Re: Curious Mail Loop (and brain teaser)

From: Michael A. Abbaticchio (nospam_at_abbaticchio.com)
Date: 09/08/04 

Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2004 23:11:08 -0400

The easiest thing for anyone to tell you is to simply disable automatic
replies ot the internet. But if I were to take a shot at this strange
situation, I would probably guess that the user is using the same Outlook
profile to access both locations. 

-- 
regards,
Michael Abbaticchio
MVP for Microsoft Exchange Server
http://mvps.org/exchange
"Ice Man" <pbeckford-news8151@mailblocks.com> wrote in message
news:vxr%c.83$cf4.60233@news.uswest.net...
> I just experienced an enigmatic mail looping issue, anybody have any ideas
> to keep this from happening again?
>
> Here is the Scenario...
>
> We have a user whom works for my organization and another government
agency,
> both organizations use Exchange 2000 but there is no interoperability
> between our systems other than standard SMTP email through the internet,
not
> same AD root, forest or even remotely similar namespace. We are able to
> induce a loop under the following conditions.:
>
> 1. User has an exchange mailbox at both Organization A & Organization B
> 2. User creates an "Out of the Office" in his Outlook at Organizaton A
that
> includes a rule to forward all email to his account at Organization B.
> (There is only one forward here and no loop should be created.)
>
> 3. User at organization A logs into his outlook at Organization A but does
> NOT turn off his "Out of the Office".
> 4. User at organization A sends a calendar appointment to users at both
> Organization A and B (including himself at Org B).
> 5. User accepts/acknowledges the meeting request in his Outlook at
> Organization B by replying to himself at OrgA.
> 6. Since these are different email systems, the meeting request is not
> automatically added to the calendar at Org B, instead it shows up as an
> email that looks like this:
>
> When: Tuesday, September 07, 2004 4:30 PM-5:00 PM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time
> (US & Canada).
> Where: office and phone
>
> *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
>
> 7. The Reply to the meeting request then hits his OOTO rule at Org A and
is
> automatically forwarded to his Outlook at OrgB.
>
> This is where it gets weird...
>
> 8. This message then gets bounced back to Org A by outlook where the OOTO
> rule forwards back to Org B, and so on, and so on. This happens despite
the
> fact that there are NO rules at Org 2 to send his email to Org 1 (which
> would be the obvious reason for a loop).
>
> 9. Finally, there are NO messages in the users inbox at Organization B but
> tons of NDRs at his mailbox in Organization A.
>
> The obvious solution is to turn off the mail forwarding rule at Org B but
> this is a standard procedure for someone working at two organizations, it
> allows them to use one mailbox.
>
> I have double checked for any rules on the mailbox at Org B including
> alternate recipients, etc but there are none. What am I missing here?
> Permissions on Free Busy info?
>
> Thanks,
> Ice Man
>
>

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