Overview

This article describes the process to follow when the GFI MailEssentials AntiSpam Quarantine or Greylisting database is corrupt.

Environment

• GFI MailEssentials.
• All supported environments.

Root Cause

GFI MailEssentials uses Microsoft ESE (Extensible Storage Engine) databases for the Quarantine feature and for the Greylisting feature. The ESE database may get corrupted. In the case of Greylisting, no important information would get lost if the database gets corrupted and when a new Greylisting database is created, MailEssentials will only need to learn the triplets from scratch. If the Quarantine database gets corrupted however it might be the case that false positive SPAM emails would be lost.

Process

A tool called esentutl.exe can be used to repair the database. The following procedure explains how to use this Microsoft Windows Utility to repair the GFI MailEssentials Quarantine database:

1. Stop the GFI MailEssentials Managed Attendant service.
2. Go to Start >Run > type %temp% and delete all JET*.tmp files in this and the parent TEMP folder (sometimes %temp% opens to a subfolder of the TEMP folder).
3. Create a backup of the Quarantine Store database (or the Greylisting database if required).
   • By default, Quarantine is located in:
     \GFI\MailEssentials\Antispam\Quarantine\quarantine.edb
   • By default, greylisting.db is located in:
     \GFI\MailEssentials\Antispam\data\greylisting.db
4. From the command prompt, change the path to the folder of the Quarantine Store database or Greylist database.
5. To repair the database, enter the following command: esentutl /p databasename.edb
   NOTE: The name of the Quarantine Store database configured in Quarantine Settings is databasename.
6. A warning message appears indicating that this process should only be performed on the corrupted database file.
7. Click on OK to start the integrity check.
8. Once completed, start the GFI MailEssentials Managed Attendant service again and access the Quarantine Management user interface.