Orphaned LDAP Aliases - Exch 2003

[tommycat1313]

Simple but troubling problem:

We run an AD domain with two Exchange servers. One of the servers crashed recently due to RAID failure.

We rebuilt the crashed server, rejoined it to the domain and re-promoted it as an exchange server & domain controller.

It works fine with one bad, bad exception:

All of the email aliases that were associated with the crashed server are now Orphaned, and I can't seem to remove them from LDAP.

For instance: The alias 'John Doe' now appears as 'John Doe372254' in a user's Outlook "TO" field as they type in the destination address. If they send the email, it bounces back as undeliverable with "user does not exist"

I've tried taking the Outlook client out of cached mode, and deleting the local *.nk2 file to remove any possible local alias caching, and it would appear the Alias, as understood by Active Directory, is wrong.

So: Is there a way to completely blow away the LDAP data and have it rebuild naturally&OR is there a way to find the Orphaned aliases in AD and kill them individually.

I promise I'm not violent.

--TC

 

[djtech2k]

So are you saying that the addresses are just showing wrong in the GAL or is it wrong in AD?

As for aliases, I do not understand how you mean they are orphaned. The alias in AD is nothing more than a text field that is searchable in the GAL. The Alias is normally equal to the username of the user (sAMAccountName).

If it is just the GAL that needs updated, sometimes it can take 24 hours or more for changes to take place in the GAL. It is an automatic process by nature, but takes time. As for the caching, I highly recommend changing your outlook clients to use cached mode, but always search for the online GAL first. The native behavior for cached mode in outlook is to lookup the GAL from the OAB first. This can cause updates to take several days to update on outlook clients. You can change a registry entry that forces the cachedmode settings to look for online GAL first and if not found go to the OAB.

 

[tommycat1313]

Thanks!

My terminology is probably inaccurate. What is happening is as a user is creating a new email and typing in the addressee, Outlook finishes the address like always and when the user sends it, it bounces back with "addressee does not exist". However I can go into webmail, for instance, and type the full address of the receiver (no alias), and it goes through with no problem.

As of this morning, some of the Aliases work again, some still cause bounce backs...just didn't know of there was a place I could go to to flush and propagate new GAL data, or if it would clean up naturally...

Thanks again
--

 

[djtech2k]

The process that you are talking about should happen eventually by itself. I cannot remember the exact name of the process, but it is a process that you can force but will still take some time. As of now, I would suggest that you make sure that you are getting the the latest GAL version. To do that, first set the setting in the registry that I mentioned. It assures that you are getting the online GAL. Then, when you open Outlook, click the send/receive button the side and select "Download Address Book - Full Details". Then address an email and try it. Please also remember that outlook can cache name resolution for adddresses too, so its possible that outlook is just "remembering" it as a frequently used item. That option to cache names is somewhere in the options of outlook and has nothing to do with the GAL. It will cache things like hotmail or anything else.

So, your issue could be coming from the online GAL (old version), offline GAL (old version), or the outlook cache.

 

[tommycat1313]

Thanks! It's working!

 

[djtech2k]

Glad I could help.