Bizzare issue without outbound faxing through e-mail and Public folders

I recently ran into some very strange issues with an older fax through e-mail solution.  The setup is a mixed Exchange 5.5 (unsupported) and Exchange 2003 site with an old version of RightFax from Captaris (version 8.5 – unsuppored).  After years of working in this configuration, suddenly the outbound fax abilities quit working and you would receive NDR messages anytime you sent an outbound fax.  Incoming was working without problems, only outbound fax through e-mail was a problem.  I checked the Exchange connector for RightFax on the Exchange 5.5 box which was fine, there were some side issues there where some .tmp files weren’t getting purged properly, but I couldn’t find a cause for the issue we were having.  Reboots were done in hopes this would help resolve the issue, but they did not help.  The only errors I was receiving were as follows:

Exchange cannot determine a route for this message or no next hop can be determined.   A routing group topology does not have a routing group connector set up between the routing groups.  Mail destined to a routing group that does not have a routing group connector to connect it to other groups cannot be sent.   

Solution: Add or configure your RGC between RGs

 

and

 

The domain ‘$MSGWIA$.FAX.*’ is unreachable.

 

No route was found for the recipient server.  Please contact your system administrator.
            <servername.domain.private #5.4.4>

After a few days of researching and trying to find a solution to this issue, I happen to notice that I had another problem.  In the Exchange 2003 ESM I could not browse the public folder tree.  I’ve had this issue before and seen various things cause it, so I began researching the exact error codes I received.  (sorry I didn’t write those down, but they said something like “503 service unavailable” when I tried through OWA). 

I ended up restarting the Exchange 2003 HTTP Virtual server from ESM, and also dismounting and re-mounting the public folder store.  After I did that I noticed some events in my application log basically saying the route for FAX was online and mentioned our fax server name.  Out of curiosity I tried sending an outbound fax through e-mail and it worked!  I then asked the staff in the location where the issue was originally reported to try sending some test faxes through e-mail but they reported back and said it was still not working.  I then performed the same steps I mentioned above on all Exchange 2003 servers which seemed to fix the issue of not being able to view the public folder tree in ESM, but also had the side effect of fixing the outbound fax issue. 

I have no idea how an old fax system could possibly be tied into the public folder system of Exchange 2003.  I have no support for either Exchange 5.5 or the version of RightFax we are using, so I will probably never know.  I do know that the two issues were related somehow and the same solution for fixing the public folder tree view in ESM also fixed our outbound fax issues.  I think this is very strange but am glad the system is working again.  I hope this will not delay replacing these old systems and they still need to be replaced asap. 

Apple iphone/itouch firmware 2.2

I have been toying around with the new 2.2 firmware for my ipod touch (2nd Gen).  I had been really excited to check out the new podcast features in the itunes app, but alas, its not as good as I had hoped.  It turns out that the new podcasting features of the itunes app are independant of your itunes configuration.  So you might have a list of podcasts you are already subscribed to in itunes, but none of them show up on the touch.  Podcasts (a new menu item in the itunes app on the iphone/touch) are indepednant of what you have in itunes.  While this new functionality is still cool, it would have been nice to import my itunes podcasts as those are the ones I want to update anyway.  This new functionality has little use to me, but is still neat if you aren’t already using itunes to manage your podcast subscriptions. 

I have also been having an issue with wifi connecting to WPA protected APs, basically I would have to turn my wifi option on and then off and then back on again in order to get it to connect to any wireless.  Hopefully this new firmware will address that issue as well. 

UPDATE 11-24-08
   It turns out there is a way to download new episodes of your podcasts from the touch (using your existing subscriptions and not the built-in separate podcast client on the iphone/touch).  When you go into your podcasts and view the details of them, there is a new option as you scroll down to “Get more episodes”.  So even though itunes and the podcast client on the touch are two separate things, you can at least download new episodes of your current subscriptions.  I was confused since my subscriptions weren’t under the podcast menu button at the bottom.  You have to go into the podcasts you have synched on your iphone/touch as if you were going to listen to one, scroll down and there you will see how to download more content right from the touch.

Review of Sandles Grande Ochos Rios

My wife and I just got back from a trip to Sandles Grande Ochos Rios in Jamaica.  We had a great time, and it was very relaxing.  This was our first interntional trip and it went very well overall.  I wrote a long detailed review/log of our trip which you can find on the trip advisor forums at – http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g147312-i110-k2376563-Just_got_back_from_SGOR_A_Review-Ocho_Rios_Jamaica.html

If you want better quality pictures, go to http://www.churchgang.us/Jamaica – this is a work in progress.