My evaluation so far

[tdegouw]

All,

Just wanted to share some ideas on the evaluation of scalix so far. Wanting an exchange alternative we are evaluating different systems.

Currently i've managed to get scalix up and somewhat working. As this is version 11, my hopes are high and the product has some potential but there are several rough edges.

To clarify more, the system is running centos 5.1, amd64 kernel 2.6.21-xen, as a guest in a gentoo virtual server. I've assigned the virtual server a 90gb disk (to start with), 4 processors and 4gb of memory, out of the 16gb and 8 processors on the physical box.

Packages installed

yum groupinstall "Text-based Internet"
yum groupinstall "System Tools" "Administration Tools" "Server configuration Tools"
yum groupinstall "Development Tools" "Legacy Network Server" "Mail Server" "Network Servers" "Web Server"
yum install htdig
yum install bind-utils

Performance wise, things run smooth but there are some problems that i encountered while installing and configuring.

Ldap integration.

This integration is nice, works with openldap but has some problems. By default it cannot deal with UID's within posixGroup or any group so a translation script needs to be created (someone on this forum created one that almost had what i needed). Would be nice to have this included or documented instead of having to search the forum for this.

Also by default the software took every object in ldap that included the scalix scheme, not only the ones with scalixScalixObject=TRUE, changing a filter in the sync.conf fixed this but this took a while before noticing this.

Webmail
* Why block other browsers than firefox and ie? C'mon, at least give the users an option to "continue on your own risk" instead of blocking it.

* Still have problems sending e-mail from webmail, it comes into the drafts folder and i'm puzzled why this doesn't work out of the box. Update: Got it working by following some posts on the forums.

* Still have a problem using the address book, this feature didn't work out of the box either, need to find out what is wrong with it. Gives an error message. Update: Got it working by following some posts on the forums. Seems to do with Ath=none in swa.properties

* Why can't i just delete forwards created in outlook from the web rules manager? Not able to edit, okay, not able to delete.. annoying.

Adding own SSL certificates
Please document where in the whole system the links to ssl certificates are, it is a pain to get it working if you're not familiar. Finally i found all spots using the wiki page on "changing to HTTPS only".

Outlook plugin
Works nice, nice and smooth. Sometimes get an error message when doing some fancy things. SmartCache is a nice feature. Only problem is that when you use activesync the sync is really slow when smartcache is enabled. We're eagerly waiting to evaluate the new plugin that should come this month.

Evolution
When will this plugin start to work?


All and all a nice product but it could really do with more documentation on these problems. The forums are filled with questions but not answered, and being such a nice product that is a waste.

I'll try to get the final parts of the product running for a full evaluation, but if it keeps popping up little bugs the management might decide to cancel it at all, being a pro-linux fan I certainly won't hope that happens.

[florian]

there are probably good reasons for most of your issues...

This integration is nice, works with openldap but has some problems. By default it cannot deal with UID's within posixGroup or any group so a translation script needs to be created (someone on this forum created one that almost had what i needed). Would be nice to have this included or documented instead of having to search the forum for this.

Sure - we decided to go with groupOfNames as a default as the LDAP integration is really generic and many people setup their OpenLDAP schemes so that this works out perfectly. The Unix-Style setup of OpenLDAP is more exception than rule. I agree that we could ship many more different templates for different situations, but at some point it becomes a true nightmare in QA. Our working assumption is that someone who uses OpenLDAP has their own idea about how their schema is supposed to work so that they can figure out the correct configuration.

I wouldn't think that you should need a script, though - it should be possible to archieve what you're looking for with a normal sync.cfg.

Also by default the software took every object in ldap that included the scalix scheme, not only the ones with scalixScalixObject=TRUE, changing a filter in the sync.conf fixed this but this took a while before noticing this.

This is by design - in migration sitautions you actually want all non-Scalix objects to be included here as external email addresses. I agree that we could actually ship the template with multiple versions of the IM_FILTER config line commented out, one for the case you're describing as well.

In general, ldapsync integration favors flexibility over strictness.

* Why block other browsers than firefox and ie? C'mon, at least give the users an option to "continue on your own risk" instead of blocking it.

Very simple - browsers not using the Gecko or IE engines will not work with the current version of SWA. There is no way to write Ajax-style applications with this level of integration (SWA is probably one of the 20 richest internet applications in the world, still) that work cross-browser. The AJAX model Webkit/Safari and Opera (which are the next two biggest engines) use is very, very, very different from the ones we are supporting. Even allowing FF3 to work required some serious code changes.

Not our fault, really, there are no standards in this market at the high end.

We are planning for Safari support in the future.

Believe me, if it was as simple as just removing the block, we'd have long done it.

* Still have problems sending e-mail from webmail, it comes into the drafts folder and i'm puzzled why this doesn't work out of the box. Update: Got it working by following some posts on the forums.

* Still have a problem using the address book, this feature didn't work out of the box either, need to find out what is wrong with it. Gives an error message. Update: Got it working by following some posts on the forums. Seems to do with Ath=none in swa.properties

On the setups I do it works out of the box - can you explain what was different and maybe we need to revamp our install?

* Why can't i just delete forwards created in outlook from the web rules manager? Not able to edit, okay, not able to delete.. annoying.

Delete should work, actually - can you describe the actual rules, how you set it up and where it fails? Full interop of the different rules thingies is a goal for a future release, however, it's several man months of work....

Outlook plugin
Works nice, nice and smooth. Sometimes get an error message when doing some fancy things. SmartCache is a nice feature. Only problem is that when you use activesync the sync is really slow when smartcache is enabled. We're eagerly waiting to evaluate the new plugin that should come this month.

Also, most ActiveSync situations should better be replaced by server-side ActiveSync, available pretty soon - see website for updates.

Evolution
When will this plugin start to work?

It does work - what doesn't for you? Which OS platform and Evolution version are you running this on?

Cheers,
Florian.

[tdegouw]

Hi Florian,

Thanks for the response, i am impressed just wanted to leave feedback to improve the product further.

About the LDAP, if needed i can mail you the problems i've encountered and still bother a little when syncing. Especially the incremental sync of new objects in the originating ldap seems not to work. (Adding an object in the source ldap, then omldapsync -u <name>, it does not sync the new object).

Blocking the browser, nice but please allow for some "continue at own risk". Prevents some browsers that change the browser ID on purpose to work. (Yeah some people do that, don't ask me why).

On the e-mail part, sx/s/sys/pam.d/ual.remote and smtpd.auth were not the same. Changed smtpd.auth to look the same. Might have missed that in the "migrate to ldap auth" document, not sure, tought i had everything covered.

On the address book part

Found on the forums the solution, /var/opt/scalix/sx/webmail/swa.properties needs

swa.ldap.1.authType=none

Then it works.

On the rule part, the odd part is :

Rules created in the web interface do not show in outlook
Rules created in outlook cannot be deleted in web interface, where the "delete" link normally is it says "outlook".
Also the rules do not offer the same functionality, relaying messages retaining sender data is not available in outlook.

ActiveSync
Two words, "give now"

Evolution

Ubuntu amd64, got it from svn, compiled, installed, connected... no error messages yet nothing shows. Found several issues about this on the forums without any solutions to that problem.

Also feel free to contact me on e-mail if you want any more detail/screenies/logs etc.

[tdegouw]

Well today during a demo for the company Scalix regrettably decided to stop working.

Suddenly during the demo an error message appeared "An error has occured" in the web interface and the user is unable to login again.

ERROR IMAP Server Da(IMAP Server Pr) 06.18.08 11:19:39
[OM 24070] Debug message for Lab use :
imap41_satSvr.c:processUntagged:Could not cache message info
User Name: Ted De Gouw / scalix/CN=Ted de Gouw


ERROR IMAP Server Da(IMAP Server Pr) 06.18.08 11:19:39
[OM 24070] Debug message for Lab use :
imapSatMonitor:Unexpected data from Core Server { * MESSAGE UID 926036315 DIRECTREF ix) with ESMTP id EED0F279703
}
User Name: Ted De Gouw / scalix/CN=Ted de Gouw

[florian]

Wow, this is pretty bad and I've never seen this type of error before. I'll have someone from engineering have a look at this post.

Please ping me via private message or email (my address should be well-known) if you want to provide the LDAP sync info.

Florian.

[usacto]

We experienced exactly the same problem today, after upgrading from 11.3 to 11.4 last week (SBE licensed, RHEL4).

Webmail worked for days, then today with no changes we suddenly saw:
- New messages appearing in webmail Inbox, but a dimmed message in place of their body text said they couldn't be displayed / server couldn't be reached (although we confirmed it was indeed reachable)
- an "imapSatMonitor:Unexpected data from Core Server" message, and
- after logging out of web mail, couldn't log back in (got an "error," "contact your email admin" dialog box).

Log entries were observed being made ("tail -f fatal") at this precise moment for the affected user:

ERROR IMAP Server Da(IMAP Server Pr) Thu Jun 19 12:53:16 2008
[OM 24070] Debug message for Lab use :
imapSatMonitor:Unexpected data from Core Server { * MESSAGE UID 1079712582 DIRECTREF 0/8560ESC
]Õ§YH KBYTES 1667379813 INTERNALDATE "08-May-2007 06:12:27 -0500" MODIFYDATE "20-Sep-1997 00:24
:43 -0500" FLAGS ($Forwarded $Label2 $Label4 Junk \X-Forwarded \X-Owner)
}
User Name: [...]


Running Outlook + Scalix Connector (SmartCache on) a few minutes later worked. An immediately subsequent attempt at webmail access also worked again.

Also saw this dialogue box periodically from webmail afterward:

"Failed to display messages for folder INBOX. The browser received some data, but it was unable to display it. Click 'Send/Receive' to try again'"

[florian]

So just to be clear... recovery worked by restarting the IMAP sessions, not resetting IMAP folder cache or anything like this?

We have development looking into possible causes, however for the time being it seems that this is some strange state (possibly memory corruption) the IMAP process servicing SWA gets into.

So - one of you is running on RHEL4, the other on CentOS 5, correct?

Tx,
Florian

[donk]

Wow, this is pretty bad and I've never seen this type of error before. I'll have someone from engineering have a look at this post.

A bug has been recorded for this issue (https://bugzilla.scalix.com/show_bug.cgi?id=17506) which Florian seems have already scheduled. Hopefully, we'll be able to track the root cause of these issues...

Thanks for the reports.

[usacto]

> So just to be clear... recovery worked by restarting the IMAP sessions,
> not resetting IMAP folder cache or anything like this?

We did not reset IMAP folder cache. The sequence was:
- Successful use of SWA
- Experience sudden error messages
- Log out
- Unable to log back in via SWA
- Run Outlook+Connector: successful
- Run SWA: successful


> So - one of you is running on RHEL4, the other on CentOS 5, correct?

Ours is RHEL4, 2.6.9-67.0.15.ELsmp. CPU is "Dual-Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 2214 HE".

[tdegouw]

Yes Centos 5.1. The symptom is exaclty as usacto says.. the odd thing is, it goes away after about 10 minutes i noticed.

The box is running in XEN, so the kernel is a bit different but that shouldn't make a difference.

root@scalix ~ # uname -a
Linux scalix.xxxxx.xx 2.6.21-xenD-64bit-dma #4 SMP Wed May 21 18:23:54 CEST 2008 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
root@scalix ~ #

[bikerider]

I'm starting to wonder if there are bigger issues with scalix on xen

[florian]

we don't currently test or support running on Xen, although I have anecdotal evidence that a good number of people are running it successfully.

Florian.

[tdegouw]

The fun part with XEN is that only the kernel gets replaced. Everything else stays the same so it shouldn't make a big difference but it could, say if scalix did some funky kernel stuff.

[florian]

Well... with Kernel changes, timing of things certainly changes, as does some I/O behaviour. Certification and testing is difficult, so unless we've really qualified a platform, we can't really support it.

Note that this is common practice amongst enterprise software vendors. Support on a specific platform does not automatically mean a xen-ified version of it is supported.

Cheers,
Florian.

[bikerider]

Your pre-sales people said it was not a problem...
and that is a great answer...I'd like to point out that
virt servers are common place and becoming more so...
slashdotted