHS for the next Activesync version just like everyone else. So essentially if I now pay 1000€ for their support this will mean that again
a) I will have to spend hours on isolating their ActiveSync bugs because they don't want to invest any time in finding their own bugs (from my experience with the one Activesync bug I submitted)
b) I will have to pay 1000€ just to be able to "officially" report the bug in a way where it won't get ignored
c) I will not get a fix for the bug before everyone else.

Something is very broken here.

Well... first of all, I think if this is a corporate email system, there's always the chance that things can go sideways and one needs help - after all, this is typically mission critical.

Support is supposed to provide HELP to a user based on the assumption that the support has deeper knowledge of the inner workings of the product than the user. Support is NOT supposed to be the only way to get a buggy product to work (and as I discussed above even that wouldn't help much since even when support fixes a bug the customer doesn't get the bugfix).

[Jeremy James]

My Activesync clients (1x iPhone, 1x Nokia E51, 1x Nokia E52, 1x Nokia E71) have mostly stopped working over the last couple of months. All mobile users are very disappointed and I can't really help them. Scalix Activesync seems to be extremely buggy and is easily irritated by calender entries or emails that it doesn't like.

same here, wasted this morning again sxmboxexp'ing calendars and contacts and reimporting it to at least have a few days until the user calls me again that it stopped working again. it's so frustrating.

in a other case i am waiting for 2 months (!) for a blackberry connector issue to be solved.

i do not need a version 11.5 , even if it brings new features. i want a bloody service release or a patch to fix the current urgent problems with active sync and the blackberry connector. why cant patches be released?

[kanderson]

Assuming you're running Scalix 11.4.6 and ActiveSync 1.0.2, the only problem I've seen is with the IMAP caches.

Rather than the HUGE hassle of exporting and importing a mailbox, just set up a script to clear the cache each night. This works well, and means that if something does go sideways, it's resolved overnight. That might not be the perfect answer that you're after, but it works well. I've heard zero complaints since implementing it. My script looks like this:

Code: Select all

omoff -w -d0 rci
sleep 10
find /var/opt/scalix/ml/s/user/*/imap-cache/* -exec rm {} \;
sleep 10
omon rci
sximapprep -a sxadmin -p <PASSWORD>
omtidyallu -M


This causes an outage on my server lasting less than a minute, and getting rid of the sleep lines would cut that in half.

You'll note that I do this for ALL of the users. My server is quick enough to do the omtidyallu and the sximapprep for all users overnight. Your mileage may vary there, so you may wish to do some customization to cut down on the number of caches that you need to rebuild if necessary. The omtidyallu likely isn't needed here, but it's a hosting server, so I run it for the benefit of anyone who has migrated earlier that day.

[Jeremy James]

thanks for your suggestion, i will implement it tomorrow and see if it improves the situation

thanks
jeremy

[anybody]

Assuming you're running Scalix 11.4.6 and ActiveSync 1.0.2, the only problem I've seen is with the IMAP caches.

I've since gotten some of my ActiveSync Phones back to work by moving all Contacts from the Outlook Contacts folder to another folder and then moving them back... Also did some cleanup on some of the contacts, but the moving forth and back is IMHO what mostly fixed it.

I have to say mostly, because the number of contacts visible on the iPhone is lower than the number of contacts in the Outlook contacts folder. About 3% are missing, and from the few missing ones my users have caught, there does not seem to be anything special about them. Saving them under a different Outlook "FileAs" Name makes them appear on the phone. But you first have to know who those 3% are.

Since those 3% are still missing, I could try your script to see if it fixes those problems. Will do that tomorrow once the IMAP cache is ready again.

My script looks like this:
find /var/opt/scalix/ml/s/user/*/imap-cache/* -exec rm {} \;

Worked fine for me, except that my path was "sx" and not "ml".

sximapprep -a sxadmin -p <PASSWORD>

Didn't work for me (Error: "User sxadmin does not have Mailbox Admin Capability"), after some digging around I finally found how to add it (I'm not exactly a scalix-commandline expert...):
ommodu -n "cn=sxadmin" -c +mboxadmin

omtidyallu -M
The omtidyallu likely isn't needed here, but it's a hosting server, so I run it for the benefit of anyone who has migrated earlier that day.

Could you explain what it actually does?

The man page says:

Code: Select all

-M
MIME  pre-generation.   This  caches  MIME conversion data. This option cannot be used in conjunction with any age or deletion options.


But I don't really get what thats good for. Is this also some sort of cache that can become corrupt? Why is this related to having a hosted server or migrating users? I'm kind of scared to run a command whose main purpose is to delete stuff without fully understanding what it does or why it might need to be done.

[kanderson]

It doesn't delete anything, It generates the MIME data in advance of the client asking for it. This makes the server faster the first time people sign into the server on a hosted server that happens more than on a normal server because normally this would only be used after a migration. Obviously, people migrate onto a hosted server more than they migrate onto an enterprise server.

As I indicated, you can certainly skip that line (actually, you can skip the imapprep stuff too, as it's the same, except that it pregenerates the imap cache, rather than the mime data) if the client needs that data, it will be generated on the fly for them (for either of those commands). This just allows you to generate it during the slower times on the server, rather than busier times.

Kev.

[anybody]

Thanks for the explanation.

I've now deleted the IMAP cache, regenerated it, generated the MIME cache and run a full "omscan -Aafx" on the database.
I've also shut down the server and started it again, as well as deleted the iPhones Exchange-Sync Settings and reentered them.

And still only 578 contacts on the iPhone while Outlook 2007 sees 594 contacts.
(that's not counting outlook distribution lists, which i've moved to a seperate folder to make sure they don't get counted)

I would therefor continue to classify this as a bug, and not something that can be fixed by regenerating the IMAP or MAPI cache.

Good tips though anyway, those additional things may probably fix some other ActiveSync problems which I'm currently not looking at...

[mxx]

Anybody, it would be great if you could report back when you know for how long the contacts actually stayed on the iphones

In my experience they disappear again after a few days /weeks.

Thank you!

[anybody]

So far I haven't heard anything bad yet from the iPhone users. So at least the majority of their contacts are probably still there

I've just this afternoon investigated the problems with an Nokia E52, which only showed 30 contacts instead of ~200+. I therefore set up an old trusty iPhone 2G and found that it also showed only 30 contacts. (the IMAP cache cleaning above had been properly done and didn't fix this)

What I found during the following investigation was that the user had several "strange" contacts in Outlook, i.e. Contacts without a name and with just an email, some of those emails even with completely invalid characters. I exported those email-only contacts to a csv file (in case he wants to look something up) and deleted them from the contacts. Didn't solve the problem though. Then I started cleaning up the remaining contacts, deleting contacts that had only a name and no phone numbers or other contents. Didn't solve the problem though.

Then I moved the Contacts to a different folder and later moved them back. Still didn't solve the problem.

Then I exported the Contacts to a .pst file and later imported them again into Outlook => SUCCESS, suddenly all of the (remaining) 101 contacts could be seen on the iPhone.

Then I tried to set this up with the Nokia E52, which was a HORRIBLE experience. In the end I gave up because this phone with its chaotic menus, constantly crashing or hanging menu system and a complete mess of different OS parts that all seem to do eMail (eMail Pro, eMail, Messages, Mail for Exchange, just to name a few SEPERATE things) was just more than I could handle. Told him again to get a proper phone from a company that cares about making good phones and left.

[anybody]

Anybody, it would be great if you could report back when you know for how long the contacts actually stayed on the iphones

UPDATE DECEMBER 9th 2010:
- I have since lent the iPhone 2G to the user who had the Nokia E71 and whose sync problems I had been battled for months (he will be able to get an iPhone4 from Vodafone in January).
- The same mailbox that was totally unsyncable with the Nokia worked flawless with the iPhone 2G.
- Things worked flawless for about a month or two, the he complained that all his contacts were gone.
- Upon investigating, I found and modified two suspicious contacts from his Outlook Contacts folder:
1) had no name, just a company, I therefor put the Company Name also in the Lastname field
2) had no name and no company, just a Phone number, I completely deleted the contact.

Soon after, he called and told me the contacts had reappeared.

My summary from all those (horrible) Scalix Activesync expericence: Even though Nokia is on the compatbility list, you should not even bother to try. From what I read here in the Forums Palm Pre and Android (using specific clients) are other options that may be working, but for now the only thing I can recommend from my own experience to at least mostly work is the iPhone.

There are still lots of issues:
- misformed contacts breaking the sync completely
- the still missing support for HTML mail
- only 97,5% of contacts are visible on the iPhone, the remaining 2,5% are missing for unknown reasons

but at least it is SOMEWHAT working with iPhones. An Activesync update to fix bugs and improve compatibilty is needed urgently. Unfortunately, Scalix does not seem to be willing to provide one

Since I'm somewhat of an iPhone fanboy myself, thats a situation I can live with for now, but be aware dear Scalix employees: Your reluctance to provide even basic bugfixes and compatibility updates will not be forgotten, neither by me or by my users. Unless something dramatically changes over the next few months, a subscription renewal is completely out-of-the-question. And of course I have long since stopped recommending Scalix for new installations, because the main selling point (Activesync) just doesn't work as it should.