HAproxy Errors and No Logging

Basically, you’re running HAproxy 1.7.x on Debian/Ubuntu and have no logging under /var/log or you’re getting log files full of errors like:

haproxy-systemd-wrapper [26417] sendmsg logger #2 failed: Connection refused

There are many reasons for this problem, but most of the solutions are related to standard setups, which means if you have version 1.7 by the time this post is published, you’re not getting the binaries through standard apt-get libraries. Thus, you don’t have standard setup ;)

Anyway, if you’ve installed version 1.7 directly, then simply remove it, and remove pointers in apt-get libraries to its source.

Install version 1.6 from the standard libraries, and test the functionality of HAproxy, then test the functionality of the logging.

Finally, you can upgrade to version 1.7 and logs will keep working for you.

Don’t ask me why, I don’t have time to find the root cause :)

HTH

Change Password on OWA Using UPN

Exchange 2013/2016 OWA allows users to change their passwords, and additionally, helps administrators to force users to change their passwords.
After first login, and when the user tries to use UPN on password change page, OWA will return an error saying username/password combination is not correct. Which is not true, but OWA tells the user to use the format domain\username not the UPN.
This is because the home directory (OWA Virtual Directory) is configured to use that format for authentication. Although it’s ok to use UPN to login, for some reason the DLL file responsible for the password change is not able to tolerate that format.
Changing OWA virtual directory authentication settings to use UPN format will solve this issue for your users.
HTH,

Exchange 2016 Readiness Checks Error

I’m not an expert of Exchange, but I wasn’t able to find something clear in the documentation saying I must install new Exchange server (2016) on the same site as existing one (2013) and move it later!

Anyway, the list of errors I got in the Readiness Checks page wasn’t useful at all. However, looking at the ExchangeSetup log file was.

If you are receiving something like:

Global updates need to be made to Active Directory, and this user account isn’t a member of the ‘Enterprise Admins’ group

Or

You must be a member of the ‘Organization Management’ role group or a member of the ‘Enterprise Admins’ group to continue

And you’re sure the account running the setup has these rights, then most likely you’re trying to install the first Exchange server of this version on AD site that has no Exchange servers at all.

My solution, actually it was a work around, was simply to move domain controllers to a site with Exchange servers, remove the subnet from AD Sites and Services, and reboot the new Exchange server.

After 15 minutes, just enough time for AD replication to take place, I logged in again to the server and started the Exchange setup, and it works just fine.

HTH

Domain Controller Status Unavailable

When running MMC with any AD management component inside it, and try to switch to another server you may notice sometimes the status shows “Unavailable”.

Most likely this is due to IPv6 not fully disabled, or not fully enabled (if you decide to run it), and you will need to update the registry value as per Microsoft article:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/929852/how-to-disable-ipv6-or-its-components-in-windows

HTH