XCON: Messages Sent to a Group Are Not Distributed to Users Who Are Members of Their Primary Group (318511)
The information in this article applies to:
- Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server
This article was previously published under Q318511 SYMPTOMS
If you send a message to either a security group or a distribution group, the message is delivered only to recipients that are explicitly stamped as members of that group. If the group is also a user's primary group, the user is not explicitly listed as a member of that group, and the message is not delivered to that user.
CAUSE
The categorizer is responsible for the expansion of group membership. After the categorizer obtains the list of working global catalogs, the categorizer uses Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) to query the global catalog for the member attribute of the group. Group membership is enumerated and the message is sent to all of the recipients that are explicitly contained in the member attribute.
If you send messages to members of a distribution group and the member attribute for the group is "null" (which is a valid state), the message is not sent to any recipients. If the member attribute for the group does not contain a complete list of members, the message is sent to the incomplete list of members if a particular member attribute is missing.
If the LDAP lookup procedure to the global catalog finds the group object, a non-delivery report (NDR) is not generated for the message.
To support groups that have a very large number of members like the Domain Users group (or the Domain Computers group), Directory Service performs a type of optimization known as the primary group optimization. If a group is marked as a user object's primary group, the membership in the group is not stored explicitly; however, membership is considered implicit. Do not use the primary group of a user to send mail to that user because the primary group membership is not explicitly stamped as a member.
WORKAROUND
To work around this issue, use the primary group of a user for administrative purposes only. Use any group other than the primary group to distribute e-mail. It is recommended that you use universal distribution groups.
STATUS
The behavior of the categorizer is by design.
Modification Type: | Minor | Last Reviewed: | 4/25/2005 |
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Keywords: | kbprb KB318511 |
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