Sophos Enterprise Console - Stuck on Connecting to Server

I have a problem on an SBS 2003 Premium Edition box (2 NICs and running ISA Server) where launching the Enterprise Console sits forever at the connection screen.



This is the same problem even if I perform a console-only install to a separate box.

The drastic remedy is to reboot the server. By using the console on a separate box I was able to use TCPView to find that EnterpriseConsole.exe was connecting to MgntSvc.exe on the server.

I then tried stopping the service from the command line:

> net stop "Sophos Management Service"

Which resulted in me being told that the service could not be stopped. I then used PsKill to stop the service:

> pskill "Sophos Management Service"

And I then restarted the service:

> net start "Sophos Management Service"

This then allowed me to successfully use the Enterprise Console.

Stopping Sophos PureMessage 3.0 from Generating an NDR Storm

I upgraded to the latest version of Sophos PureMessage (v2.6.1 upgrade to v3.0) on an SBS 2003 server.

The upgrade went smoothly as per usual. Hats off to Sophos for providing good quality products and excellent documentation.

This version now includes AD integration and allows for recipient validation. I enabled this, as well as verifying the upgraded settings. I kept an eye on progress for about 90 minutes as I was performing other administrative tasks.

When I came back to it the next morning, the server was being sluggish. Investigation showed that the were several thousand NDRs queued up, and further investigation revealed that the Exchange journal mailbox was bouncing Read Receipts with a Permission Denied error back to PureMessage. Unfortunately, the Read Receipts had no From header, so PureMessage was generating an NDR and trying to send it to an address of '<', which is a completely invalid address. This was then escalating an alert message to the Alert address, which had filled up the resulting mailbox. The mail bounce that was occuring was also generating an unscannable error due to too many nested attachments, which also queued up an alert message.

The remedial action was to remove the administrator alert address. This stopped the queuing. I then turned off administrator alerts for the On Unscannable action for the Exchange Store scanning and the Transport scanning. This helped stopped further NDR flooding.

The final action I performed that finally killed the NDR storm was to fire up the Exchange System Manager, go into the SmallBusiness SMTP Connector properties, go into Content Restrictions and turn off System Messages.

I also opened up the Delivery Restrictions placed on the mailbox that I'm using for Exchange Journalling until I can verify what the appropriate restrictions should be on the mailbox such that it works with PureMessage 3.0, seeing as the previous settings worked fine with PureMessage 2.6.1 (which was only accept messages from the Exchange Journalling mailbox).

MSDE2000 Installation Error on Windows 2003 DCs

Well I've just spent the last few hours trying to install Sophos Enterprise Console 1.0 on 3 Windows Server 2003 systems. One of the server installs worked just fine and the other two failed with the following message:

Error 3500. The custom action "InstallMSDE" failed with the following error: Fatal error during installation. 1603

A Google search using "sophos error 3500" yielded nothing useful. A search of "sophos error 1603" proved more valuable. It pointed me in the direction of looking in the MSDE install log (C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Temp\SophosMSDEInstaller.log in this case). The line of interest was:

InstallSQLAgentSecurity failed (SERVER02,LocalSystem,87).

A Google search for "InstallSQLAgentSecurity failed" then yielded "Backup Exec 9.x or 10.0 for Windows Servers fails to install ..." which detailed the exact problem, but with Veritas Backup Exec 9.x/10.x.

One of the links included in this document was "PRB: The MSDE Installation Does Not Succeed If the Installation Computer Is Running Terminal Services in Application Server Mode".
The problem with this was I wasn't meeting all the criteria - I was using VNC to remotely install the software after it failed first time. Long experience with software installation on a W2K3 system even when accessing the console session over RDP has resulted in VNC being installed on my W2K3 systems.
Further wading through the Google result set then gave me this: "Solution for the WSUS/WMSDE install error"

This accurately described my problem - MSDE failing with the same error. Not only that, but it explained why one of my servers installed Sophos Enterprise Console correctly - it was the one with the FSMO roles! I excitely followed the instructions in the Microsoft Knowledge Base article titled "How to view and transfer FSMO roles in Windows Server 2003" and yay! A successful installation.
Performed the FSMO transfer again on the third server, then went home for much needed food and sleep.
Must allocate some time for the next time I need to do this to see exactly which FSMO role needs transferring.