Missing User Accounts

Problem reported by Jon Eastwood - 12/4/2021 at 11:14 AM

Resolved

All of a sudden SM has started showing for certain domains ZERO user accounts in the admin interface

Yet when I check the file system the folders and files for the missing user accounts are there on disc. with data in but SM thinks they are not.

I have tried the reload domain option but nothing happens

If I try to go into the domain user list I get "Object reference not set to an instance of an object"

Anyone else had this or seen it or know what I could try

Running latest version of SM:

SmarterMail Enterprise

Build 7957 (Oct 14, 2021)

9 Replies

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JerseyConnect Team Replied

12/6/2021 at 10:19 AM

Marked As Resolution

That behavior and coresponding error is an indication that one of the domain's json files is corrupted. I suspect it's either accounts.json or settings.json. Try to open them in a text editor and if the file is blank, it's corrupted. If that's the case then restore the corrupted file from your backups and then reload the domain.

Jon Eastwood Replied

12/6/2021 at 10:45 AM

that's all ok if you have backups that arent also corrupted, i would have thought there was a way that you could regenerate them from SM

Kyle Kerst Replied

12/6/2021 at 12:53 PM

Employee Post

This turned out to be the accounts.json file, and they were quite empty! Most (aside from one domain who likely had this occurring for some time now) domains were corrected by way of a restore of this file from the backup for the night before via the Archived Data directory.

Kyle Kerst

Lead Internal Network/System Administrator

SmarterTools Inc.

smartertools.com

Robert Mathias Replied

12/7/2021 at 8:25 AM

We had exactly this problem after a power outage last week. Several users' calendars and contacts (including mine) disappeared - the problem was figuring out which json files were affected. I ended up by restoring ALL the json files from the Archived Data files. This worked without any apparent problems, but is it safe to restore ALL the json files?

Kyle Kerst Replied

12/7/2021 at 8:40 AM

Employee Post

@Robert: Power failures are unfortunately one of the most common causes of this behavior since we have these JSON files open throughout the day under standard operation, and when our access to them is terminated improperly we end up with damaged versions of the file.

It is safe to restore all of the JSON files, but any changes to folder lists, contacts, calendars, etc since the day of that backup file will be lost during that restore. The only place I can see this truly introducing trouble is in synced clients.

For example; if a user has an Outlook client syncing an account via MAPI, the user adds a folder, then the files become corrupt and have to be restored to a previous version, this could result in the Outlook client trying to sync this missing folder repeatedly. To correct something like that we'd just need to have the user do a full re-sync (including removal of the sync key in Settings>Connectivity>Synchronized Devices) then allow the customer to recreate their missing folder once Outlook is back in sync.

Kyle Kerst

Lead Internal Network/System Administrator

SmarterTools Inc.

smartertools.com

JerseyConnect Team Replied

12/7/2021 at 10:12 AM

When we ran into this issue I used this powershell command to look for corrupted accounts:

select-string -path D:\SmarterMail\Domains\*\Users\*\settings.json -pattern "{`"settings`":{`"" -simplematch -notmatch | format-table path

It just lists the full path for all the settings.json files that are blank. You could easily adapt this to look for other corrupted json files.

Kyle Kerst Replied

12/7/2021 at 10:14 AM

Employee Post

That's a great little script! A good way to check for corrupted settings.json files is to check the Error logs for the pattern password encrypted is null as well, as this will return any accounts with an invalid password configuration, frequently pointing to a corrupted JSON.

Kyle Kerst

Lead Internal Network/System Administrator

SmarterTools Inc.

smartertools.com

Rod Strumbel Replied

12/8/2021 at 10:45 AM

Kyle, if this is a known issue, wouldn't it make sense to make a copy of the files before opening them and then update that copy whenever closing them. Then if you start and the .json is empty you can just re-copy the copy and use that?

Seems a simple solution to what sounds like a common problem.

Kyle Kerst Replied

12/8/2021 at 12:00 PM

Employee Post

Good point Rod, and we already have this in place. You can see evidence of that in the Archived Data folder found in the system, domain, and user level directories. That said, when this takes place its because we were in the process of swapping those files (.json and .json.tmp) at the time of the lock, failure, or disk corruption.

Kyle Kerst

Lead Internal Network/System Administrator

SmarterTools Inc.

smartertools.com

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