Topic: Problem accessing Hotmail

[Jeff Nelson]

Hi all,

We are having a problem accessing Hotmail from behind our e-smith server.  The clients are eight Win9x machines running Netscape Communicator 4.05.  I have set the e-smith server as the gateway and proxy.  The Hotmail login screen comes up, but any subsequent screen gives a DNS error message.  

We were having this problem before, when we were running Winproxy.  Usually, Hotmail could be accessed normally only from the machine running the proxy server software.  Of course, now that option is not open to us because I'm not going to install X and Communicator on our nice, lean e-smith server!  

Does anybody have any ideas?  

Jeff Nelson

[Joseph Morrison]

Hello Jeff,

Has your ISP provided the IP addresses for primary and secondary DNS servers? If so, have you entered them into the e-smith manager (under "name and domain settings")?

If you enter these IP addresses into the e-smith manager, it will do DNS lookups via those IP addresses first. Alternatively, if you leave the two addresses blank in the e-smith manager, then the e-smith server will do DNS lookups directly.

Try it both ways (this sounds like it could be DNS related). Let us know what happens.

- Joe

p.s. Are there any other sites you have trouble reaching from your Windows machines?

[Jeff Nelson]

Thanks for the help.  I think we solved the problem with Hotmail by disabling proxy services in the preferences of the Web browser on the client machines, and entering the e-smith server's IP address as the DNS server in the Network control panel.  

We may still be having some DNS problems, however.  Some of our students are trying to access a Web-based class registration program at BYU in Utah and are getting DNS errors.  

Our ISP did give us a primary (but not secondary) DNS, so I'll try entering that in the e-smith config and see if it helps.  

Chao,
Jeff

[Charlie Brady]

Jeff Nelson wrote:

>  The Hotmail login screen comes up, but
> any subsequent screen gives a DNS error message.

Please tell me exactly what the DNS error is and I might be able to guess what the problem is.

Charlie