Troubleshooting Lab

Coho Winery employees who are logged on to IMAP4 clients report problems with mail retrieval. In order to diagnose these problems, you reconfigure the diagnostic level for IMAP4 virtual servers so that the Application log in Event Viewer records entries for each step taken to run a task, and the level of logging gives more detail once the location of the problem is found. (You can use the same procedure for POP3 virtual servers by selecting the POP3Svc service.)

Before proceeding with this lab, ensure that you have two Exchange Server 2003 servers configured as described in the "Before You Begin" section at the start of this chapter. Ensure that the Microsoft Exchange IMAP4 service is started. You also need to have created the additional IMAP4 virtual server IMAP4_server1 as described in this chapter.

Exercise 1: Set a Diagnostic Level and Read the Resulting Entries in the Event Log

To set a diagnostic level and read the event log, perform the following steps:

1. Open Exchange System Manager.

2. Navigate to Administrative Groups\First Administrative Group\Servers\Server01.

3. Right-click Server01, and then click Properties.

4. Click the Diagnostics Logging tab, and then click IMAP4Svc in the Services section.

5. Click an item in Category. The dialog box shown in Figure 9-16 appears.

   
   Figure 9-16: Setting a diagnostic logging level

   The appropriate section in the dialog box now becomes active and you can select a Logging Level:

   • None—This level logs only critical and error events.

   • Minimum—This level logs high-level events by logging a single entry for each major task performed by the service. This level of logging can help identify where a problem might be occurring.

   • Medium —This level records entries for each step taken to run a task. This level of logging gives more detail once the location of the problem is found.

   • Maximum—This level records entries for each line of code in the service, providing a complete trail of the operation of a service and logging all events. This level of logging can affect server performance and should be used only when detailed debugging is required.

6. Select Medium, and then click OK.

7. Pause, and restart Default IMAP4 Virtual Server and IMAP4_server1.

8. Open Event Viewer on Server01.

9. In Event Viewer, in the application log, double-click an event of type IMAP4SVC. Figure 9-17 shows a typical event log entry.

   
   Figure 9-17: An Application event log entry for an IMAP4 virtual server

10. Click OK to close the Event Properties box.

11. Close Event Viewer and Exchange System Manager.