Mac Srv: Group Messages w/ Gateway Users May Go to Wrong User (134235)

SYMPTOMS

When you send a message to a Macintosh global group defined on another Macintosh postoffice, and that group contains gateway addresses, the message may go to the wrong gateway user.

This only affects those gateway users who may have been deleted from the originating Macintosh server when those changes did not propagate properly to the downstream servers; Mail for AppleTalk Network users who are deleted do propagate correctly.

CAUSE

Normally, when you delete a user all groups containing that user are automatically updated. For gateway users, the situation is different.

There are a limited number of identifiers for gateway users in Mail for AppleTalk Networks, and when a gateway user is deleted and a new gateway user is added, the ID of the deleted user can be reused for the new address. When this occurs, the group entry may not be removed.

One of two situations may occur:

The old user remains in the group on the downstream server, and any message to the group will go to an unknown user. -or-
The group will contain the new gateway user and not the old, deleted user. As a result, the message goes to the wrong user.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in version 3.1d of Microsoft Mail for AppleTalk Networks. We are researching this problem and will post new information here in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as it becomes available.