Topic: mail server name

[Ralph Areste]

I have just installed e-smith. I can send and receive mail messages but only when the e-mail client is configures for the pop3 server: "mail.e-smith.mycompany.com" If I enter "mail.mycompany.com" it doesn't work. Is there anything misconfigured?

Thank you,

Ralph

[Dan Brown]

Well, it's hard to say, as "it doesn't work" isn't very informative.  However, it's most likely that whoever's providing DNS service for your domain isn't set up to recognize mail.mycompany.com as your service.

[Ralph Areste]

The message I get is:

The connection to the server has failed. Account: 'mail.mhplace.net', Server: 'mail.mhplace.net', Protocol: POP3, Port: 110, Secure(SSL): No, Socket Error: 10060, Error Number: 0x800CCC0E

The DNS service for my domain is provided by e-smith as I understand, ie, the DNS entry in tcp/ip properties is the address for e-smith server.

[Dan Brown]

Well, you don't quite correctly understand how the e-smith server handles DNS.  It resolves e-smith.mydomain.com locally, but it asks the root servers to resolve mydomain.com (and then caches the result).

In this case, however, the problem is different, as mail.mhplace.net is defined.  mail.mhplace.net is a CNAME for mhplace.net, and is your first-preference MX for mhplace.net.  Setting an MX record to a CNAME is a Bad Thing (tm)--there's an RFC which specifies this, but I don't remember the number.

As an experiment, try setting the mail servers to just mhplace.net (without the mail.) and see if that works.

[Ralph Areste]

Dan Brown wrote:
>
> Well, you don't quite correctly understand how the e-smith
> server handles DNS.  It resolves e-smith.mydomain.com
> locally, but it asks the root servers to resolve mydomain.com
> (and then caches the result).
>
> In this case, however, the problem is different, as
> mail.mhplace.net is defined.  mail.mhplace.net is a CNAME for
> mhplace.net, and is your first-preference MX for
> mhplace.net.  Setting an MX record to a CNAME is a Bad Thing
> (tm)--there's an RFC which specifies this, but I don't
> remember the number.
>
I have to admit I don't have great knowledge of the matter but I will call my isp to have it fixed.

> As an experiment, try setting the mail servers to just
> mhplace.net (without the mail.) and see if that works.

I did it, and I cannot connect to the pop3 or smtp servers.

What makes me think there is something odd about my configuration is that when I go to the "review configuration" section in the e-smith manager, under pop3 and smtp mail servers it says "mail.e-smith.mhplace.net" whereas I would have expected something more like "mail.mhplace.net" which is what appears in the screen shots of the manual.

Also, when I do nslookup I get as Default Server: "e-smith.e-smith.mhplace.net" whereas I would expect something like " e-smith.mhplace.net" This would seem to explain why the e-mail client has to point out to "mail.e-smith.mhplace.net" It's like somehow an extra "e-smith" has been inserted. The person who installed e-smith tells me that he installed an older version, and then upgraded to 4.1 Could it be that the upgrade has something to do with this?

BTW, thanks for all the help.

[Timothée]

I got exactly the same problem! I upgraded from e-smith 4.1 beta2 to 4.1 final.
Maybe someone could give an answer to Ralph's last questions because that could help me too

[David]

Ralph,

As I understand it, e-smith is doing exactly what it is supposed to do.  As long as you are on your local network ie 192.168 etc (or some other private subnet) e-smih handles the network dns by adding the extra e-smith in front of the real domain name.  So for your mail client to work on the private network just use the settings that you can see in the review configuration section.

David

[Des Dougan]

Ralph,

HAve a look at this thread from the Experienced forum:

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=10408.msg39228#msg39228

It explains what you're seeing, and has instructions to get round it.


Des Dougan

[Charlie Brady]

David wrote:

> As I understand it, e-smith is doing exactly what it is
> supposed to do.  As long as you are on your local network ie
> 192.168 etc (or some other private subnet) e-smih handles the
> network dns by adding the extra e-smith in front of the real
> domain name.

Allow me to clarify. What you say is true for version 4.0. In response to many requests, we have removed the "e-smith" subdomain from the internal DNS setting managed by the e-smith server. However, in order to avoid distrupting existing networks, the "e-smith" subdomain is preserved when upgrading. Therefore in version 4.1.1, the local network will be *.domain.name for new installations, but *.e-smith.domain.name for systems which have been upgraded.

The "e-smith" subdomain, however, wasn't there just for show. If the local network is *.domain.name, and specifically, if www.domain.name resolves to the e-smith server IP address, then the local network machines won't be able to locate and access an externally hosted www.domain.name web site. For version 4.0, the solution to this dilemna was to insert the "e-smith" subdomain for the local network. This behaviour can still be set up with version 4.1.1, by doing:

/sbin/e-smith/db configuration set LocalDomainPrefix "e-smith."
/sbin/e-smith/signal-event console-save

And if you have upgraded to 4.1.1 and wish to remove the "e-smith" subdomain, you can do it with:

/sbin/e-smith/db configuration set LocalDomainPrefix ""
/sbin/e-smith/signal-event console-save

If you have www.domain.name hosted at an external web site, you can make that site visible to the local network machines by entering the IP address for the externally hosted website alongside www.domain.name in the Hostnames and addresses page of the e-smith manager.

> So for your mail client to work on the private
> network just use the settings that you can see in the review
> configuration section.

This remains true.

Regards

Charlie