Topic: Newbie can't get email

[Rod]

I'm new to e-smith and linux. Set it up last week and everything seems fine except I can't send or receive email thru the gateway (DSL connection). When I disconnect my Windows PC from the network and use use dial-up, I can send and receive mail. Is there a way to check to make sure port 110 is open? I can't see a way around the text-based control consol and if I did get around it, would I be looking at a linux command prompt? The thought scares me. Is there some kind of friendly user interface in my linux box?

Rod

[Graham]

Rod, you need to be looking at the web interface to e-Smith
or the console.

Read the manual. Use Internet Exploiter and navigate to :-

http://192.168.1.1/e-smith-manager

(replace IP address with your own if you changed it at install time)

You _should_ see a nice webtop interface : )

Set up your mail program (Outlook Depressed) with a new account
called e-Smith and choose that IP as the POP3 AND SMTP server.

All being well you should be able to send some test mail.

At the console there is an interafce to most of the services. You could
have selected that at install time (The install routine asks you if you want to automagically display the consle at boot up) If you didnt and you have ended
up at at the command prompt nav to /sbin/e-smith/

Type cd/    
cd /sbin      
cd e-smith  
./console    

Hope this helps !

ps Its a good idea to brush up on some basic Linux / Unix commands !!

[Rick]

Rod, are you trying to access your regular pop3 email account from your isp?

if so it is the config of your client machine that you need to look at not the e-smith box, if this is the case let me know and I may be able to point you in the right direction.

Rick

[Rod]

Yes, I'm trying to get mail off my ISP mail server. I can still get it with dial-up but not thru the gateway. Do I need to change my settings in my mail program (Eudora) to look to e-smith for the the mail?

Rod

[Rick]

no, you need to add a dns entry in your in tcp/ip settings for the network card on your windows machines and then your mail program will know where to look externally for your mail server. for windows go to network places/ configuration/ dns cofiguration and enable dns. supply a host name (whatever doesn't matter what you call it) then add your isp's domain in the the section marked "domain suffix search order" click add ok and then reboot. that should get you working, if you are after a quick fix or a temporary one if you don't have the domain details, open a command prompt and ping your mail servers to obtain the ip addresses and substitute the pop and smtp server names with ip addresses instead. this method also works fine however some isp's have a habit of changing the ip addresses of their mail servers from time to time which would stop it from working, as such adding the dns info to your network card is the better way to do it as the domain won't change

[Rod]

Rick,

I tweaked the TC/IP DNS setting for my Win98 machine's network card. DNS was already enabled. The host name was set as bambauer, the domain was ocis.net (my isp) the DNS Server Search Order was set as 209.52.173.1. There was no Domain Suffix Search Order set, so I entered and added ocis.net (didn't work) then tried my ISP's mail server - mail.ocis.net. That didn't work after a reboot either.
Do you have any other ideas? I'm willing to try anything and really appreciate any help you can give me and will supply any settting info that you might need to help me. My ISP told me it was my problem and I was on my own.

Rod

[Des Dougan]

Try taking out everything except host name. The e-smith DHCP server provides DNS services, so there should be no need to add anything else to the TCP/IP properties.


Des Dougan

[Dan Brown]

Des is right; if you've configured your win9x box to obtain an IP address automatically, then the relevant settings should be automagically configured--you don't even need the host name, actually.

By default, you would be able to access your ISP's mail servers through the e-smith server--it doesn't do anything to block those ports.  You'll need to try a few things to determine where the problem is.

First, from a command prompt on your Windoze box, type "ping mail.myisp.com" (or whatever the name of your ISP's mail server is).  If this fails, try it from the command line on your e-smith box.

If you're able to ping the server from your client machine, go to start\run and enter "telnet mail.myisp.com 110" (again using the actual address of your ISP's pop server).  If it connects, try to log in.  Enter "user [your username]" and "pass [your password]" and see how it responds.  Again, if this fails, try it from the command line on your e-smith box.

Good luck!

[Rod]

I've deleted all the TC/IP settings for my NIC in my PC execpt host. Everything still works fine except email. The ping for my ISP mail server was 0ms which leads me to believe the ping never really left my office. The dial-up pings at 92ms. For telenet, all I got was @localhost. (dial-up connected, but for some reason I wasn't able to enter any commands) After reading the manual, I'm still not aware of a method to get to a command line on my e-smith box to do the other tests you suggested. Is there an area at the e-smith site that discusses this feature and how to use it?

Rod

[Ross Laver]

> After reading the manual, I'm still not aware of a method to get to a command line on my e-smith box to do the other tests you suggested.

It's here:

http://www.e-smith.org/docs/manual/4.1/admin-misc.html

Ross