Request troubleshooting list for OWA 1

[mattjurado]

Have a client running SBS2000 with naturally every service in the world enabled (ISA, Exchange, IIS, SQL packages all configured for one task or another). The tech who installed it has made many mistakes in his logic.

Server has recently lost ability to dish out OWA pages. When you type

http://domain/exchange,

we get page cannot be displayed. If you just go to

http://domain,

the default web page they selected does show up (btw, this is trying to access from internal network and the outside world). Event log errors are a plenty, varying messages about smtp, iis, and nntp terminating and then not starting properly. Seems like certain services crashed and restarted back up in the wrong order.

Coming from a shop that spends much of its days in the Linux world, I'm curious if their is a consensus regarding the startup order of services (i.e.

http://www publishing,

iis admin, etc...), and any troubleshooting steps. Is it any different for SBS than regular server?

In the end, a simple reboot may fix it. Does not appear to be any changes made, but judging by the event logs, this happens every couple months or so. SMTP works fine, POP3 connector fetches mail. Everything is running, just no OWA access.

I'm going to build a test server and load SBS2000, so I can test the different services out myself. Since their server is a mess, I'd rather rip apart a test box. Just curious if anyone out there can lend a tip.

Thanks.

Matt J.

 

[Beboen]

Is the http virtual server running?

 

[mattjurado]

Appears to be so.

Matt J.

 

[didocus]

Hi!

Does a full restart of the IIS services fix the problem.
I think this possibility - IIS services start before the MS Exchange services. The

http://domain/exchange

folder is pointing to the M: drive which is not yet mounted because the Exchange services are not runing?

If a full restart of IIS after the Exchange services are running helps probably this is causing the problem.

Didocus

 

[mattjurado]

I'll consider that. But I'm curious about all the other services, such as

http://www admin,

and there's one or two others that I believe IIS has dependencies on. I'm curious if anyone knows what order they should load. I'm still going to build myself a test server, so I can watch that one crash and burn before I rip apart their server.

Matt J.

 

[Beboen]

IIS depends on the iisadmin service. If you want IIS to start after Exchange, you can go to HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W3SVC and in the DependOnService key add MSExchangeIS (so there should be: IISADMIN MSExchangeIS). I don't think though this is the problem.

Once I've seen an article - can't remember though where - and it had to do with permissions. Maybe this might be a problem.

Try to telnet to your OWA server (telnet OWA_server 80 /and/ telnet OWA_server 443) and check if this works.