153806 - Exchange IMAP login fails -- eating Exchange licenses

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(MailNews Core :: Networking: IMAP, defect)

Description

[Dietmar May]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.0.0) Gecko/20020607
BuildID:    0000000000 (ie. 1.0)

When connecting to an Exchange server 5.5 SP4 as an IMAP server, I can access
exactly 'n' distinct folders, where 'n' is the number of client licenses for
Exchange Server (in this case, 5). Upon selecting the 'n'+1 folder, an Alert
dialog pops up in MailNews stating "Login to server 10.x.x.x failed." This
message is repeated 3 more times (ie. 4 times) for each additional folder that
is attempted.

Exiting Mozilla completely, and then restarting, allows fresh access to 'n'
(possibly different) folders.

Viewing the Application Event Log on the Exchange Server reveals the following
messages:

EventID:  13005
Source:   MSExchange IMAP4
Type:     Error
Category: Authentication
Login attempt by *DOMAIN\user* from 10.x.x.y to *user* has failed:
EcCreateOtherSess() call failed with Insufficient number of client access licenses.

EventID:  201
Source:   LicenseService
Type:     Error
Category: None
No license was available for user *DOMAIN\user* using product MSExchangeIs 0.

These entries are duplicated numerous times.

Is MailNews perhaps requesting a new authentication for each folder, and keeping
the previous ones open?

This problem does not occur with Outlook 98 under Windows NT 4 SP6, nor with
Bynari's Insight under RedHat 7.3.

I have only seen this fail to happen (that is, for it to work correctly for all
of the folders on the IMAP server) one time.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.Set up MailNews IMAP Server account. I have it as the default account.
  Server name is Exchange Server's IP address, not DNS name.
  Port is 143.
  Advanced IMAP Server Settings has:
     blank IMAP server directory, 
     unchecked Show only subscribed folders,
     checked Server supports folders that contain sub-folders,
     Personal namespace ""
     Public (shared) "Public Folders/"
     checked Allow server to override
  Offline and Disk Space has
     checked Make the messages in my Inbox available offline
     unchecked When I create new folders
    and has a number of IMAP folders selected
  Outgoing Server (SMTP) has
    Server name as Exchange Server's IP address
    Port 25
  No SSL used.

2. If your Exchange Server has a large number of client licenses 'n', then using
MS Outlook, create 'n' + 10 folders and populate with dummy messages.

3. Sequentially select 'n' + 1 folders, and wait as MailNews synch's with each one.

4. On the 'n'+1th folder, the Alert dialog should pop up.

Expected Results:  Display the data in the folder without an error message.

I've done a search on the unfixed IMAP bugs, and this doesn't seem to be a match
for any of them.

Comment 1

[brianr-bugzilla.mozilla.org]

Pick Mail & Newsgroup Account Settings,
Server Settings,
Advanced Account Settings
and adjust "Maximum number of server connections to cache".

It is normally set to 5. On my system, mozilla makes up to this number of
connections to the IMAP server. If Exchange is set up to allow only 5
connections, it's quite possible that all of them may be consumed by a single
mozilla client in its default configuration. 

Comment 2

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 3

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.