InteractiveWebs

Reduce Exchange 2016 Mailbox Database White Space

Reduce Exchange 2016 Mailbox Database size using Eseutil.

In this post I will walk through the steps of reducing the Exchange Mailbox Database size, However the method of reducing the Mailbox Database size varies from different administrators. If you can afford to have downtime on a Mailbox Database then these steps would work for you. Some Exchange Administrators  and in most cases myself ,will simply just create another new Mailbox Database and Move Mailboxes from one Database to another and then delete the old one.

For the purpose of this post , I will be using a build in tool from Microsoft called Eseutil.

Eseutil is a command line utility that works with Extensible Storage Engine (ESE), database (.edb) files, streaming (.stm) files, and log (.log) files associated with an Information Store, in a given Storage Group. The tool can be run on one database at a time from the command line and can be used to perform a range of database tasks from repair, offline defragmentation, and integrity checks in Exchange Server .

The most common Eseutil switches are listed in the table below.

Eseutil Mode
Switch
Description
Defragmentation
/D
Eseutil defragments the database files. This mode reduces the gross size on disk of the database (.edb) and streaming files (.stm) by discarding most empty pages and ad hoc indexes.

For more information, see these topics:

Eseutil /D Defragmentation Mode
How to Run Eseutil /D (Defragmentation)
Repair
/P
Eseutil repairs corrupt database pages in an offline database but discards any that can’t be fixed. In repair mode, the Eseutil utility fixes individual tables but does not adjust the relationships between tables. ISInteg should be used to check logical relationships between tables.

For more information, see these topics:

Eseutil /P Repair Mode
How to Run Eseutil /P (Repair) in Different Scenarios
Restore
/C
Eseutil displays the Restore.env file and controls hard recovery after restoration from online backup.

For more information, see these topics:

Eseutil /C Restore Mode
How to Run Eseutil /C (Restore) in Different Scenarios
Recovery
/R
Eseutil replays transaction log files or rolls them forward to restore a database to internal consistency or to bring an older copy of a database up to date.

For more information, see these topics:

Eseutil /R Recovery Mode
How to Run Eseutil /R in Recovery Mode
Integrity
/G
Eseutil verifies the page level and Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) level logical integrity of the database but does not verify database integrity at the Information Store level.

For more information, see these topics:

Eseutil /G Integrity Mode
How to Run Eseutil /G in Integrity Mode
File Dump
/M
Eseutil displays headers of database files, transaction log files, and checkpoint files. The mode also displays database space allocation and metadata.

For more information, see these topics:

Eseutil /M File Dump Mode
How to Run Eseutil /M in File Dump Mode
Checksum
/K
Eseutil verifies checksums on all pages in the database and streaming files.

For more information, see these topics:

Eseutil /K Checksum Mode
How to Run Eseutil /K in Checksum Mode
Copy File
/Y
Eseutil performs a fast copy of very large files.

For more information, see these topics:

Eseutil /Y Copy File Mode
How to Run Eseutil /Y in Copy File Mode
 

To get started I will check the current available whitespace for the Mailbox Database DB1 and then Dismount the Database.

 
1
Get-MailboxDatabase DB1 -Status | Format-List Name, DatabaseSize, AvailableNewMailboxSpace

Next Dismount the Database

 
1
Dismount-Database DB1 -confirm:$false
After the Mailbox Database has been Dismounted navigate to the install directory where Exchange has  been installed.

 
1
C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Bin>eseutil.exe
Open eseutil to view the available switches.

Next I will run the Defrag on Dismounted Database called “DB1”

C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Bin>eseutil.exe /d D:\DB\DB1.edb

Lets go ahead and Mount the Defragmented Database

 
1
Mount-Database DB1
Next lets view the available whitespace after the Defragmentation of the Database.

 
1
Get-MailboxDatabase DB1 -Status | Format-List Name, DatabaseSize, AvailableNewMailboxSpace
The amount of time it takes to run the Defragmentation of a Mailbox Database depends on the size of the Database and the Hardware its running from.

This has been copied for my own reference as it is super handy and exactly what I need to reference in the future. Taken from https://www.thatlazyadmin.com/2017/07/25/reduce-exchange-2016-mailbox-database-size-using-eseutil/ 

(Thanks for the perfect details. Needed my own copy as I can’t afford to miss this in the future)

Other Useful References is this for the database specifics: https://www.datanumen.com/blogs/depth-understanding-system-mailboxes-exchange-server/

This post Reduce Exchange 2016 Mailbox Database White Space first appeared on InteractiveWebs and is written by %AUTHOR%

InteractiveWebs

iPhone Add Email Account Exchange asks to sign in to Office 365

Office 365 sign in prompt when setting up Exchange email account on iPad, iPhone or Mac Mail

The issue arrives when you are attempting to configure a new exchange account that is not hosted on office 365 but you keep getting a prompt to sign into office 365 mail account when you attempt to add a new account for a domain.

The can be very confusing as if you have host your own services, or have a host that knows what they are doing, you can have an exchange email account that is not part of office 356 but yet you will see the prompt for sign into office 365 when attempting to set up the account on apple devices. It could well be that it also prompts with non apple devices, we did not bother to test.

The issue likely arises from the situation where office 365 services were once associated with the email domain in question. Commonly services like Godaddy will allow it’s users to simply click a few buttons and sell office 365 email services. If a user has previously had an office 365 email service, then this needs to be removed from the service that originally set this up.

We have done extensive checking with DNS and Autodiscover settings and found that even when DNS correctly has the new discovery settings of the own premises Exchange server, or third party Exchange comparable email service (SmarterMail etc) that it will still fail to find the server for login, but will offer previously activated office 365 services for login.

Apple products appear to do a check on office 365 for the domain, and if they find a provisioned service, they will offer that login without a way to skip.

The solution

The only way we found to solve this is to unsubscribe and remove the provision of any and all email accounts on that domain name in question. In Godaddy it was a matter of removing the configured email accounts. This took about 15 minutes to complete and remove domain associated records from the office 365 service. Once complete a signing was accepted as expected.

This post iPhone Add Email Account Exchange asks to sign in to Office 365 first appeared on InteractiveWebs and is written by %AUTHOR%

InteractiveWebs

WHM Cpanel Other Usage‡ folder large in size – Solution

Solution to WHM Cpanel Other Usage‡ folder large in size

If you are an WHM / Cpanel Admin and receive a waring that looks something like this: 

The backup process on “your.server” failed.
 
The backup failed to complete for the following reason:

Available disk space (17 percent) is too low. Backups will not run.

Start Time:
Saturday, August 7, 2021 at 4:00:02 PM UTC
End Time:
Saturday, August 7, 2021 at 4:00:03 PM UTC
Run Time:
1 second
This notice is the result of a request from “cPanel Backup System”.The system generated this notice on Saturday, August 7, 2021 at 4:00:03 PM UTC.
“Backup Failed To Finish” notifications are currently configured to have an importance of “High”. You can change the importance or disable this type of notification in WHM’s Contact Manager at:

This is a warning that the disk space is too low, and you may be experiencing an open session problem with one of your Cpanel site.

If you know the likely site at cause, you can login to WHM / then open the Cpanel account in question and view the Disk Usage report. Pay Attention to the “Other Usage‡” report.

These other usage files include email services for the account and usually should never be bigger than a couple of GB at most. In our case it looked like this:

Significantly higher than it should be and the cause of the missing hard disk space that is used for backup process.

To Diagnose and Resolve

To diagnose this we use a small application called “Ncdu” that we installed following the instructions found here: https://computingforgeeks.com/ncdu-analyze-disk-usage-in-linux-with-ncdu/

This is through an SSH connection as a root user to the server in question. Thin following the instructions in the above link, we use the “Ncdu -x/“ command to search the root folder for large sub folders. What we found what that the /var/cpanel/php/sessions/ea-php71 folder was over 20 GB in size.

This folder is used for the sessions in that version of php that in our case related to one account that needs to use the older php version for a Magento site. It appears that sessions are being left open and we need to delete the folder in question to erase the previous opened sessions taking up room.

The easy way to do this is using the “d” command in NCDS. Again following the directions.

Alternative method is through a WHM file browser plugin that can be installed Config server Explorer cse found here: https://www.configserver.com/cp/cse.html

This then allows you to use the file browser from WHM Plugins folder to erase the /var/cpanel/php/sessions folder without the need to mess around in SSH (Other than the setup).

This post WHM Cpanel Other Usage‡ folder large in size – Solution first appeared on InteractiveWebs and is written by %AUTHOR%

InteractiveWebs

WHM Nginx Manager Enabled Gives 413 Request Entity Too Large Error and Solution

With Nginx Manager Enabled in WHM Cpanel you receive a 413 Error when uploading to WordPress (or other sites)

Recently WHM / Cpanel enabled an option for Nginx Manager

With this option enabled in Cpanel you may receive a 413 Error when uploading large files like plugins to your WordPress Site.

Not it’s worth mentioning that there are potentially a couple of places that the size upload limit is set. This error relates specifically to the Nginx Manager options for caching in WHM and Cpanel that was added as an option in 2021. 

There are also options in the MultiPHP INI Editor to se the upload_max_filesize that we are presuming you have already set in your WHM configuration panel.

So assuming that you have previously set these limits and have had no trouble uploading things like large plugins for WordPress or images etc, then you will likely find that the error for 413 is related to the enabling of Nginx in the recent whm update.

The solution for 413 Request Entity Too Large

To fix the issue you will need to edit the Nginx.conf file on your web server. This file among other things controls the configuration settings for allowing larger uploads. It has defaulted to a small size to avoid denial of service attacks where people try to throw large files at your site and block it from general access.

Editing conf files can be done using various linux editors. We suggest Nano as it is easy for those who like me are simple. If nano is not installed you can follow these instructions here: https://phoenixnap.com/kb/use-nano-text-editor-commands-linux

Login to your WHM Management and search for Terminal and select it.  (Note that if you have the skills you can also connect to your server using your favourite Terminal software as a root user, we are using the web interface here as it is easier). 

Use nano text editor:
$ sudo nano /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

Add the following line to the end of the http or server or location context to increase the size of the Nginx.conf size limit

# set client body size to 20M #
client_max_body_size 20M;

(Note that the 20 M is for 20 meg. You can set it to any size you like and should probably match the size set in the MultiPHP INI for the PHP versions that you set in WHM.)

Once you have edited the file you can Exit using the Control X keys.

Then search for in WHM your Nginx Manager.

Click on the Restart Nginx button.

That is it and should get you running.

This post WHM Nginx Manager Enabled Gives 413 Request Entity Too Large Error and Solution first appeared on InteractiveWebs and is written by %AUTHOR%

InteractiveWebs

Mornington Peninsula Pest Control

First Choice Pest & Termite Control Melbourne & Mornington Peninsula

Mornington Peninsula Pest Control website launched, and we are pleased to have been able to assist First Choice Pests with their new website.

First Choice Pests has recently established their new website hosting on our high performance WordPress hosting service. 

Included in this service is all the usual benefits of website hosting in Australia with InteractiveWebs.

• Email,
• Domain Hosting
• WordPress Website Hosting
• Backup
• and SEO services.

First Choices Pest has announced a range of Pest Control Services in Mornington Peninsula.

If you would like to know more, please visit the website and use the Contact Us Pest Services form to make an enquiry about the services on offer.

This post Mornington Peninsula Pest Control first appeared on InteractiveWebs and is written by %AUTHOR%

InteractiveWebs

SmarterMail Email Setup on iPhone (Exchange) – Interactivewebs

Setting up an iPhone for SmarterMail InteractiveWebs Email
There are multiple ways you can connect to your InteractiveWebs email account. These methods include, POP3, IMAP, or EXCHANGE. This method covers the Exchange connection method.

What you will need:

Your Email address: example@email.com (not that the email address is also your user name)

Your Email Account Password

In this example we are using iOS 14, and roverx.com.au as the domain with “servcie” being the email address. Note too that we have “Dark Mode” enabled for a black background look. Yours may look a little different.

Open you iPhone and Select the Settings Icon

Navigate to Mail

Select Accounts

Select Add Account

We are going to set this up as an EXCHANGE account. To do this we need to select “Microsoft Exchange” from the Add Account List.

Enter Your Email Address and a Description of your choice. This Description will be listed on your iPhone Email Accounts List

When the POPup flashes up, select Sign In

Enter the account password we provided you

Enter the Email Address again in the User Name field (showing required). In other words, the email address is also your user name.

So it will look like this. – then NEXT

When you press NEXT, it will pop up and ask you to enter the Mail Server Address. Enter mail.domain as the format. So for oceanfoam.com.au it becomes mail.oceanfoam.com.au – Then Click NEXT

It will Verify your Settings

You can then click SAVE and you are done.

You then have an option to create NOTES, Contacts, Calendars, Reminders for this account. Feel free to either enable or disable this function as you require. If you enable these on your phone and when you setup your Email account as an exchange account on your desktop computer. You will be able to sync all data over your exchange email account.

That essentially completed the process for adding an account to your iPhone for SmarterMail with InteractiveWebs.

If you wish to setup IMAP as the connection type.

This post SmarterMail Email Setup on iPhone (Exchange) – Interactivewebs first appeared on InteractiveWebs and is written by %AUTHOR%

InteractiveWebs

Business Website with COVID-19 Safe Meetings

We continue to provide Web Design and Web Development Services in Sutherland

While some business need face to face to remain active, we are lucky that for 20 years we have been providing virtual meetings and online interaction for our website design services based in Sutherland Sydney Australia.

This really comes as no great surprise, as the need to meet face to face to develop a website solution has only become less necessary over recent years as the rise of very stable internet connections and advance software allows us to interact with customers virtually.

That all being the case, we are pleased to announce that we have in place a number of safe guards that allow us to meet with customers in person in a COVID-19 safe environment where we can all feel safe.

This post Business Website with COVID-19 Safe Meetings first appeared on InteractiveWebs and is written by %AUTHOR%

InteractiveWebs

Website Auditor Reports Empty Title Tag

Website Auditor Reports Empty Title Tag wp-content/uploads/fbrfg/site.webmanifest on a WordPress Site

Do you notice in the website order application that reports empty title tags on a page that ends in sight.manifest. 

When you browse to the page in question you’ll find the code looks something like this on the page that loads.

{
“name”: “”,
“short_name”: “”,
“icons”: [
{
“src”: “/wp-content/uploads/fbrfg/android-chrome-192×192.png”,
“sizes”: “192×192”,
“type”: “image/png”
},
{
“src”: “/wp-content/uploads/fbrfg/android-chrome-512×512.png”,
“sizes”: “512×512”,
“type”: “image/png”
}
],
“theme_color”: “#ffffff”,
“background_color”: “#ffffff”,
“display”: “standalone”
}

Usually you will find that there is an associated Plugin called Favicon by RealFaviconGenerator that is responsible for generating a page in question. This plug-in is used to provide a favicon for your website.

The good news is, that since early versions of WordPress 4 WordPress allows you usually within your thing to upload a favicon. There is some good information about installing a Favicon in WordPress here.

We are using the Neve theme on our site, and the process may differ depending on your theme an the support they have for favicon.

To Fix this

we go to: Appearance >> Customise >> Header >> Change Logo

Down the Bottom there is a Site Icon Setting where you can Change the image.

Know what the site specifically needs is a square that is ideally 512×512 pixels. We found the easiest way to generate this on the Mac is using an application that we got from the App Store called icon Set Creator, which is a simple icon generating application that is designed for developers if iOs and Mac Apps. It is perfect as it does all the sizing and squaring of the image automatically. When we select the output as macOS, some of the images that are auto generated include a 512×512 image that is perfectly optimised for use as a favicon image.

We just use the output from this to create the favicon in the settings above. 

Then if you are using the Favicon by RealFaviconGenerator plugin in WordPress, be rue to deactivate it and potentially uninstall it.

That should get the error removed from the SEO PowerSuite Website Auditor report.

This post Website Auditor Reports Empty Title Tag first appeared on InteractiveWebs and is written by %AUTHOR%