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Obsolete Releases => SME Server 6.x => Topic started by: jbaillie on March 16, 2006, 09:01:44 PM

Title: can't reach off site mail server
Post by: jbaillie on March 16, 2006, 09:01:44 PM

Hello,

We have an old E-smith 5.5 that we would like to retire.

We are testing a 6.5 server.

Our mail is hosted on an IMAP server off site and we cannot reach it when using the new server as the default gateway / primary dns server.

Changing the domain from stmarys-school.org to stmarys-school.lan  would probably "fix" the problem but that's just a work-around I'd like to know the right way to get this to work.

Any ideas?

Thank's
John

Title: can't reach off site mail server
Post by: kitnorriss on March 17, 2006, 01:29:28 AM

Hi John,

What is the IMAP server name from which you collect your off-site mail?? If this is "stmarys-school.org" then this would cause the problem.

The reason: your local computers will not be able to determine the difference between the local domain and the remote domain so as soon as it finds one, it stops looking. As a general rule, it finds the local one first.  As you say, by changing the local domain to stmarys-school.lan (or .local for example) then your local computers will be able to determine the difference between local and remote domain and therefore resolve correctly.

I presume you had the same setup working with the old server? Was that setup with .org or .lan??

If the IMAP server you are connecting to runs at the domain "stmarys-school.org" then this is the only fix / work-around.

If it doesn't run from that domain then we'll need some more information to solve it.

Let me know how you get on.  :lol:

Kit Norriss

Title: can't reach off site mail server
Post by: jbaillie on March 17, 2006, 02:54:10 AM

Kit,

Yes the mail server is mail.stmarys-school.org.

I named the new server michael.stmarys-school.org

Our school web site ( www.stmarys-school.org) is off site too, but we are able to hit it through the new server.

The DNS server does not resolve mail.stmarys-school.org so I configured a PC to use another dns server and it resolved the name to an IP but then timed out.

Yes the old server is set up as stmarys-school.lan

With the way we are using this server it's no big deal to change the domain name.

I'd guess I could dig into the config files and add a static route that points to  the mail server but I have never looked under the hood of esmith to see how the templates work.

Thanks for the input,

John