Koozali.org: home of the SME Server
Legacy Forums => General Discussion (Legacy) => Topic started by: Rich on December 09, 2003, 05:46:10 AM
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Has anyone here had experience with MS Small Business Server. I am having trouble configuring it to look past itself for its own domain name.
For instance, a user on a client desktop cannot use internet explorer to look up his own web site, which is hosted externally.
Where in the many areas that you can change settings should i tell it to look at an external ip address or the e-smith proxy?
Does anyone have any good resources (besides mircosoft.com), or book recommendations for someone who may have to go to the dark side for a while.
(never used any MS Server products before so please be gentle on my already befuddled brain)
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hi,
i use sme as gateway, file server, and web server with a Small B. Server.
On the SBS, i have stop the dns service, the dhcp service.
On Workstation :
a) In Internet Explorer, i set the Internet Proxy adresse of my SME (port 3128) and all is good.
b) In network parameters, i set the adresse of sme in gateway parameters.
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Hello!
For one you are using the wrong forum for asking questions about other products. However I shall give you an answer.
Your clients get there Ip from the DHCP Server, which in your case will be most probably the SBS. If you open the DHCP Manager in SBS, then here you are able to set options for the dhcp clients. Among these options is default gateway, and dns server.
If you set these to the ip address of your SME server - which I presume is your proxy server, then you will find that when the clients have renewed there ip address then I can use the internet.
Yours
Schotty
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While the above responses are correct, you may run into problems on your clients if you do not point them at the SBS for DNS, i.e.
Your clients probably won't be able to log onto the exchange server (spit) if you want to use it.
Your clients will be SSSSSSSLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW to log onto the window domain.
Group Policy (if you use it) will not work.
The best way to fix this is as follows:
1) Go into the DHCP manager on teh SBS and set the SBS to be the DNS server again.
2) Go into the DNS manager on the SBS and check to make sure it doesn't think its a root server (Look for an entry called "." in the forward lookup zones) - If its there, delete it, close DNS manager and restart the DNS server Service then go back into the DNS manager.
3) R-Click properties on the Server and go to forwarders.
4) Enter the Internal IP of your SME box as a forwarder
5) Under Forward Lookup zones go into domain folder you are concerned with eg "company.co.uk"
Create a new Host record (A) call it WWW and give the IP address of the server on which the companies website is hosted.
This will cause the SBS to resolve LOCAL queries itself, if it doesn't recognise a domain it will forward th request to the SME box for resolution. If you try to go to www.company.co.uk it has a static record telling it where to go.
If you get any problems, let me know.
Nick
Network Consultant
Networking Systems Ltd.
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Thanks guys,
Nick especially,
I know it's not exactly the right place to ask but i knew that someone here would have the correct answer. (and i am using e-smith as a proxy server so technically....)
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Hello!
I dont quite agree with this. The clients would not be slow at all! If the clients would be slow then this would indeed not have anything at all to do with dns!!!
Since when would dns actually speed up an intern network - ie. one location with only one domain???
The way you describe would most probably be better if more locations were involved. It involves though using two dns servers, which in my way of thinking is just a case of more work and more points of failures.
I have a setup of SBS 4.5; Ip-cop and SME server.
IP-Cop handles the proxy/firewall (with DNS)
SME Server handles the Mail and a couple of admin shares,
and the SBS Server has shares, SQL, WINS server and makes the domain.
With this setup there is absolutly no speed cutbacks.
If I am wrong somewhere then I would love to hear from you!!
Schotty
P.s Exchange is useable too, but its not doing much now. Everything has been migrated to SME Server.
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Ahhh. Sorry Schotty, I didn't clarify
I was referring to either A win2000 or 2003 SBS.
If you're running an NT4 based SBS then yes you don't need DNS on the server, but if you run a 2k or 2k3 based server, and 2k or xp clients they NEED DNS on the Server or else you will experience the problems I outlined above.
Also the Clients won't be Slow to run, Just Slow to *log on* or won't log on at all in some cases.
:)
Nick
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Ok Mate thanks!
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This all assumes that the SME was set up as the PDC right?
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No the SBS would be the PDC.
.....
That said, since 2Kserver there's no such thing as PDC's and BDC's, Just Domain Controlers and Member servers.
Trust Microsoft to keep changing things whenever they like it! :)
Nick
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Nick Critten wrote:
> I was referring to either A win2000 or 2003 SBS.
>
> If you're running an NT4 based SBS then yes you don't need
> DNS on the server, but if you run a 2k or 2k3 based server, and
> 2k or xp clients they NEED DNS on the Server or else you will
> experience the problems I outlined above.
>
> Also the Clients won't be Slow to run, Just Slow to *log on*
> or won't log on at all in some cases.
I can confirm that the above is true from my experience. XP clients get very slow in the described situation. I was able to solve this problem by specifying the Win2K machine as the DNs primary server on the XP client, and log on with that configuration only once or twice, and then replace it with the IP address of the SME server as the primary dns.
Doing this on many XP clients, I found that the log on speed will be back to normal and at the same time, I can still use SME server as the primary dns for the XP clients.
Best regards,
Samer Pharaon
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Nicks solution is will work, I went through this with AD2000 and all 2k clients. Nice write up Nick.
Ryan
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No Worries :)
Glad to be of service.
Now all I have to do is find someone who knows how to get Outlook Web Access to work........ Hmmm.
Nick
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> Now all I have to do is find someone who knows how to get Outlook Web Access to work
>
Try to use proxypass contrib and redirect web URL to internal web server where Web Outlook (or is it LookOut? :-)) is running.
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Thanks Boris, but my problem is with the Micro$haft product itself.
Typical Bill Gates product, It doesn't work, and doesn't tell me why either.
Buuut Its a M$ only problem so I wont Contaminate this BB with it any further :))
Nick
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Replace it with SUSE OpenExchange server. You LookOut users won't even notice substitute. :-)
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Trust me I would LOVE to do that, But it would involve them spending money, and is therefore not going to happen.
All I keep getting is: "When is the WebMail going to work?, When is the WebMail going to work?, When is the WebMail going to work?"
And the thing is I'm completely stumped!
If I had had my way when the Job was specced out I would have put in an SME box, but unfortunately someone else specced the job and supplied an SBS then expected me to sort it all out!
Bloody typical. :)
Nick
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Nick Critten wrote:
>> All I keep getting is: "When is the WebMail going to work?,
> When is the WebMail going to work?, When is the WebMail going
> to work?"
>
> And the thing is I'm completely stumped!
>
Did you ever get this working? I'm trying to do something similar. I have a client running SBS2000 and using SME5.6 as the gateway. OWA working fine internally.
I've used the PortForwarding contrib to forward ports 80 and 81 (for testing) to port 80 on the SBS. I get the authentication screen but can't log in.
I've tried the different login settings in the IIS control panel for the Exchange 'website', including plain text authorisation. I also found details of other ports to open to allow authentication (UDP 135-139, I think). I also forwarded them, but without luck.
As a desperate measure I even used the PortForward contrib to redirect all ports on the SME on to the SBS server (just long enough to test!). Still get the login screen & then fail to authenticate.
Anyone got any ideas?
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No I didn't, In the end I gave the M$ server a swift kick and looked for alternatives...
I Found out that you can connect to Exchange using IMAP so I took away the Port 80 and 443 Port forwards and enabled Port 143.
Currently there's only one or two people who need access to it, So I've given them instructions on how to use Lookout Distress (I Mean Outlook Express - How silly of me ;) ) to connect to it.
I Feel far safer having that running than Port forwarding 80 & 443 to a M$ Product. I get a shiver every time i think about it.
Brrrrr.
btw, I'm in the process of writing a PHP -> IMAP WebInterface by following the instructions on DEVSHED. If you're desparate for a webmail interface, you could try the same.
http://www.devshed.com/c/a/PHP/Building-A-PHPBased-Mail-Client-part-1/
http://www.devshed.com/c/a/PHP/Building-A-PHPBased-Mail-Client-part-2/
http://www.devshed.com/c/a/PHP/Building-A-PHPBased-Mail-Client-part-3/
Let me Know how you get on.
Nick
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