KACE Product Support

Purpose
The purpose of this document is to help you send mail TO the kbox from your Exchange Server.

Principles
The KBOX has a built-in SMTP server that you can use to both send mail IN to the KBOX and OUT of the KBOX. It does NOT have a POP server.

The way that it accepts mail in is by having its own domain that other SMTP servers deliver the mail to. Since the KBOXs domain is usually only an internal domain it will be your SMTP servers delivering mail to it. In the case of this document those mail servers are Exchange.

The way that it sends mail out is either of two methods. It can use an external SMTP server, or use DNS to deliver mail, but not both.

Usage of Email in KBOX
Mail can be used in any of the following areas. These topics are covered in other articles or the documentation

• Helpdesk Ticket creation and updates (inbound email creates tickets, outbound emails contain ticket updates)
• Email alerts and notifications (outbound only) [not covered here]
• Administrator notifications (outbound only) [not covered here]

Resources

• How to Specify an Address Space for the Connector at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996761.aspx
• How to Create an SMTP Connector to Route Mail to a Specific Host at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124055.aspx
• How to Create an SMTP Connector at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996625.aspx

Steps to setup:

1. Configure the Kbox to accept mail
2. Create a user that your employees can address via Active Directory
3. Create a Virtual SMTP server (if necessary)
4. Create or modify a connector to the SMTP server

1. Configure KBOX to accept mail
The KBOX Exim server is always running in this mode by default. The only thing needed here is to configure the email addresses that will be accepted.

In version 4.0 you setup a queue and each queue has an email address. In version 3.3 there is only one queue, thus one email address.

1. Go to the Help Desk Configuration page
2. Confirm that the domain suffix for the email address column is correct (ie. Kbox.yourcompany.com) (red)
3. Version 4: Type in the name of the Queue (green)
4. Type in the email address for the queue (orange)
5. If desired type in an alternate email address which will modify the from of email sent from the KBOX (blue)

2. Create a user that your employees can address via Active Directory lookup
In Exchange there are two main ways that you might normally create a user that can route mail to the KBOX: First, you could create a user account with an exchange mailbox and one or more resolvable addresses for the KBOX. Second, you could create a contact that just has one email address but no priviledges in the system and very little configuration. We prefer a a way to create a contact that has more than one resolvable addresses for the KBOX. We will create a user that has multiple addresses but no Exchange mailbox.

Steps:

1. Create a typical user (see Active Directory docs)
2. In the user manager, rght-click on the user and perform “exchange tasks” and choose “delete mailbox
3. In the user manager, right-click on the user and perform “exchange tasks” and choose “Establish Email address”
4. Reopen the properties of the user and select the “Email Addressess” tab
5. Add addresses needed. The primary must be for the KBOX address, the other are practically osmetic to allow for naming consistency in your network.

3. If necessary, Create a Virtual SMTP Server
(see your exchange documentation on this)

4.Create or modify a connection to your SMTP server

1. 1. Bridgehead points to existing virtual SMTP Server and uses DNS routing. If you do not have an existing Virtual Server then create one first – see above
   If DNS routing is not working for you then you can use the setting "Forward all mail to the following smart hosts" and input the IP address of the KBOX as such [xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] (e..g [10.1.1.10])
2. The Address Space is defined as SMTP for address kbox.<local.domain> (i.e. fully qualified kbox server name).
   Note that an asterisk may be required in your configuration like this *kbox.<local.domain>
3. You probably want to scope the connector for "entire organization" and leave "relay" turned off.
4. The "cost" level of the address space should be leveled per the existing exchange configuration. Typically you will have other connectors so created a KBOX connector with cost setting of "1" and moved other connectors to a higher cost level. That way, this one would be filtered first and no KBOX mail would accidentally leave your network.

Troubleshooting

Test Outgoing Mail
not covered here. See Purpose This is covered here: "I am not receiving emails from my KBOX"

Test incoming mail
For a complete test, make sure that you run this test from your mail server Remember, the KBOX does not have a POP server. You route the mail to the KBOXs SMTP server and it does the rest. So, you can try to telnet to the KBOXs SMTP server and send a test mail. Make sure when you do this test that the address used (e.g. [email=admin@mycompany.com]admin@mycompany.com[/email]) is a valid user that can submit tickets to the helpdesk queue you are testing

E..g

>telnet kbox.mycompany.com 25
>EHLO mycompany.com
>MAIL FROM:<admin@mycompany.com>

>RCPT TO:<helpdesk@kbox.mycompany.com>
>DATA
To: <helpdesk@kbox.mycompany.com>
From: <admin@mycompany.com>
Subject: <Test>
Test
.

Every step should work.

Note that on some kbox configurations there must be a user with the email address of [email=admin@mycompany.com]admin@mycompany.com[/email] that is allowed to be a submitter of tickets.

Reading logs for information

When you download the kbox log:

• the mail server (Exim) logs are in kbox_logs.tgz\tmp\exim* (exim_mainlog_MBx75l and exim_paniclog_5d5pTo)
  • Look for interaction similar to the SMTP tests above.
  • Make sure that hostnames, etc are resolvable.
• Debug_info_ST6ima log might show the exim process running away
• Other logs that give messages: Kbox_logs.tgz\kbox\kboxwww\logs\khelpdeskmailhandler_error
  Kbox_logs.tgz\kbox\kboxwww\logs\khelpdeskmailhandler_output
  Kbox_logs.tgz\kbox\kboxwww\logs\khelpdeskmailnotifier_error
  Kbox_logs.tgz\kbox\kboxwww\logs\khelpdeskmailnotifier_output

Use SMTP services logs from Microsoft:

• Enable logging on the SMTP Virtual Server.
• Files usually in c:\windows\system32\LogFiles\*SMTP*

Errors
I get a “550 unknown user” message:

• Make sure that you spelled the name of the address correctly and it matches the address in one of the helpdesk queues.
• Try to turn off your external SMTP server and remove the address of it from the network settings. Then reboot. Then change it back. Reboot again. That should clear up many issues.

I get a “451 error – unable to verify sender”

• Check your DNS settings.

Last update: 2009-11-03 07:05
Author: Gerald Gillespie