Topic: E-mail: Couldn't find any host named ajblan.ajblan

[abovett]

Hi

I've been running SME server (5.6 until now) for quite a while, but just as a filestore - now I want to do a bit more.

I started looking at the e-mail system and realised there are loads of "bounce bounced" messages to ajblan.ajblan in the admin mailbox. They are from "qmail-send program at ajblan".

Why ajblan.ajblan? and why from qmail-send at ajblan? The server name is meant to be "sol" and the domain name is "ajblan" - I guess I've entered something wrong in the configuration but I don't know what. The "Review configuration" screen on the main console shows:

  Primary domain name   : ajblan
  System name           : sol

The "Change workgroup settings" page of the web frontend has the following:

  Windows Workgroup      : ajblan
  Server Name            : sol

Have I entered one of these wrong? Should there be a dot in there somewhere?

I am also having problems getting name resolution to work over my LAN - could this be related?

I had a look through the forum on this, and whilst I saw several posts mentioning bounces a bit like this, there was no explanation as to what was happening. Any help would be much appreciated.

Regards

Andy B

[Jon_Reynolds]

Hi Andy,

Can you post one of the bounce messages you are recieving?

Jon

[abovett]

Here it is. I understand the cause of the original message, and it's not significant (at least I don't think so) - the print account is only used for printing. It's the host/domain name stuff that's confusing me.



Date:    21 Jun 2004 23:37:02 -0000   
From:    MAILER-DAEMON@ajblan   
To:    postmaster@ajblan   
Subject:    failure notice

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at ajblan.
I tried to deliver a bounce message to this address, but the bounce bounced!

<do-not-reply@ajblan.ajblan>:
Sorry, I couldn't find any host named ajblan.ajblan. (#5.1.2)

--- Below this line is the original bounce.

Return-Path: <>
Received: (qmail 16204 invoked for bounce); 21 Jun 2004 23:37:02 -0000
Date: 21 Jun 2004 23:37:02 -0000
From: MAILER-DAEMON@ajblan
To: do-not-reply@ajblan.ajblan
Subject: failure notice

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at ajblan.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.

<admin@ajblan.ajblan>:
Sorry, I couldn't find any host named ajblan.ajblan. (#5.1.2)

--- Below this line is a copy of the message.

Return-Path: <do-not-reply@ajblan.ajblan>
Received: (qmail 16200 invoked by uid 0); 21 Jun 2004 23:37:02 -0000
Date: 21 Jun 2004 23:37:02 -0000
Message-ID: <20040621233702.16199.qmail@ajblan>
To: System Administrator <admin@ajblan.ajblan>
From: "SME Server automated quota report" <do-not-reply@ajblan.ajblan>
Subject: One or more users have exceeded their disk quota

The following users have exceeded their disk quota on the server called "sol" All values are in megabytes.Account                Usage     Limit with grace period     Absolute limit
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
print                   0.03                        0.00              50.00

[raem]

The simplest way to "get rid" of the doublebounce messages is to follow this HOWTO

http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/contribs/rmitchell/smeserver/howto/double%20bounce%20message%20deletion%20HOWTO%20for%20sme%20server.htm

[Jon_Reynolds]

Ok, what is your actual domain name? Is it .com or .net or ....
What does /var/qmail/control/me say you are? Better yet, give the complete and unedited output of /var/qmail/bin/qmail-showctl, if you are uneasy about posting that to the forums then send it to me directly at jonr@destar.net. Also Andy, don't disguise any of your info because what you leave out could be the answer to your problem, not harpin on ya' just trying to help.

As for your DNS issue of trying to resolve names on the local LAN make sure that whatever is handing out DHCP has a list of what the names and addresses are of your local systems.

Jon

[Jon_Reynolds]

Ok, what is your actual domain name? Is it .com or .net or ....
What does /var/qmail/control/me say you are? Better yet, give the complete and unedited output of /var/qmail/bin/qmail-showctl, if you are uneasy about posting that to the forums then send it to me directly at jonr@destar.net. Also Andy, don't disguise any of your info because what you leave out could be the answer to your problem, not harpin on ya' just trying to help.

As for your DNS issue of trying to resolve names on the local LAN make sure that whatever is handing out DHCP has a list of what the names and addresses are of your local systems.

Jon

[Anonymous]

Ok, what is your actual domain name? Is it .com or .net or ....

I think you have the problem right there. I simply entered "ajblan" as the domain - I guess it has to be something like "ajblan.lan" does it?

I downloaded 6.0.1 last night so I've just been giving it an initial try on another PC, and I put ajblan.lan as the domain this time (it won't be .com or .net or anything because I'm not hosting an externally visible domain - just a private LAN). I just tried a test e-mail and it seems to be working - I'll try it on my main server.

What does /var/qmail/control/me say you are? Better yet, give the complete and unedited output of /var/qmail/bin/qmail-showctl, if you are uneasy about posting that to the forums then send it to me directly at jonr@destar.net

On it's way to you.

Also Andy, don't disguise any of your info because what you leave out could be the answer to your problem, not harpin on ya' just trying to help.

No problem - thanks for the advice. Did you think I'd disguised anthing before by the way - I hadn't.

As for your DNS issue of trying to resolve names on the local LAN make sure that whatever is handing out DHCP has a list of what the names and addresses are of your local systems.

Not quite sure how to do that - is it a hosts file on the server or something (the SME server is the DHCP server)? I sort of assumed (probably wrongly) that if I gave the clients names this should somehow be picked up over the network when they connected, a bit like Windows NETBIOS names. Anyway, I think I'll get the mail issue sorted first, and I'm planning to upgrade to 6.0.1 before I go much further, so I'll put the domain names issue on the back burner for the moment as it's not a big problem.

Thanks for your help

Andy B

[abovett]

Sorry - forgot to log in - that last post was me (abovett)!

Andy B

[Jon_Reynolds]

Right on Andy! Score man!

I thought you might be hiding some info. ;^) No problems though it sounds like you figured out your problem for your email. Now on to your DNS issue. Here is what you need to do to make all names resolve on your local LAN.

Turn DHCP on in your SME server and add the hostnames in the 'Hostnames and addresses' on the left panel. Here is what my Freevo entry looks like:

freevo.destar.net Local Local 192.168.1.64     Modify Remove

Then make sure that all of your computers use the SME server to get their DHCP information and viola', everything should start resolving by name from every system once they get their DHCP info from the SME server.

i.e.

[root@sme tmp]# ping freevo
PING freevo.destar.net (192.168.1.64) from 192.168.1.30 : 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from freevo.destar.net (192.168.1.64): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.178 ms
64 bytes from freevo.destar.net (192.168.1.64): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.154 ms

Let me know how that works out for you.

Jon

[abovett]

Hi again Jon

I'm half way through upgrading from 5.6 to 6.0.1 at the moment, but as soon as I've got that sorted I'll try your suggestion.

I really appreciate all the help you've given me. This forum has certainly proved its worth as far as I'm concerned. Hopefully one day I'll know enough to start giving some help back!

Thanks again

Andy B

[abovett]

Hi again

Here is what you need to do to make all names resolve on your local LAN.

Turn DHCP on in your SME server and add the hostnames in the 'Hostnames and addresses' on the left panel. Here is what my Freevo entry looks like:

freevo.destar.net Local Local 192.168.1.64     Modify Remove

Then make sure that all of your computers use the SME server to get their DHCP information

I just tried this but no luck I even included the MAC addresses so the hostnames and addresses get assigned to the right PCs.

It looks like this:

europa.ajblan.lan Local Local 192.168.7.12  00:07:95:C2:34:22 Modify Remove

The IP address assignment works OK, but I still can't ping by name - not sure what I'm doing wrong. I tried on a Win98 box and on a Linux box (europa - example entry above) with no luck. Can't even ping _from_ the server by name even though the names are defined using the server's hostnames configuration page.

I'm not too sure how the names are stored and looked up. I had a look in the /etc/hosts file and the only entries in there are:

127.0.0.1    localhost
192.168.7.2  sol.ajblan.sol  sol

and sol (the server) is the only name that resolves on the server.

Any ideas? It's not the most critical problem but it's annoying it's not working right.

BTW, I'm running SME server 6.0.1 now - upgraded this evening.

Thanks again

Andy B

[Anonymous]

Hey Andy,

Is your esmith server handing out the dhcp and is your dhcp in your esmith pointing to itself?

Can you take a screen shot of your dhcp manager page and send that to me?

Jon

[abovett]

Hi again Jon

Is your esmith server handing out the dhcp and is your dhcp in your esmith pointing to itself?

As far as I know it is - but I could well have something wrong. I set it up to be a DHCP server and it's certainly handing out IP addresses (and I'm sure they're coming from the server not somewhere else).

Can you take a screen shot of your dhcp manager page and send that to me?

Screenshot(s) on their way via e-mail

Thanks again - your help is very much appreciated.

Andy B

[tcarroll]

Were you two able to work this out?  It appears your possible solution was handled outside of this forum, and I cannot benefit from that...  

Thanks in advance!

[smeghead]

this at least is part of the answer:

http://www.activeservice.co.uk/sme/contribs/sme-dhcp-dns-0.9-rc1.noarch.rpm