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From: morrow@rdsunx.crd.ge.com (madeline e morrow)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.comm
Subject: Microsoft Mail data file corruption problem
Message-ID: <14591@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>
Date: 7 Dec 90 14:03:07 GMT
Sender: news@crdgw1.crd.ge.com
Reply-To: morrow@rdsunx.crd.ge.com (madeline e morrow)
Organization: GE Research & Development
Lines: 44

We have a problem with our Microsoft Mail server that Microsoft says is due to
a bad interaction between MS Mail servers and SAM (from Symantec).  The claim 
is that SAM can corrupt the MS Mail data file.  We are using Microsoft Mail 
2.0b on OS 6.05.  We are also using Cayman's GatorMail-M SMTP gateway.  The
symptom is that GatorMail-M crashes 6 times a day - always with an heap access
 error, and the Mac has to be restarted to get it to run again.  We've been 
sending countless logs to the vendor, and neither we nor they can ever find an
error when the gateway crashes.  We used HeapFixer so the system has a megabyte
of heap, and GatorMail-M has 400K of heap.

Microsoft has confirmed that our Microsoft Mail data file has a problem.
The header file has a pointer out of bounds that indicates the data file os
bigger than it really is.  When something tries to access the end of the data
file, it will crash.  They think that's why the gateway crashes so regularly
at peak load times - it's trying to get more space and tries the bad pointer.
Microsoft thinks SAM did it - but they say that SAM errors happen in random 
places and it's very hard to replicate what went wrong.

Microsoft has a recovery program that may be able to fix our MS Mail data file
However, it recovers deleted mail as well as current mail and deleted userid's.

I talked to someone else in our company who has had two corrupted MS Mail
servers without SAM. They decided to use the brute force method: Take a Mac, 
format the hard disk and re-install all needed software.  Then create userids 
on the new server, then sign on to the old server and forward all the mail to 
the new server.  The person who did this said it took 14 hours with 3 people.
He suggested a calculation of 5 minutes per userid and 2 minutes per message.
With 122 users and 1342 messages on our server, that's 31 hours if you
only have 
one person.  

This person thinks that disk parity or memory errors can corrupt the MS Mail
data file.  My question to Microsoft Mail users out there - have you had 
corrupted MS Mail data files, and if so, do you know what caused it, and what 
did you do to fix it?  What about daily backups of the data file?



|------------------------------------------------|
| Madeline Morrow                                |
| memorrow@crd.ge.com                            |
| GE Research & Development 			 |
| Schenectady, NY                   518-387-6414 |
|------------------------------------------------|