Notes client is spamming the Domino console

Wednesday, April 17, 2024 at 4:22 PM UTC

This is something we experienced for quite a while with several versions of the Notes client on different systems: the Notes client randomly tries to access known servers in the environment (aka servers with a connection document in the names.nsf).

I never understood the strategy behind the client trying to access a "server A" when this isn't even the mail server of the used location after login, especially when the ID is not even allowed on "server A". Ok, I live with that for decades and sometimes it helps to nuke the $Saved... fields in the location document(s). But this is another story.

The story I want to tell with this post is the following: we randomly see Notes trying to access a "server X" where the currently used notes ID (defined in the location being used) is not cross-certified. This results in messages like this on the console:

04/15/2024 10:05:06 AM  NINTERA/BoosVarel from host [37.32.103.7:59371] failed to authenticate: The server's Domino Directory does not contain any cross certificates capable of authenticating you.
04/15/2024 10:05:06 AM  NINTERA/BoosVarel from host [37.32.103.7:59374] failed to authenticate: The server's Domino Directory does not contain any cross certificates capable of authenticating you.
04/15/2024 10:05:06 AM  NINTERA/BoosVarel from host [37.32.103.7:59375] failed to authenticate: The server's Domino Directory does not contain any cross certificates capable of authenticating you.
04/15/2024 10:05:10 AM  NINTERA/BoosVarel from host [37.32.103.7:59377] failed to authenticate: The server's Domino Directory does not contain any cross certificates capable of authenticating you.
04/15/2024 10:05:10 AM  NINTERA/BoosVarel from host [37.32.103.7:59379] failed to authenticate: The server's Domino Directory does not contain any cross certificates capable of authenticating you.
04/15/2024 10:05:10 AM  NINTERA/BoosVarel from host [37.32.103.7:59380] failed to authenticate: The server's Domino Directory does not contain any cross certificates capable of authenticating you.
04/15/2024 10:05:18 AM  NINTERA/BoosVarel from host [37.32.103.7:59385] failed to authenticate: The server's Domino Directory does not contain any cross certificates capable of authenticating you.

As you can see these connection attempts happen frequently and within seconds. These also come in waves, so for a few seconds there is a relief. These messages are from a server, where the named ID is not cross certified - and it will never be. The location document does not contain anything that points to this server, so why the hell is Notes trying to access it? The client is doing this in the background, there is no user interaction during those bombardments. If the message appears in the client when I try to access this server with the wrong ID, then this is fine though.

Workaround

I opened a case for this and the only workaround to avoid this situation is to use location documents for each user ID potentially being used and connections documents that are restricted to certain locations, like this:

My question is: did you experience this, too or similar? Let me know in the comments what was the reason and also what you did to solve this.






Latest comments to this post

Richard Schwartz wrote on 23.04.2024, 17:39

Could it be that someone put an icon on his desktop for a replica of a database on that server, and the desktop is trying to update the count of unread marks?

 

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Glen Urban wrote on 18.04.2024, 09:46

Grouping your servers in different "Notes named networks" may prevent this.

If you do this then you need to setup connection documents if you want to route mail between the different "Notes named networks".

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