ZCS Child Accounts

[msmcknight]

Hi everyone,

I am trying to implement child accounts and I cannot get them to work. I am using ZCS OS 5.0.16 on RH5.3.

I issue the following commands:

$ zmprov ga michael@zimbra.example.com|grep zimbraId
zimbraId: 98d03d12-d123-4bd7-bd2f-ea8ee461b39c
zimbraIdentityMaxNumEntries: 20

$ zmprov ma test01@zimbra.example.com +zimbraChildAccount 98d03d12-d123-4bd7-bd2f-ea8ee461b39c

$ zmprov ma test01@zimbra.example.com +zimbraPrefChildVisibleAccount 98d03d12-d123-4bd7-bd2f-ea8ee461b39c

When I log into the test01 account, I do NOT see michael's mail. When I go to Preferences-->Accounts, I see the account listed as a "secondary", but if I select the account (ie. simply click on it), it changes to "primary".

The interesting thing is that when I try to exit preferences, it asks me if I want to save my changes -- even though I have not changed anything. Keep in mind, I didn't change "secondary" to "primary"... it did it all by itself. Anyway, if I click on "yes" to save the changes, I get a red balloon message that says: "no such identity." If I click "no", I can exit back to my mailbox without error... still no child account access, but no error either.

When I look in /opt/zimbra/log/mailbox.log, I see:

2009-07-03 00:53:23,447 INFO  [btpool0-522] [name=test01@zimbra.example.com;mid=3;ip=10.1.1.45;ua=ZimbraWebClient - FF3.0 (Win)/5.0.16_GA_2921.RHEL5;] soap - BatchRequest
2009-07-03 00:53:23,447 INFO  [btpool0-522] [name=test01@zimbra.example.com;mid=3;ip=10.1.1.45;ua=ZimbraWebClient - FF3.0 (Win)/5.0.16_GA_2921.RHEL5;] soap - (batch) ModifyIdentityRequest
2009-07-03 00:53:23,540 INFO  [btpool0-522] [name=test01@zimbra.example.com;mid=3;ip=10.1.1.45;ua=ZimbraWebClient - FF3.0 (Win)/5.0.16_GA_2921.RHEL5;] SoapEngine - handler exception
com.zimbra.cs.account.AccountServiceException: no such identity: 
ExceptionId:btpool0-522:1246596803539:5f5fe942b8af5a89
Code:account.NO_SUCH_IDENTITY
        at com.zimbra.cs.account.AccountServiceException.NO_SUCH_IDENTITY(AccountServiceException.java:203)
        at com.zimbra.cs.service.account.ModifyIdentity.handle(ModifyIdentity.java:60)
        at com.zimbra.soap.SoapEngine.dispatchRequest(SoapEngine.java:429)
        at com.zimbra.soap.SoapEngine.dispatch(SoapEngine.java:276)
        at com.zimbra.soap.SoapEngine.dispatch(SoapEngine.java:160)
        at com.zimbra.soap.SoapServlet.doPost(SoapServlet.java:275)
        at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:727)
        at com.zimbra.cs.servlet.ZimbraServlet.service(ZimbraServlet.java:190)
        at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:820)
        at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHolder.handle(ServletHolder.java:487)
        at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler$CachedChain.doFilter(ServletHandler.java:1093)
        at org.mortbay.servlet.UserAgentFilter.doFilter(UserAgentFilter.java:81)
        at org.mortbay.servlet.GzipFilter.doFilter(GzipFilter.java:132)
        at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler$CachedChain.doFilter(ServletHandler.java:1084)
        at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler.handle(ServletHandler.java:360)
        at org.mortbay.jetty.security.SecurityHandler.handle(SecurityHandler.java:216)
        at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.SessionHandler.handle(SessionHandler.java:181)
        at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.ContextHandler.handle(ContextHandler.java:716)
        at org.mortbay.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext.handle(WebAppContext.java:406)
        at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.ContextHandlerCollection.handle(ContextHandlerCollection.java:211)
        at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.HandlerCollection.handle(HandlerCollection.java:114)
        at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.HandlerWrapper.handle(HandlerWrapper.java:139)
        at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.rewrite.RewriteHandler.handle(RewriteHandler.java:350)
        at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.HandlerWrapper.handle(HandlerWrapper.java:139)
        at org.mortbay.jetty.Server.handle(Server.java:313)
        at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpConnection.handleRequest(HttpConnection.java:506)
        at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpConnection$RequestHandler.content(HttpConnection.java:844)
        at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpParser.parseNext(HttpParser.java:644)
        at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpParser.parseAvailable(HttpParser.java:211)
        at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpConnection.handle(HttpConnection.java:381)
        at org.mortbay.io.nio.SelectChannelEndPoint.run(SelectChannelEndPoint.java:396)
        at org.mortbay.thread.BoundedThreadPool$PoolThread.run(BoundedThreadPool.java:442)

Anyone out there have any ideas what might be going on? Am I doing something wrong, or is this feature broken in 5.0.16?

Thanks,
Michael

[msmcknight]

Anyone out there have any tips on this one? I have several users who really need access to child accounts and I can't get it to work.

Thanks again to you all,
-Michael

[UMDjwain]

You can try the alternate method listed here:

Personas show as "On Behalf Of"

One side effect I've found of using this method though- it gives the parent user two 'Calendar' named calendar entries which can cause issues with color coding if they are using one color for their 'Calendar' and another for the child 'Calendar' (new entries will show up with the color of child's 'Calendar' although they are attached to parent's 'Calendar').

[msmcknight]

Using the alternate method (zmmailbox sharing), how to I create a persona for the parent account that refers to the child account?

When I try to create an alias, it wont let me since the child account already exists. I cant seem to create a persona that can use the childs email address.

Access to the folders seems to work, but all the outbound mail is sent with the parents email address.

What I am looking for is when the childs folder is highlighted (or any sub-folders) then all outbound emails will say they are from the child. If the parents folders are selected, then the parents email address would be used. Is this possible?

Think of it like how thunderbird manages multiple accounts. When the account is selected, its as if you are in that account.

Thanks again,
Michael

[UMDjwain]

Originally Posted by msmcknight

Using the alternate method (zmmailbox sharing), how to I create a persona for the parent account that refers to the child account?

When I try to create an alias, it wont let me since the child account already exists. I cant seem to create a persona that can use the childs email address.

Access to the folders seems to work, but all the outbound mail is sent with the parents email address.

What I am looking for is when the childs folder is highlighted (or any sub-folders) then all outbound emails will say they are from the child. If the parents folders are selected, then the parents email address would be used. Is this possible?

Think of it like how thunderbird manages multiple accounts. When the account is selected, its as if you are in that account.

Thanks again,
Michael

As long as you've removed the zimbraChildAccount and zimbraPrefChildVisibleAccount attributes that you set up in the beginning (redo the commands with a - instead of a +), if you share with the zmmailbox method, then you can set up the persona and the parent can send using the child's e-mail address.

[Rich Graves]

I'm using child accounts on 5.0.16. Some added in 5.0.11, some new.

When I log into the test01 account, I do NOT see michael's mail.

Are you sure you know where to look? It wasn't obvious from the blog post. There should be a new bar immediately above the mini-calendar in lower left.

When I go to Preferences-->Accounts, I see the account listed as a "secondary", but if I select the account (ie. simply click on it), it changes to "primary".

Cute bug. I see that too. In my case, it doesn't seem to be causing harm, but I was careful to hit "Cancel."

[msmcknight]

Holy crap... Rich, you are the man.

I feel like a complete idiot. When looking at the blog, it looked like all of the accounts would show up at the top of the window, not down by the calendar. I never even looked for them there!

Thanks!

[msmcknight]

As for the inability to manage Personas once the child account has been added, there appears to be two bug reports... one I created and an older one...

Bug 35294 – Unable to add personas when zimbraPrefChildVisibleAccount is associated to the account

Bug 39259 – Child Account problems with Persona management

If anyone else is bitten by this, please vote for these bugs.

Thanks,
Michael