Topic: rookie setup problems for new user

[Gord Laiken]

I'm a new user to e-smith server/gateway version 3.1 that I downloaded a couple of weeks ago (before version 4.0 was officially released). The install of a server/gateway mode dial up access went very well compared to my experiences with other more complicated distributions of Linux. However, I have not been able to resolve the following "problems" and would appreciate being pointed in the right direction:

a) There is a cosmetic problem with the Time of Day settings on my PC. I test e-smith on a P133 32meg with a swappable hard drive (so that I do not destroy my old Win95 system). When I run the "set date and time", from a Win95 P90 PC on the network, I have tried a couple time zones that sound appropriate (eg EST5EDT) and the time while running e-smith is fine. When I plug the Win95 hard drive back into the P133 after my e-smith testing, the BIOS time of day has been moved 4 hours ahead. My correct time zone is Eastern Standard Time currently on Daylight Savings Time.

b) A more annoying problem is with the Dial On Demand option. My expectation is that the phone line should be freed up when there is no activity. However, the e-smith software out of the box, appears to connect at server boot time and remains connected. Otherwise, the MS Internet Explorer works amazingly well with a 56K modem shared between two IE clients.

c) The most serious problem is that I cannot configure Outlook Express to access the mail server on e-smith. I followed the instructions in the manual but get messages that it could not find the "mail.domainname.com". Since I do not want to involve my ISP until I know that e-smith server will work for me, I tried to fake the DNS server by
coding a C:WINDOWSSYSTEMHOSTS file with the appropriate entry. At one point I was able to ping to the domainname.com address but even that is not working right now. I can ping to 192.168.1.1 (the e-smith server). Must I have a real DNS server do the translation? Appendix 7 of the manual "transitioning from a prior email system" suggests that want I'm trying to do should work.

d) I cannot figure out how to use/access the LDAP directory settings in my Outlook Express

[Dan Brown]

a.  This problem is caused by the fact that e-smith, like many other Linux systems, wants your PC's internal clock set to GMT.  I don't know if anything can be done about it.

b.  I experience the same thing.  In my case, it's good, but it still isn't what I understand it should be doing.  I don't know if 4.0 changes this; I haven't installed it on my "production" machine yet.

c.  If your windows system thinks that "mail.mydomain.com" is 192.168.1.1, you should be fine.  If you add a line to c:windowshosts that says "192.168.1.1 mail.mydomain.com", that should do the trick.  Alternatively, you could just set the mail server to 192.168.1.1.

d.  Can't help you on this one, sorry.

[Gord Laiken]

Thanks Dan. You were exactly right about the HOSTS file. I had been modifying a copy in the wrong directory. When I corrected the one in the c:windows directory I got addressability. However, now my problem is that Outlook authorizing my new users' passwords is failing. I've tried removing and setting up new users without resetting their passwords and using "default" or resetting the passwords to something unique. The Admin password does not fail when connecting from Outlook, but it cannot find the files. This may have been because I was not logged into Win95 as Admin. Any ideas?

[Charlie Brady]

Dan Brown wrote:

> a.  This problem is caused by the fact that e-smith, like many
> other Linux systems, wants your PC's internal clock set to
> GMT. I don't know if anything can be done about it.

You don't want to do anything about it. The only way that your operating system can know for sure what time it is is to run on UTC (formerly known as GMT). Unfortunately, Microsoft didn't understand this simple fact. This has been the cause of much frustration for many people...

Also, since daylight savings time changes occur from year to year and place to place, your BIOS cannot be expected to correct for daylight savings time.

Regards

Charlie

[Charlie Brady]

> b) A more annoying problem is with the Dial On Demand option. > My expectation is that the phone line should be freed up
> when there is no activity.

Indeed you should expect that. So I guess you must have some activity. We don't yet have a good display to show you all
network activity, but you can see a list of active network connections if you log into a console as root (use the admin password), and type:

netstat -t
netstat -M

However, see my next answer to your other problem - perhaps DNS queries is what is keeping your connection active.

Regards

Charlie

[Charlie Brady]

> The most serious problem is that I cannot configure Outlook
> Express to access the mail server on e-smith. I followed
> the instructions in the manual but get messages that it could
> not find the "mail.domainname.com".

If you have configured your e-smith server correctly, and have configured your Windows machines to use the e-smith server as the DNS provider, then you should be able to resolve "mail.domainname.com" (using e-smith 3.1).

If you upgrade to 4.0 - and I recommend that you do - then the name that you will need to resolve is "mail.e-smith.domainname.com".

Charlie