Outlook sync problems (a lot of them)

ozy

Hello,

I have a grommunio server that I use to share some mailboxes between multiple outlook clients, currently running gromox-2.35.
I do encounter multiple Outlook synchronization problems, especially with mailboxes that are opened on multiple outlooks (various outlook versions, I have 2016, 2019 and 2021, all up to date).

So far this week:

Empty inboxes on one outlook instance but another outlook for the same mailbox showed everything
Mails without internet headers (internet headers were ok in webapp), so replying to an email didn't add the sender/return path email address in the "to" field
Missing mails in one outlook instance but available on another outlook instance (and of course in the webmail)
I can resolve those issues by two ways: deleting the ost file, forcing outlook to recreate the profile, or by right clicking on the inbox folder, then clicking "clear offline items", then clicking on update folder in the ribbon.

I've repaired my outlook instances four times already this week.

On the server, I don't see any specific error logs, except some mysql errors I posted about here and here

On the outlook side, I get alot of errors in the synchronization journal like [80040803-30141506-0-533] which basically says that the ost file cannot be opened because too many files are open (the french exact wording I have is: "Impossible d'ouvrir le fichier C:\Users<user>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook<mailaddr>.ost, car un trop grand nombre d'autres fichiers est ouvert. Fermez quelques fichiers, puis réessayez.")
This error rings a bell since my problem only occurs on outlook instances that share mailboxes, or outlook instances that open multiple mailboxes at once.

I'm a former Exchange admin, and I've never seen this error message until I begun working with grommunio, so there's not much documentation / help for these errors.
I've of course run those outlook instances with /safe parameter in order to make sure no addon would interact somehow, but the problems still show every couple of days.

So my questions:
Is grommunio mature enough yet to have outlook open multiple mailboxes at once / share mailboxes between various outlook instances without any sync problems ?
Do any people here have those kinds of setups ? What are your experiences ? Do you encounter the same sync bugs ?

Does anyone perhaps have some advice on what to do / where to search for a root cause ?

Any input is welcome.

crpb

ozy Is grommunio mature enough yet to have outlook open multiple mailboxes at once

Other than the "On-Line Mode"-Search problematic i say it's just working fine here.
And Mailboxes like info@ or alike are usually opened by many users.

I can say that syncing of shared mailboxes only made problems with the calendars with AV-Plugins and when the cached mode was enabled for the shared mbx's but other than that i never seen such problems as you describe.

Thats with full online mode but just to make it clear what i meant for anyone but YOU probably know that if you worked with Exchange 😛

But i also mainly run / deploy settings to use Online-Mode and only because of the current search problem some clients even use the cached mode.

I expect you cleared the cache del /s /f /q %LOCALAPPDATA%\..\Local\Microsoft\Outlook on problematic systems?

ozy I've repaired my outlook instances four times already this week.

What does that mean? Are you talking about deleting the Profile and recreating it?

And for debugging:

Switch between Online/Cache Mode
Check autodiscovery

ozy

@digbylawson Please don't post bullshit generic ads answers here.

ozy

@crpb Thank you for your reply.

What does that mean? Are you talking about deleting the Profile and recreating it?

And for debugging:

Switch between Online/Cache Mode
Check autodiscovery

I've tried creating new profiles indeed.
Autodiscovery just works fine.

On all of my Outlook setups (currently linked to 3 grommunio servers, 2 production and one test server), I get sync journal problems.

Generally speaking, sync stops, and server shows more elements than local outlook, eg:

Outlook then says things like: "this folder has been synchronized for the last time on <date when error begun>", eg:

Outlook logs look like the following when sync stops:

15:12:10 Synchronisateur Version 16.0.18129
15:12:10 Synchronisation de la boîte à lettres 'Main mailbox' en cours
15:12:10 Synchronisation de la hiérarchie en cours
15:12:10                  1 dossiers mis à jour dans la banque en mode hors connexion
15:12:10 Synchronisation des modifications locales dans le dossier « Boîte de réception » en cours
15:12:10 Erreur lors de la synchronisation du dossier
15:12:10                               [80040102-501-80040102-430]
15:12:10                               Echec de l'opération du client.
15:12:10                               Banque d'informations de Microsoft Exchange
15:12:10                               Pour plus d'informations sur ce problème, cliquez sur l'URL ci-dessous :
15:12:10                               https://www.microsoft.com/support/prodredirect/outlook2000_us.asp?err=80040102-501-80040102-430
15:12:10 Synchronisation des modifications locales dans le dossier « Problèmes de synchronisation » en cours
15:12:10 Téléchargement en cours vers le serveur 62656175-766f-6973-2e73-6f7001000000@domain.fr
15:12:11                  1 élément(s) ajouté(s) dans le dossier en ligne
15:12:11                  1 élément(s) avec état de lecture modifié dans le dossier en ligne
15:12:23 Synchronisation des modifications de serveur dans le dossier « Other mailbox - Haut de la banque d'informations »
15:12:23 Erreur lors de la synchronisation du dossier
15:12:23                               [80040803-30141506-0-533]
15:12:23                               Impossible d'ouvrir le fichier C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\user@domain.fr.ost, car un trop grand nombre d'autres fichiers est ouvert. Fermez quelques fichiers, puis réessayez.
15:12:23                               Fichier de données Outlook
15:12:23                               Pour plus d'informations sur ce problème, cliquez sur l'URL ci-dessous :
15:12:23                               https://www.microsoft.com/support/prodredirect/outlook2000_us.asp?err=80040803-30141506-0-533

The get the log with error 80040803-30141506-0-533 on litterally all my outlook clients, regardless of the grommunio server I'm using.

As already said, autodiscover looks good to me:

Running Outlook without addons (using /safe) doesn't help.

The only "error" messages I get on the grommunio servers are MySQL ones, eg:

2024-11-07 14:12:25 3537511 [Warning] Aborted connection 3537511 to db: 'grommunio' user: 'grommunio' host: 'localhost' (Got timeout reading communication packets)
2024-11-07 15:12:25 3544757 [Warning] Aborted connection 3544757 to db: 'grommunio' user: 'grommunio' host: 'localhost' (Got timeout reading communication packets)
2024-11-07 16:12:25 3552010 [Warning] Aborted connection 3552010 to db: 'grommunio' user: 'grommunio' host: 'localhost' (Got timeout reading communication packets)
2024-11-07 17:12:25 3559268 [Warning] Aborted connection 3559268 to db: 'grommunio' user: 'grommunio' host: 'localhost' (Got timeout reading communication packets)
2024-11-07 17:44:57 3557363 [Warning] Aborted connection 3557363 to db: 'grommunio' user: 'grommunio' host: 'localhost' (Got timeout reading communication packets)

I'm all out of ideas.
Server <> Client links are all good too.

@crpb Could you check your sync journal log ? Don't you have any error messages at all ?

crpb

ozy @crpb Could you check your sync journal log ? Don't you have any error messages at all ?

right, 80040803-30141506-0-533 pops up here aswell here and there.. also have a ticket open but nothing heard regarding it..

The Unicode setting is also active on a users profile i checked.

But the error count doesn't look as bad as yours (₁₅₀₀).

--
As i'm about to write a thingy to lookup the itemcount/folder/mailbox i maybe able to provide more numbers in the near future :>.

ozy

I've also grepped around http server log files, nothing suspect.

ChristianS

Hey Ozy,

I can confirm that this problem with missing headers sometimes exists!

This only happened on one client for every third (or so) email. The only differences between the one client that sometimes let the headers disappear and the other clients was that I had "Use Unicode-Format" unchecked at "Save messages" in "E-Mail" in the outlook options.

After I checked "Use unicode" there on the Client with the non-existent headers, the problem ceased to happen for new messages.

Sorry for the screenshot in German language but I think you get what I mean?

ozy

Hello @ChristianS,
Thank you for reporting this. I will check whether this applies here, but as far as I could tell, this option only applies to messages written / sent by outlook itself, not for received messages.
Still, I'll check if my outlook clients are configured right (the ones I'm using myself have Unicode Format checked already).

By any means, could you perhaps check if you have problems in the sync journal too as in the following ?

PS: I've posted french screenshots, so I'm not judging 😉

WalterH

On some systems also I see this sync errors, on other systems I do not see this sync errors. No idea why we have this errors, the documentation link in this mails are outdated and I also see the same errors on Exchange systems. I assume this is a common Outlook problem.

ozy

So we deal with two different problems here.

Looks like error 80040803-30141506-0-533 is a limit of how many open folders the Grommunio server can handle at the same time for one client.
There's something similar (similar error message) here
I've applied said workarounds to see whether it will resolve my issue.

The thing is that in my own case (I have a lot of those errors), I open four mailboxes, one shared mailbox and two public folders, so that could indeed apply to me.
The exchange limit seems to be 500 open handles per client. Looks like the default in grommunio is the same, set via variable emsmdb_max_obh_per_session

I'll report back if the above workaround did solve the issue. If not, I'll try to increase the emsmdb_max_obh_per_session setting, since I have a particuler usecase here.

As for error 80040102-501-80040102-430, I'm still wondering what happens. I see that error quite often, and usually that's the one after which I have to recreate the profile in order to have offline sync work again.
Do you guys get that specific sync error too ?

WalterH

If you see errors like: "E-1992: The buffer pool "http_blocks_allocator" is full.", set: /etc/gromox/http.cfg:context_num=1800.

ozy

WalterH Did a journalctl -g allocator and a grep -ri allocator /var/log. I don't seem to get that error. Where am I supposed to find it ?

WalterH

ozy If you have this errors, than in journalctl -f.

crpb

WalterH If you have this errors, than in journalctl -f.

fyi,

% journalctl --help |grep -- -g
  -g --grep=PATTERN          Show entries with MESSAGE matching PATTERN

ozy

Some good news !
It seems that since I unchecked the "Download shared folders" checkbox, I don't get anymore sync error messages.
This has been working since friday.
I'll propagate this change on other outlook clients and give some feedback if the sync journal stays clean.

nettania

Hi,
this corresponds with older problems, that the cache modus for shared folders does not work correctly in Grommunio, see e.g.:
https://community.grommunio.com/d/1459-synchronisationsproblem-freigegebene-kalender/8
Can you have a look if you have also the problem that events of shared calendars are not shwon in Outlook, see:
https://community.grommunio.com/d/1855-entries-of-shared-calendars-not-shown-in-outlook-in-latest-version/3
I have this problem on our server, which is always used as "beta test" before I update clients systems.
Florian

ozy

@nettania I usually take my own mailserver as "beta test", since I don't have the resources to check everything in details, I just run it for a week before upgrading my other 2 servers.

I didn't quite understand your problel though. Cached calendars from other mailboxes are invisible, right ? Do "standard" shared calendars work if you don't open other mailboxes ?

crpb

ozy Do "standard" shared calendars work if you don't open other mailboxes

you can just share a calendar to a user and open the mailbox via advanced and it will only show the calendar.

i also do that with folders so i won't see the whole mailbox but only things like inbox+etc for stuff like server/monitoring/ticket@ where all the mails fall in.

that way you don't have to see the whole thing but only what you are actually interested in and the rest won't have anything in it anyway.

for how to configure shared mailboxes have a look here

The "open shared calendar" option sometimes works and sometimes not somehow so i always recommend the way via the "Advanced" settings.

ozy

So I can confirm after a week that unchecking "Download shared folders" solves the issue where sync journal grows with errors.

Hopefully the cached mode can be fixed for shared folders.