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SBS 2008 - Exchange 2007 - Unable to Install PureMessage 3.1.3

BenDance

Hi all

I'm new to the forum so please bear with me.

Basically before i joined the company we had version 3 of Sophos PureMessage installed, along with the Enterprise Console and the AV solution. However this expired some time ago and we have been using an alternative AV, PureMessage has continued to do a good job though of catching a good majority of the spam before getting to Exchange.

I have managed to get the green light to update to the latest version of PureMessage for Exchange 2007 which currently is 3.1.3, however when i goto do this it refuses to update, citing an issue with: Logon Failure: unknown user name or bad password even though i am logged on as a domain administrator. When we do eventually get this error though it mentions in the error message box that it can't contact the AD/LDAP server. I've spent hours on this trying to resolve it, but without much luck. I'm even in contact with the 2nd/3rd line support teams who don't seem to know what to do either.

Basically we had an old version of Sophos PureMessage (v3.0) on our SBS 2008 server running Exchange 2007, and we wanted to upgrade this to 3.1.1. That in itself is fine, however during the installation no matter what we seemed to do it wouldn't upgrade to the new version. We have now uninstalled PureMessage in order to install it again from scratch.

However the same problem now happens on a new installation. During the setup process it asks to create a new password for the predefined user of 'SophosPureMessage' but according to the error message the password complexity requirements don't meet what the domain wants - even though i have entered passwords as long as 15-20 characters and include alphanumeric, uppercase, lowercase, multiple special characters. What we have tried is creating a network user of SophosPureMessage manually instead which then lets us past this stage, however the setup will fail during the last stages of the setup as it says it is unable to contact the AD domain because of logon failure. However we know that the AD domain is contactable as all other domain services work fine (DNS, Email, Logon etc).

Our server is configured to run using a domain format of XXX.local, however the error message doesn't include the '.local' in the error message of the installer. It just says unable to contact XXX.

I have been working with the 3rd line teams for Sophos support who have been very good, but we aren't getting anywhere after more then a week. What they did suggest is running a VBS script which had the following, because of the problem. For now i am just putting XXX to substitute our own domain name.
======================
const ADS_SECURE_AUTHENTICATION = &H0001

Set oDSP = GetObject("LDAP:")
Set obj = oDSP.OpenDSObject("LDAP://XXX/rootDSE",vbNullString,vbNullString,ADS_SECURE_AUTHENTICATION)
WScript.Echo obj.Get("configurationNamingContext")
======================

Using command prompt, we then run the following command (with elevated privileges) on the root of C: cscript test.vbs > test.txt

We are getting an error that came back with: c:\Test.vbs(4, 1) (null): Logon failure: unknown user name or bad password.

I have done an NSLOOKUP command for our domain are the following is returned:

c:\>nslookup XXX
DNS request timed out.
    timeout was 2 seconds.
Server:  UnKnown
Address:  fe80::5be1:f55d:a87f:965a

Name:    XXX.XXX.local
Address:  10.0.0.32

Does anyone know why, or more importantly how to fix this error at all?? Some forums have suggested turning on IPV6 but this is already switched on so i don't believe this is the issue.

 Other things that i can confirm:
- Being an SBS server this is the only domain controller on the domain
- We are logging on as a domain administrator
- The server doesn't run DHCP



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  • 0

    Others have suggested this but I didn't quite understand what was required. However, the problem is that there appears to be a quirk with the the PureMessage installer where it sometimes has difficulty connecting to the LDAP server. In most cases and especially in my case. That is the server onto which I am trying to install Pure Message.

    I have now encountered the problem on two different SBS2008 servers and I have had success with both.

    The solution:

    For example if the full server name is SERVER.XYZ.COM.AU then put a record in the host file stating the internal IP address of the server

    E.g.

    192.168.16.1.       Server.xyz.com.au

    Run the installation of PureMessage and. You should be good to go.

    P.S.

    There was one other line that I put in the host file.

    My domain xyz.com.au has a shortened form which goes in front of the username. Let’s say the username is SophosPureMessage and the domain is xyz.com.au. In my case the shortened form of the domain name is xz. So the username will be xz\SophosPureMessage.

    In the host file I also put a line:

    192.168.0.1         xz

    I didn’t think that this was the relevant line but, since you are having the issue still, then it must be necessary for that second line to be there. To be honest, I didn’t check which line was the relevant one. I was just so elated that I got a result after three months of trying.

  • 0 in reply to HughHolland

    Hi Hugh

    Thanks for your feedback. I have given this a go on our SBS (I'm logged on with a different account on Sophos forum at the moment) but this still doesn't work for me - even after adding the line to the bottom of the hosts file.

    I have again got all the way to the end of the install, but it has failed with: "Setup was unable to create the user account for the PureMessage services. Error details: Cannot contact the LDAP. This error could be caused by a failure to resolve or contact the AD server (named 'XXX')"

    Then once the error message has been submitted we then get another error message that says:
    "Error code 1603 was returned when running:
    C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msiexec.exe
    ADDLOCAL=ClientInstall,ClientServerInstall,ServerExchangeStore,ServerInstall,ServerMain,ServerAntiSpam /qb /lvoicewarmupx!
    C:\Users\admin\AppData\Local\Temp\MsiPureMessage-20160413151833.log
    SETUP_INIPATH=C:\Users\admin\AppData\Roaming\PureMessageSetup.ini REBOOT=Supress TRANSFORMS=:1033 /i "F:\PureMessage\PM\Sophos PureMessage.msi"

    The only thing i don't seem to be able to do is allow the user to run as a local service though? I'm not sure whether this would force the installation to fully stop though?

  • 0 in reply to TechSupport5

    Just to advise that this is now resolved, after trying various different things i eventually concluded that whatever i had done previously with the hosts file, i must have done wrong as i edited the hosts file again and this then installed without a problem!

    The reason for this is because the domain used to run on just something like XXX, however this was changed at some point by a predessor to XXX.LOCAL and for one reason or another the PureMessage installer was still trying to reference the original XXX domain. At a guess i'd say it is probably pulling this information from the registry somewhere where there is still an old reference. Highly annoying but i got there in the end.

    The hosts file reference i used last time included the full IP address of the network adapater, however on this occasion i have put the loopback address of 127.0.0.1 along with the original XXX domain.

    I will mark this as solved now. Thanks all!

Reply
  • 0 in reply to TechSupport5

    Just to advise that this is now resolved, after trying various different things i eventually concluded that whatever i had done previously with the hosts file, i must have done wrong as i edited the hosts file again and this then installed without a problem!

    The reason for this is because the domain used to run on just something like XXX, however this was changed at some point by a predessor to XXX.LOCAL and for one reason or another the PureMessage installer was still trying to reference the original XXX domain. At a guess i'd say it is probably pulling this information from the registry somewhere where there is still an old reference. Highly annoying but i got there in the end.

    The hosts file reference i used last time included the full IP address of the network adapater, however on this occasion i have put the loopback address of 127.0.0.1 along with the original XXX domain.

    I will mark this as solved now. Thanks all!

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