I have a windows server 2003 enviornmentwith Exchange 2003 SP2. The exchange server also runs our BES or Blackbery Enterprise Server on it as well. Recently a couple of users have told me that people are telling them they're getting their messages multiple times both internally and externally. The users it's happened to have blackberry's though they have not been sending from their blackberry so I would think that would eliminate that aspect.  I've seen a few posts out there but they've been related to pop3, we do not use pop3. The odd thing is it's not happening to everyone and the few it has happened to it's not happening every time they send out. I've looked at the event logs and have seen nothing in there related to this. Any help or tips would be appreciated, thanks.

How are the messages brought from the external world to the internal world?   Direct hosting off an IP address or are you using software like the Microsoft POP3 connector PopBeamer?

 

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Well all else fails, make an offering to the computer gods. Preferably in small unmarked bills.

Direct. I thought it could be our spam filter but checking the exchange logs, the messages are defnitely going out from there multiple times.

So multiple messages.   Single server, single host.   No intermediary spam server.   Is there any pattern to the duplication?  Specific users?  All users?  How many duplicates?  Did somebody add a group or CC: to a group on Server and that's the dupe? 

I've seen the multiple inbound with the Small Business Server POP3 connector but not "all by itself".

So you've Blackberry's on the server with a BES in that mix or without or not at all?  Any additional routing rules maybe?  Something causing a Loop?

Did you use any magic incantations to ward off the evil spirits floating about the mail database?

This is an interesting one.  I wonder if the original LazyAdmin is watching and has a thought on this.  He is Exchange god... ;)

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Well all else fails, make an offering to the computer gods. Preferably in small unmarked bills.

whoa!  Stop.  Just thought.  Check for a pattern on the users reporting the dupes.   See if it is just externally.  It COULD be greylisting.   That's an antispam feature (useful sometimes) that tells a mail server to resend the email.

I have seen other mail servers on the outside sending a false "Not received" causing the originating mail server to resend the message.   Depending on how many "false drops" you get that "2 copies, 3 copies".  Even 5 or 10.   

I spent a day working with our hosting provider on this one.   A good provider will have logs of all the SMTP traffic.   Pair.Com did and was able to identifiy that the "multiple emails" were in fact single sent ones reported as dropped by the destination SMTP server.

Whitelisting doesn't necessarily bypass your address from Greylisting either.   Usually I find Greylisting (since in theory it's harmless since a true hosted and registered SMTP server is designed for a resend) isn't controlled other than on/off and no restrictions.

Good luck.  Failing that you could just fire all the users reporting the dupes.... ;)

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Well all else fails, make an offering to the computer gods. Preferably in small unmarked bills.

No pattern or rhyme or reason, and it's only been 2 users that I'm aware of though that is highly unlikely. I would imagine users and customers are just deleting the multiple messages and not reporting the issue.  Only person that would have added a group would have been me so that isn't it.

No POP3 or SBS.

 

BES on the Exchange server though the users are blackberry users they have sent through outlook client on their workstations and have the issue.

I don't know of any magic incantations though I'm welcome to any you would suggest!  I did pray to the IT gods and went ahead and restarted the Exchange server and the Barracuda spam filter as well and so far so good!!!! I'm hoping it was just a possible communication/time/replication error of sorts and the restart took care of it. Strange issue as it wasn't happening to everyone and wasn't happening everytime. Thanks for answering the post Ybeard.

 

seen that type of thing happen with barracuda spam filters before... my money is on it.

Anything in the message tracking?

 

Also how many users in total on BES just for info? 

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cheers
Andy

Nothing but the multiple messages which is why I don't think it was the barracuda, otherwise it would have only shown 1 message in Exchange I woudl think but could be wrong there.

 

24 users on the BES

I've heard RIM only support up to 15 users on a server running Exchange but that is irrelevant really.  What sort of load do you have on the server?

In message tracking showing different IDs for the duplicates?

 

Also maybe:

http://blackberryforums.pinstack.com/24731-duplicate_email_blackberry_7250_telus.html

http://steves-rant.blogspot.com/2006/10/duplicate-messages-on-your-blackberry.html

 

 

May not be relevant but goes back to the other responses in the thread.
I did resolve this problem. The problem for me was caused by Red Earth
Software - Policy Patrol 3.0. Odds are, if you have some kind of
anti-virus/anti-spam software installed on your Exchange Server... it's the
source of your problem. I removed the software and the duplicate email
problem went away. I had the option to remove this filtering software
because I was running a trial license and I just replaced it with a solution
that doesn't sit on the Exchange server. If you don't have the option and
you are running Policy Patrol, you delete the forward rule in AD and create
a forward rule in the Policy Patrol software. 

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cheers
Andy

Only Exchange is running on the server and it is only a few years old so there is not a significant load on the resources, our spam filter is an appliance (barracuda) so again I don't think it was the spam filter.

The message ID's were different and looking at it again Outlook had the time wrong on my test messages, they were an hour later then I had sent. So it looks like it may have been a time sync issue or Daylight savings time. The problem appeared to be resolved after I did a restart as mentioned above and have had no one complaining of this since. Just kind of odd it wasn't effecting everyone.

 

Thanks for your help everyone!

 

I am seeing a very similar thing: users sending one message and it arrives twice, even 3 or 4 times. It happens internally, even when a user sends a message to himself! So far affecting only a few users. Message tracking shows the message definitely arrives twice, but Sent Items shows only one. So far I have no idea what's causing it.

The problem is back!!!!

Checked the message id's are all different in the users inbox not only that but in one instance the message tracker showed 5 messages and the users inbox only had 4.

 

Vwalton, do you have a blackberry server? Have you done any recent patches to the exchange server?  Are you in a daylight savings time state? I'm in Missouri, jJust trying to see if we have any similarites besides the actual problem.

I do have a BES, and I am in a DST state. However the problem appeared before DST kicked in, and the users involved don't have a Blackberry (at least not all of them). I did notice though that of the 4 users that are on the same server (I have two) so I'm going to restart it tonight to see if that helps.

I'm starting to think it was a client issue, so for one of the offending users, I've deleted their outlook profile, uninstalled outlook and reinstalled. I'll keep you posted but so far so good.