Scalix 11.3 U1 - Release Notes

Release Date: 18 January 2008


Contents




Introduction

Back to top

Thank you for downloading Scalix 11.3 U1.

Scalix 11.3 U1 is the latest release of Scalix 11, providing new functionality, updated platform support as well as several important enhancements and fixes to previous versions. We recommend you upgrade all systems running Scalix 11 to this latest release.

Compared with Scalix 11.3, Scalix 11.3 U1 is a Service Release. The only component updated is Scalix Web Access, in which a number of additional issues have been resolved. Please check the information below carefully.

This document includes late-breaking information about product capabilities, known issues and workarounds. Please read this document thoroughly before beginning your installation or upgrade.

For full documentation on how to install, configure and administer Scalix, see the customer documentation at http://www.scalix.com/documentation. In addition, after Installing the Scalix Mail Server and other applications, you can access the following online help systems, which are embedded in the product:

You also can learn more about any of the known issues listed here - or report others - by going to the Scalix bugtracking system at https://bugzilla.scalix.com/.

Scalix Corporation is committed to your success with our software. For additional information above and beyond what is provided here and in the official product documentation, visit the Scalix Forums at http://www.scalix.com/community. Customers who have purchased support from Scalix also may also contact Scalix Technical Support to request help, ask questions about how to use a particular feature, provide feedback, or report bugs by sending email to support@scalix.com.



Acknowledgements

Back

Scalix Connect for Outlook 11.3 now includes software developed by the OpenSSL project for use in the OpenSSL toolkit. (http://www.openssl.org). It also includes includes cryptographic software written by Eric Young (eay@cryptsoft.com) and software written by Tim Hudson (tjh@cryptsoft.com). Scalix would like to thank these individuals and the OpenSSL community for their valuable contributions.

Scalix Server 11.3 now includes software based on the Universal Character Set Detector from the Mozilla project (http://www.mozilla.org), written by Simon Montagu (smontagu@smontagu.org), Shy Shalom (shooshX@gmail.com), Shoshannah Forbes <xslf@xslf.com> and others. Scalix would like to thank these individuals and the Mozilla community for their valuable contributions.



Important End of Life Notices

Back

Scalix 11.3 no longer supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 (RHEL 3) and no packages are available for this platform for new installs or upgrades. For new installations and upgrades, you will now need to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (RHEL 4) or Red Hat Enterprise Server Linux 5 (RHEL 5).

Scalix is planning to deprecate support for SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 (SLES 9) in one of the next releases of Scalix. We recommend that you consider upgrading to SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (SLES 10), even though no date or release has been set.

Scalix is planning to freeze development of Scalix Connect for Outlook for Outlook versions 9 (Outlook 2000) and 10 (Outlook XP/2002) in one of the next releases of Scalix. We recommend that you consider upgrading to Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007. Note that we will continue to provide support on the basis of a frozen connector version, however, no new functionality in Scalix Connect will be made available for these platforms.

Scalix is committed to both providing programmatic access to the system as well as to promote the use of open standards. With Scalix 11.3, we are releasing support for CalDAV (RFC 4791) and will continue to enhance Scalix WebDAV capabilities in future releases. As there is significant overlap between the technologies, we are considering to halt further development and then later remove support for Scalix REST-based Messaging Services APIs, which use proprietary interfaces and data formats. If you are using Scalix Messaging Services for your application development, we recommend investigating into updating your code to use CalDAV/WebDAV interfaces instead. No date has been set for this change yet.


Upgrade Notices

Back to top

Please read the following carefully, as some specific actions might be required as you upgrade from earlier versions of Scalix.

 If you are upgrading from a previous version of Scalix, there are several changes of which you should be aware:

If you are upgrading Scalix Connect for Outlook to version 11.3 from any previous version of Scalix Connect for Outlook 11, there are several things to be aware of:

If you are using omldapsync to manage Scalix users and groups through an external directory:

          Change
                        JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jre1.5.0_06
          or
                        JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jre1.5.0_11
          to
                        JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jre1.5.0_13

If you are upgrading your server to Scalix 11.3 from any previous installation of Scalix 11, there are a number of new packages supporting Scalix Server:

If you are using Scalix Community Edition and you are upgrading your server to Scalix 11.3 from any previous version of Scalix, please note that the number of free Premium User licenses has changed from 25 to 10.

Please also check the Scalix 11 Upgrade FAQ on the Scalix Wiki.


New in Scalix 11

Back to top

New Features in Scalix 11.3

Scalix 11.3 provides the following new features:

General

Licensing

Scalix Server

Scalix Messaging Services

Scalix Web Access

Scalix Connect for Outlook (for Scalix "Premium" users only)

New Features in Scalix 11.2

Scalix 11.2 provides the following new features:

General

Server

Scalix Connect for Outlook (for Scalix "Premium" users only)

New Features in Scalix 11.1

Scalix 11.1 provides the following new features:

Scalix Server

Scalix Web Access

Scalix Connect for Outlook (for Scalix "Premium" users only)

Scalix Connect for Evolution

New Features in Scalix 11.0

Scalix 11 includes many new product features and improvements across all product components:

Scalix Mail Server

Scalix Web Access

Scalix Connect for Outlook (for Scalix "Premium" users only)

Mobility

Management and Administration (Scalix Management Console)

Services Architecture

Internationalization and Localization

Scalix Search and Indexing Service

Note: This product includes a 'phone home' feature, which, for Community Edition installations, summarizes basic server and installation information such as platform type and number of users, and periodically sends it back to Scalix via email. This information helps Scalix to track product usage statistically and better plan our upcoming releases. The information is also sent by email to your administrator account so that you can confirm that the content is simple, transparent and non-sensitive. Except where disallowed by local statute, it is a violation of the licensing conditions to disable or circumvent this feature. Installing a Small Business or Enterprise Edition license key deactivates this feature.

Note: Group scheduling features and public folders in Scalix Connect for Evolution are available only to Scalix Premium users, not Standard users.



Bugs fixed in Scalix 11.x

Back to

Fixed in 11.3 U1

The following issues have been addressed in Scalix 11.3 U1:

Scalix Web Access


Fixed in Scalix 11.3

The following issues have been addressed in Scalix 11.3:

Scalix Admin Tools

Scalix Server

Scalix Messaging Services

Scalix Web Access

Scalix Connect for Outlook


Fixed in Scalix 11.2

The following issues have been addressed in Scalix 11.2:

Scalix Admin Tools

Scalix Server

Scalix Messaging Services

Scalix Web Access

Scalix Connect for Outlook

* 'scalix-text-extractors' are only available for Scalix Small Business Edition (SBE) and Scalix Enterprise Edition (EE)


Fixed in Scalix 11.1.0

The following issues have been addressed in Scalix 11.1.0:

Scalix Server

Scalix Messaging Services

Scalix Web Access

Scalix Connect for Outlook

Scalix Installation


Fixed in Scalix 11.0.4

The following issues have been addressed in Scalix 11.0.4:

Scalix Server

Scalix Messaging Services

Scalix Search and Indexing Services

Scalix Web Access

Scalix Connect for Outlook

Scalix Installation

* Indexing of binary attachment types (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, PDF) is only available for Scalix Small Business Edition (SBE) and Scalix Enterprise Edition (EE)
** The Recovery Folder feature is only available for premium users in Scalix Small Business Edition (SBE) and Scalix Enterprise Edition (EE)


Fixed in Scalix 11.0.3

The following issues have been addressed in Scalix 11.0.3:

Scalix Admin Tools

Scalix Server

Scalix Messaging Services

Scalix Web Access

Scalix Connect for Outlook

Scalix Installation

Scalix Migration Tool

* The Scalix Migration Tool (SMT) is a separate product for migrating user data from Exchange 5.5, 2000, 2003 and 2007 to Scalix. Please contact Scalix Sales at info@scalix.com for further information.
** The Recovery Folder feature is only available for premium users in Scalix Small Business Edition (SBE) and Scalix Enterprise Edition (EE)
*** Indexing of binary attachment types (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, PDF) is only available for Scalix Small Business Edition (SBE) and Scalix Enterprise Edition (EE)


Fixed in Scalix 11.0.2.1

The following issues have been addressed in Scalix 11.0.2.1:

Scalix Server


Fixed in Scalix 11.0.2

The following issues have been addressed in Scalix 11.0.2:

Scalix Admin Tools

Scalix Server

Scalix Web Access

Scalix Mobile Web Client

Scalix Connect for Outlook

Scalix Installation


Fixed in Scalix 11.0.1

The following additional issues have been addressed in Scalix 11.0.1:

Scalix Web Access

Scalix Connect for Outlook

Scalix Installation

Scalix Search and Indexing Services

Scalix Server


Fixed in Scalix 11

The following issues have been addressed in this release:

Scalix Admin Tools

Scalix Web Access

Scalix Connect for Outlook

Scalix Server

Scalix Installation

Scalix Active Directory Extensions



Supported Environments

Back to top

Supported Linux Platforms

Scalix 11.3 is supported on the following platforms:

System Requirements

Please check the Scalix Installation guide for current minimum system requirements.

Alert

Note that the choice of storage environments will have a major influence on performance of your Scalix system. Scalix as an application is largely I/O-bound, using variable, small-blocksize random read/write synchronous file I/O.

Also note that Scalix does not support putting a Scalix Message Store on a NFS- or SMB-based storage device such as a NAS Filer. Performance issues and/or Message Store corruption can occur. This is true for all Linux distributions using Linux 2.6.x kernels as the NFS client software in these kernels have known issues with file locking operations, which Scalix heavily relies on.

We suggest putting the Scalix message store on a Hardware RAID Array, using RAID 1+0 for best performance. The use of RAID 5 will result in substantially worse performance due to the nature of Scalix Disk I/O patterns (small, synchronous random writes) and is not recommended. In larger installations, we do recommend using iSCSI- or FibreChannel-based SAN storage. We also recommend the use of battery-backed write cache on the RAID controller where available.



Packaging

Back to top

The Scalix 11.3 Release consists of a self-extracing shell archives for Linux and a separate ZIP file download for the Windows components.

The Copmponents in the package and their respective version numbers are as follows:

Component

Package

Build

Scalix Installer

Linux .bin

11.3.0.77

Scalix Server

Linux .bin

11.3.0.11339

Scalix Character Set Detectors

Linux .bin

1.0.20071031

Scalix Libical

Linux .bin

0.27.20071008

Scalix iconv Extras

Linux .bin

1.2

Scalix Management Services (SAC, RES)

Linux .bin

11.3.0.77

Scalix Messaging Services ("Platform")

Linux .bin

11.3.0.77

Scalix Web Access (SWA)

Linux .bin

11.3.0.97

Scalix Mobile Web Client (Mobile)

Linux .bin

11.3.0.77

Scalix Search and Indexing Services (SIS)

Linux .bin

11.3.0.77

Scalix Text Extractors for Indexing and Search *

Linux .bin

1.0

Scalix DB (Postgres)

Linux .bin

11.3.0.77

Scalix Tomcat Connector

Linux .bin

11.3.0.77

Scalix Tomcat

Linux .bin

5.5.25-57

Scalix Connect for Evolution

Linux .bin

11.3.0.77

Scalix Connect for Outlook

Windows .zip

11.3.0.77

Scalix Migration Tool (SMT) ***

Windows .zip

11.3.0.77

Scalix Active Directory Extensions (ADE) ****

Windows .zip

11.3.0.77


* Text extractors allow the indexing of binary Microsoft Office (Word, Excel and Powerpoint) and PDF documents. They are only available as part of Scalix Small Business Edition (SBE) or Enterprise Edition (EE)
** For Scalix Community Edition downloads, Scalix Connect for Outlook (MAPI) is a separate ZIP-file download.
*** The Scalix Migration Tool is a separately-sold product to migrate eMail, Calendar, Contacts and other objects from Exchange 5.5, 2000, 2003 to Scalix. Please contact Scalix Sales for details.
**** The Scalix Active Directory Extensions are only available as part of Scalix Small Business Edition (SBE) or Enterprise Edition (EE)



Known Issues and Workarounds

Back to top

Installing the Scalix Mail Server requires Linux system administration skills and root access to the server. Coordination with your site networking team is also required to ensure that workstations are able to connect to the server (through TCP/IP sockets) and that the server itself is visible to the network, including any necessary DNS/MX configuration. If the network uses Firewalls and/or VPNs, then additional modifications to the network might be necessary to enable the required network connections to the appropriate ports on the server, as described in the Scalix Installation Guide.

Back to top

Scalix Installer

Issue

Workaround

If you installed SLES 9 on the Scalix server host, the python-gtk-2.0.0-215.1 package automatically installs. This version of the package forces the Scalix Installer to display the following error message:

Error: Please upgrade python-gtk package to version 2.0.0-215.3 or newer, currently installed version 2.0.0-215.1 contains a bug that affects Scalix Installer.

Exit the Scalix installer and use YaST to upgrade the python-gtk package by the means provided by SLES 9.

After installation, the automatic launch of the Scalix Management Console can sometimes be accompanied by a series of error messages saying, "Shell-init: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: No such file or directory." Ignore these messages. The browser launches anyway. (Bug 4754)

None.

Reconfiguring the Messaging Services or the PostgreSQL Database Integration with the Installation Wizard upgrade process can, in some cases, cause users to be locked out when they later try to sign in to the Scalix Mobile Web Client. (Bug 13947)

If the PostgreSQL database password changes, it must also be changed in the file, platform.properties, which is located at <instance>/platform/platform.properties. This requires a restart of Tomcat. If the database is on a separate server from the platform, this change must be done manually.

Windows-based installer for Scalix Connect for Outlook crashes at the end of installation when starting setup.exe from inside a Windows compressed folder even though installation completed successfully. (Bug 14281)

Extract setup.exe from the compressed folder and execute it directly from a normal folder.

Installer quits without warning if "dig" is not available (Bug 15771)

make sure that dig is installed. On most distributions, this is part of the "bind-utils" package.

When replacing an existing Scalix SBE or EE license during upgrade installation, sometimes the Scalix Server is not restarted properly and the license manager will die unexpectedly (Bug 15770)

Check the status of the license monitor using the "omstat -a" command. If not running or aborted, restart the server using "omshut" and "omrc".

 


Back to top

Scalix Mail Server

Issue

Workaround

After upgrading Scalix Mail Server from Scalix 10 to Scalix 11, users with a large number of messages in their email client folders might notice reduced client/server performance when they access the message store. This is caused by upgrades to the message store container file structure that occur when they are next accessed by a user (through the client UAL process or the local delivery service).

To control when the upgrading of the message store happens so that it doesn't slow down mailbox access, shut down the Scalix Mail Server after upgrade and with only the daemons running (omrc -n), run the commands omtidyu and omscan without the fixmode (-f) option. For example, enter: omtidyallu -M and omscan -Aa.


Note: The first time it runs after an upgrade, omscan can take twice as long as is typical because it is upgrading message store containers. Scalix recommends that you perform this task in off hours (nights or weekends) to minimize impact on the Scalix Mail Server.

If you've installed your Scalix system on host(s) running SUSE Linux Enterprise 9 (SLES9), your Outlook users will not be able to take advantage of single sign on because of a flawed Kerberos interaction between SUSE and Microsoft inherent in the Heimdal Kerberos implementation provided with SLES9.

Upgrade to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (SLES10) which uses a MIT Kerberos implementation.

[iCal Information] --

  • Exchange 5.5 does not support iCal, therefore SWA-generated meeting requests and meeting requests sent from Outlook/Exchange using the "Forward as iCalendar" do not work correctly.
  • A cancelled meeting scheduled via iCal shows as "Tentative" rather than "Free".
  • Outlook 2002 (Outlook 10) with an IMAP profile does not recognize iCal messages. The only way Outlook XP will render iCal is if the content type is text/calendar and is the only body type. Most iCal messages are formatted as multipart/alternative. The same messages viewed with OL11/IMAP are correctly processed. Therefore you cannot use Outlook 10 in IMAP mode to connect to a Scalix Mail Server and process iCal type meetings.
  • All-day events across time zones appear in local time and are not marked specifically as all-day.
  • Advanced recurrence patterns are not supported, e.g. every 2 weeks, Tuesday and Sunday (where the week starts on a Monday) or yearly recurrence of the first weekend day of December.
  • Responding to an iCal meeting request and proposing a new time is not supported. Scalix does not currently support the COUNTER method of iCal.
  • Updating text for a series of recurring meetings may fail to display the update where the recurring meeting previously had exceptions.
  • Sending a meeting request from Evolution to Outlook with Scalix loses the "Optional" attendee status. As a result, all attendees appear as "Required".

[iCal Workarounds] --

  • To get full calendaring interoperability between Scalix and Exchange 5.5, use the TNEF route and Outlook as the client.
  • To make a time slot display as "free," manually remove the meeting from the calendar when accepting a cancellation request.
  • This is a Microsoft issue with Outlook 10.

 

 

 

  • None

 

  • None

 

  • None
  • None

If you modify an email user's name while the user is actively connected to the server, the user may not be able to sign on again using SWA or Outlook/Connect. This applies to modifications made both in the Scalix Management Console or the ommodu command on the CLI.

Use SAC or the CLI to verify that the user is logged off before making any modifications. You can then use SAC to modify the user record, or use CLI and issue the following command:

ommodu --requireSignoff -o "<name> "

Where <name> is the user's Scalix name.

If a user's account is moved from one server to another when SmartCache is enabled, local caches do not update with the user's new internal server address.

When a user is moved to a different server, the profile and cache must be recreated.

If using SmartCache in SmartCache mode, when a user's mailbox is moved from one server to another within a multi-Server Scalix Enterprise Edition environment, you must create a new profile on the user's desktop and re-initialize the user's cache.

Create a new profile on the user's desktop and re-initialize the user's cache.

If you use DDVs to store ISO bulletin board subjects, any DDVs that contain 8-bit ISO characters should be moved to the DDVn-TX variants before upgrading to 11.0. Otherwise, upgrade and/or directory synchronisation may fail for these entries.

DDVs that contain 8-bit ISO characters should be moved to the DDVn-TX variants before upgrading to 11.0. On the system where the directory entry is locally owned, use omsearch to extract (e.g. omsearch -e S=bb1 -m DDV1) and ommodent to 'move' it. For example: ommodent -e S=bb1 -n DDV1=/DDV1-TX=<ddv1_value>.

With the 11.0 release, the interchange character set used for storing ORN's has been changed from T61 to UTF8. This means that when communicating with legacy Scalix machines (Scalix 10.0 and earlier) via the Sendmail Interface (SMINTFC), character set conversion needs to take place.

To achieve interoperability with legacy machines, the SMINTFC routes need to be flagged with a new "Version Number" field, which can be set with a new "-v" option to omaddrt/ommodrt and which can be viewed with the pre-existing "-f" option to omshowrt. When creating a NEW route to a Scalix 1.0.x machine, the version number should be set to "0" or "1". If creating a SendMail interface route to another 11.0 machine, the route version should be set to "2". In multi-server environment, if a machine is upgraded to 11.0, initially all interface routes will remain as version 0. But as soon as it receives a message on one of those routes which it detects to be an 11.0 message, then the Sendmail Interface Service automatically upgrades that route to version 2. This way, as other machines in the network are upgraded, Sendmail interface communication continues to work.

In some cases, you may be able to log in to SAC using administrative privileges from a server not registered with SAC. (Bug 14088)

On each server, use a different management domain password (set