Tag: links

Synchronising Microsoft Exchange to Another IMAP Server

This post is much less of a detailed how-to but rather some useful links. We were tasked with the job of sync’ing about 1,000 MS Exchange mailboxes to a Dovecot server. This needed to be done via an administrator account on the Exchange end as individual user passwords were not available.

The tool of choice for this is imapsync.  Unfortunately, there is not a single formula that will work for all as it can depend on the Exchange configuration and version as well as the use of domains on the Exchange and ActiveDirectory servers.

To help understand the various combinations of logins for Exchange, I found the following invaluable: Understanding login strings with POP3/IMAP.

Also invaluable is the imapsync FAQ – just search for mentions of Exchange.

In the end, the following worked for me (but your mileage will most definitely vary!):

./imapsync --host1 exchange-server 
    --user1 'domain/adminuser/user' --password1 'admin-password' 
    --authmech1 LOGIN 
    --host2 dovecot-server --user2 user@example.com 
    --password2 userpassword

One key element here is that when logging into Exchange as an individual user I had to use --authmech1 NTLM but if you use this auth method with the above user string, you will always end up logging into the admin’s mailbox, not the user’s. That, at least, was my experience.

MySQL 5.6 – Memcached / NoSQL Support and More

MySQL 5.6 has been released with some interesting new features and performance increases:

  • What’s New in MySQL 5.6
  • DBA and Developer Guide to MySQL 5.6
  • InnoDB Integration with memcached:MySQL 5.6 includes a NoSQL interface, using an integrated memcached daemon that can automatically store data and retrieve it from InnoDB tables, turning the MySQL server into a fast “key-value store” for single-row insert, update, or delete operations. You can still also access the same tables through SQL for convenience, complex queries, bulk operations, application compatibility, and other strengths of traditional database software.

    With this NoSQL interface, you use the familiar memcached API to speed up database operations, letting InnoDB handle memory caching using its buffer pool mechanism. Data modified through memcached operations such as ADD, SET, INCR are stored to disk, using the familiar InnoDB mechanisms such as change buffering, the doublewrite buffer, and crash recovery. The combination of memcached simplicity and InnoDB durability provides users with the best of both worlds.

  • Multi-threaded Slaves
  • Improved IPv6 Support – both in the bind to address option and the INET_ATON() function.
  • Replication improvements.

All in all, some nice new features. Especially the memcached integration.

That said, MariaDB seems to be making inroads on MySQL with some distributions considering a switch. Some interesting reading from that project includes:

Woot! We hit 50Gbps at INEX!

 

Adventures with LDAP (OpenLDAP) – SSL, Multi-Master Replication and Monitoring

In my career to date, I successfully managed to avoid all but the periphery engagement in OpenLDAP. Until recently that is – we had to build a Microsoft Exchange like environment with open source software in a way that was closely integrated and easily managed. But, more on that another time. For anyone else diving into OpenLDAP, here are some articles on my experiences that I have penned:

Nagios Plugin for Checking Backups via rsnapshot

We’ve just added a check_rsnapshot.php script to our nagios-plugins bundle on Github. This script will verify rsnapshot backups via Nagios using a number of checks / tests:

  • minfiles – checks the number of files in a snapshot against a minimum expected number;
  • minsize – checks the size of a snapshot against a minimum expected size;
  • log – parses the rsnapshot log to ensure the most recent runs for each retention period completed successfully;
  • timestamp – checks for files created server side containing a timestamp and thus ensuring snapshots are succeeding;
  • rotation – checks that retention directories are being rotated; and
  • dir-creation – checks that retention directories are being created.

Please see this Github wiki page for more information including instructions.