SQL Query to determine Blackberry MDS Services administration password

June 30, 2009 — Julie

I was troubleshooting a Blackberry Manager problem today that required the BES MDS credentials.  The admin thought he knew what the credentials were, but wasn’t sure.  So I wrote the following SQL query and ran it against the Blackberry Enterprise Server’s BesMgmt database to get the user name and password:  

Use BesMgmt
select
WSAdminUserName, WSAdminPassword
from dbo.MDSAGConfig
 
Replace BesMgmt with the name of your BES database if you are not using the default database name.
 
See RIM KB15618 for additional details on how to reset the BES MDS Services administration password.
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Fix: HTTP Error 413: Request Entity Too Large on Blackberry

June 23, 2009 — Julie

I was attempting to load a rather large web page on my Blackberry today, and received  the following error:

 HTTP Error 413: Request Entity Too Large on Blackberry
 
Here’s how I fixed it.
 
  1. Open Blackberry Manager, selected the affected Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES).
  2. Highlight servername_MDS-CS_1
  3. Select the Connections Tab and click Edit Properties > General > Flow Control
  4. Increase the KB/Connection setting (maximum is 1024, or 1MB)
  5. Restart the Blackberry MDS Connection Service
 
I was then able to view the large web page on my Blackberry.
Posted in Blackberry. Tags: , . 1 Comment »

BES Error: CheckNewMbSyncRecords() MISSED MAIL ITEM ARRIVED FOR INACTIVE OR NON-EXISTANT USER

June 22, 2009 — Julie

Found the following messages in my Blackberry Enterprise Server 4.1.6 MAGT log file this morning.  I hadn’t noticed them previously, so I did some digging to find out their origin.

CheckNewMbSyncRecords() MISSED MAIL ITEM ARRIVED FOR INACTIVE OR NON-EXISTANT USER, Id=73

CALENDAR UPDATE REQUESTED FOR INACTIVE OR NON-EXISTANT USER, Id=73

Wrote a quick SQL query that I ran against the Besmgmt database to find out who was user ID 73. 

SELECT     Id, DisplayName, UserName
FROM         UserConfig
WHERE     (Id = ‘73′)

The results returned were:

73 Amy Jones ajones

I verified that Amy Jones was still listed as a user in Blackberry Manager.  She was, so I looked at her Groupwise account.  Apparently our User Access group had disabled her Groupwise account while she was on leave from the company.  Disabling the account is what caused the above entries in the log files.

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Howto: Export a list of all BES users via the Blackberry Manager tool

May 6, 2009 — Julie

A supervisor requested a list of all Blackberry Enterprise Server users in our organization.  I knew if I had the BES resource kit installed I could provide management with a number of reports, but I didn’t have time to go through that process.  Here’s how I quickly exported the list of users through Blackberry Manager 4.1.6:

  1. Open Blackberry Manager 
  2. Highlight Blackberry Domain 
  3. Select the All Users tab
  4. Highlight the entire list of users by selecting the first user, then selecting the last user while holding down the shift key. 
  5. With all the users highlighted, right click a user to bring up the context menu 
  6. Select Export Asset Summary Data
Save the file to a convienent location.  The file will be saved in .txt format, but you can change the file extension to .csv, then open the document in Excel to remove columns or sort data.
 
If you have multiple BES servers in your environment and only want to list users on a particular server, perform the same steps as above, but instead of selecting Blackberry domain, highlight the server in question and select the Users tab instead of All Users.
Posted in Blackberry. Tags: , , , . 1 Comment »

Fix: Cannot find Groupwise users to add to the Blackberry Enterprise Server

February 12, 2009 — Julie

A user was recently having issues with his Groupwise email on his Blackberry, so our BES admin planned on removing him from BES, then re-adding him.  Removing the user was no problem, but the admin was quite suprised to find out he could not re-add the user.  When searching for the user to add, the user was not found. 

I found RIM KB12111, which describes running GWSystemAddressBookSync.exe manually to resynchronize the Blackberry Configuration Database with the Groupwise System Address Book.  By default this process runs every 12 hours.
 
The user in question was not a new user, but running the manual synchronization allowed the BES admin to find the user and re-add him onto BES.
 
By default you can find the GWSystemAddressBookSync.exe program in the C:\Program Files\Research in Motion\Blackberry Enterprise Server directory on the BES server.  Run the .exe from the command prompt and wait for the process to finish.  

My BES is version 4.1.14 with 180 users, and my Groupwise System is version 7.0.3 hot patch 1 with 2600 users, and the sync process took about 14 minutes to complete when run during production hours.
 

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After upgrading to BES 4.1.3 or higher for Groupwise, excessive GWXMLData::ContactSyncRecordToXML warnings appear in the Windows Application log

February 11, 2009 — Julie

Blackberry KB15941 exlains that starting with BES 4.1, additional warnings are logged to the Blackberry Messaging and Windows Application log.  These warnings are informational in nature, and do not indicate a problem.

If you’d like to reduce or eliminate these messages, KB04342 says to edit the EventLogLevel DWORD value  of the appropriate BES service located at : 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Research In Motion\Blackberry Enterprise Server\Logging Info
 
DWORD values and Event Types correspond as follows:
 
0 = Disable all event logging
1 = Errors
2 = Warnings
3 = Information
4 = Debug
5 = Other
 
Unforturnately, I was unable to determine which service was generating these excessive GWXMLData warnings, so I had to contact RIM directly.  Their response was that the Mailbox Agent service needs to have it’s EventLogLevel changed to 1, which would log errors only.
 
I made this change on my BES server, and the event logs are now much slimmer!
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Viewing Pending Messages by user in Blackberry Manager

February 10, 2009 — Julie

After our recent upgrade of our Blackberry Enterprise Server from version 4.0.7 to 4.1.14, I  noticed the total pending message counts shown in the BES MAGT log file never droppped below 275.  I was concerned about this, thinking that the server was busy and could never get all messages processed, even during times of light usage, like in the middle of the night.  

I later found that the Pending Data Packets field can be added within Blackberry Manager.  This allowed me to sort by users with the most pending messages.  Identifying these users, and corresponding the Last Contact Time allowed me to determine which users are probably no longer with the company.  A quick call to HR verified my hypothesis, and after removing these users my pending message counts dropped to a more reasonable amount.
 
To view the BES pending message counts:
 
1.  Launch Blackberry Manager
 
2.  Highlight the BES server name, and select Users
 
3.  From the View menu, select Choose Columns
 
4.  Under Available Columns, select Pending Data Packets and click  Insert > OK
 
5.  Click the Pending Data Packets column to sort by users with the most pending requests.
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The correct order to stop and start BES services

March 5, 2008 — Julie

KB 13718 explains the correct order to stop and start Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) services for Microsoft Exchange:

1. BlackBerry Router.
2. BlackBerry Dispatcher.
3. BlackBerry Controller.
4. All remaining BlackBerry services.

The BlackBerry Enterprise Server for Microsoft Exchange Disaster Recovery Guide explains the correct order is:

1. BlackBerry Controller
2. BlackBerry Router
3. BlackBerry Dispatcher
4. all remaining BlackBerry services

KB04293 explains the correct order for BES 4.0 or later with Exchange is:

1. BlackBerry Router
2. BlackBerry Dispatcher
3. BlackBerry Controller
4. all other BlackBerry Enterprise Server services

The BlackBerry Enterprise Server for IBM Lotus Domino Version 4.1.3 Upgrade Guide explains the correct order is:

1. BlackBerry Controller
2. BlackBerry Router
3. BlackBerry Dispatcher
4. all remaining services

I was unable to find any official Blackberry documentation regarding the proper order to stop and start the BES services for Groupwise, but this document on the Vodaphone support web site suggests the following order:

Start the Blackberry services in the following order:

1. Blackberry Dispatcher
2. Blackberry Router
3. Blackberry Controller
4. Blackberry Alert
5. Blackberry Attachment Service
6. Blackberry Mobile Data Service
7. Blackberry Policy Service
8. Blackberry Synchronization Service

Reverse the order of the services when you stop the services.

As you can see, the documentation does not consistently explain the order the BES services should be stopped and started.

Posted in Blackberry. Tags: , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Making Groupwise 7 and Blackberry Enterprise Server Communicate

March 4, 2008 — Julie

I have a client who wanted to integrate Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) version 4.1.3 with his Groupwise 7.0.1 system. He already had a Windows 2003 SP2 server ready for me to install BES onto, so I figured it would be a quick job. I was wrong.

The first hurdle appeared when I started to run the BES setup program on the Windows 2003 server. The installer refused to run because the server was running in Terminal Services Application mode, which is not a supported configuration.

We changed our plan and started running the BES installer on a different Windows 2003 SP2 server, but this time the installer quit because we did not have at least SQL 2000 SP3a on the server. Determining which version of SQL 2000 is installed is not the easiest thing to do, so we just went ahead and downloaded and installed SQL 2000 SP4.

After installing SQL 2000 SP4 we were able to install BES without problems, but BES was unable to communicate with Groupwise. We determined the problem was the version of the Groupwise client installed on the BES server was 7.0.1 IR1, which is not a supported configuration – we’d later learn we needed to be on versions 7.0.2 or 6.5.6 FTF4. Utilizing client 7.0.2 would have required upgrading the entire Groupwise system, so we decided to backrev to client 6.5.6.

I uninstalled the 7.0.1 IR1 client, rebooted the server, then installed GroupWise 6.5
Support Pack 6, Update 1 dated June 27, 2006. After rebooting the server again, BES and Groupwise could not communicate.

We uninstalled the GroupWise 6.5 Support Pack 6, Update 1 client, rebooted, then tried GroupWise 6.5 Post SP6 Client Rev 4 dated November 10, 2006. We found this to be the required client version according to KB04164, but it didn’t work for us despite following the special installation instructions listed in TID 2974707. We kept receiving the following error message in gwenv1.dll when executing the client:

Entry point not found. WpfCheckAncestryAnd Read

I figured the problem had to lie with gwenv1.dll, so I checked the file’s date. C:\windows\system32\gwenv1.dll was dated 6/16/2006, while the gwenv1.dll found in GroupWise 6.5 Post SP6 Client Rev 4 was dated 11/6/2006.

I suspected the problem was that files from previous Groupwise client installations were not being overwritten by the new client installations. I uninstalled the GroupWise 6.5 Post SP6 Client Rev 4 client , rebooted, ran Messaging Architects’ GW CleanIT, rebooted, then reinstalled GroupWise 6.5 Post SP6 Client Rev 4 client per the TID’s instructions.

We were finally able to communicate with Groupwise through the BES server!

In hindsight, I wish I would have found Blackberry’s KB KB12662, “Perform basic troubleshooting steps for Novell GroupWise”, prior to beginning the BES installation. It probably would have saved us a few hours worth of work.

Posted in Blackberry, Groupwise. Tags: , , , , , , . 10 Comments »

Howto: Resend an Activation Password for a Blackberry Device from Blackberry Enterprise Server

February 29, 2008 — Julie

Yesterday I installed Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) on a Windows 2003 SP2 server that would synchronize with Groupwise 7.0.1. Installing BES was fairly straightforward, but getting the Groupwise client to synchronize the users and address books was another story.

Once we had the entire system functioning properly, it was time to synchronize the first Blackberry with the server. From the Blackberry Manager we selected the option to Generate and Email Activation Password, but the user never received the activation message – neither in her email nor on her Blackberry. We finally tracked down the result of the failure, which was we were sending the activation email from an alias address, not from a user with an actual mailbox.

This morning we changed the address the activation message was sent from to a user with an actual mailbox. When we tried to resend the activation email to the Blackberry device we received the following error from Blackberry Manager:

A password was not generated. The user still has a non-expired activation password for which the number of attempts has not exceeded the maximum of 5.

I couldn’t find anywhere to cancel the pending activation request, and was not about to wait the 48 hours for the message to expire. Nor was I going to enter the incorrect password 5 times to nullify the activation request.

Finally, I found the following solution:

1) In Blackberry Manager, right click the user and select Set Activation Password

2) In the Password box, leave both fields blank

3) In the Password Expires in _ hours box, enter a 0 (zero) and click OK

This will expire the existing activation email and password and will allow you to resend the activation email to the Blackberry device.

To resend the Activation email from Blackberry Manager, right click the user and select Generate and Email Activation Password.

Posted in Blackberry, howto. Tags: , , , , , . 2 Comments »