DNS problem on upgrade

[apollo_jones]

Hello:

I noticed, about a week ago, that webmail was no longer working on my otherwise very stable Scalix platform (CentOS 5.1 + Scalix 11.4.1).

On further investigation, the SAC is also inoperative, in both cases giving me a 404 error in any browser I access the server from. My Outlook clients all seem to work fine.

Rebooted the server and watched the boot messages, and seems that scalix-postgres fails to start. The /var/opt/scalix/tr/postgres/pgstartup.log is saying:

LOG: could not bind IPv4 socket: Cannot assign requested address
HINT: Is another postmaster already running on port 5733? If not, wait a few seconds and retry.
WARNING: could not create listen socket for "<host>.<domain>"
FATAL: could not create any TCP/IP sockets

I tried starting postgres in isolation to the rest of Scalix with service scalix-postres start, but got exactly the same failure.

So, I decided that rather than hunt for the problem, I would try an upgrade instead, hoping that the installation script would uncover and rectify any deeper issues, and have tried to upgrade to 11.4.2. This does seem to be getting me closer to the problem, but I can't get past the configuration check in the binary installer, and get the following message during it:

2008-11-22 11:32:59,330 INFO System check start
2008-11-22 11:32:59,452 INFO Operation passed: Environment check passed.
2008-11-22 11:32:59,532 INFO Operation passed: Filesystem check passed.
2008-11-22 11:32:59,832 ERROR Operation failed: Network check failed -- Could not find a host name in DNS that matches an IP address
2008-11-22 11:32:59,832 ERROR Operation failed: Network check failed -- IP address '89.145.244.x' associated with host name 't<host.<domain>' in DNS cannot be confirmed as this host's IP address
2008-11-22 11:32:59,850 INFO Network interface is lo
2008-11-22 11:33:03,754 INFO Apache 2.x appears to be installed.
2008-11-22 11:33:03,754 INFO Operation passed: Dependency check passed.
2008-11-22 11:33:05,396 WARNING Operation warning: Running services check warning -- Scalix server is already running.
2008-11-22 11:33:05,505 INFO Operation passed: Community license check passed.
2008-11-22 11:33:05,506 INFO System check end
2008-11-22 11:33:05,509 INFO System check result: fail

Have since hunted around this forum looking for reasons why this might be the case, so I'll report here some of the common questions some of the experts have been asking as follows:

/etc/hosts says:
# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
::1 localhost6.localdomain6 localhost6
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
192.168.1.13 cheetah
192.168.1.10 giraffe
192.168.1.14 bison
192.168.1.252 panther
192.168.1.33 racoon
192.168.1.17 gazelle
192.168.1.16 zebra
192.168.1.1 draytek
89.145.244.x <host>.<domain> <host>

/etc/network says:
NETWORKING=yes
NETWORKING_IPV6=no
HOSTNAME=<host>

/etc/resolve.conf says:
nameserver 62.69.62.6
nameserver 62.69.62.7
# generated by NetworkManager, do not edit!

nslookup <host>.<domain> says:
Server: 192.168.1.254
Address: 192.168.1.254#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: <host>.<domain>
Address: 89.145.244.167

ifconfig -a says:
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:13:20:3B:8D:28
inet addr:192.168.1.254 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::213:20ff:fe3b:8d28/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:117461 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:108194 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:33718692 (32.1 MiB) TX bytes:16932673 (16.1 MiB)

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:18136 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:18136 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:9475003 (9.0 MiB) TX bytes:9475003 (9.0 MiB)

...and a few other interfaces as well.

iptables -L says:
Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target prot opt source destination
ACCEPT udp -- anywhere anywhere udp dpt:domain
ACCEPT tcp -- anywhere anywhere tcp dpt:domain
ACCEPT udp -- anywhere anywhere udp dpt:bootps
ACCEPT tcp -- anywhere anywhere tcp dpt:bootps

Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT)
target prot opt source destination
ACCEPT all -- anywhere 192.168.122.0/24 state RELATED,ESTABLISHED
ACCEPT all -- 192.168.122.0/24 anywhere
ACCEPT all -- anywhere anywhere
REJECT all -- anywhere anywhere reject-with icmp-port-unreachable
REJECT all -- anywhere anywhere reject-with icmp-port-unreachable

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target prot opt source destination

and finally, getenforce says:
Disabled

I guess, reading the forums, the issue would seem to lie in the Scalix Installer log line:
2008-11-22 11:32:59,850 INFO Network interface is lo

As far as I can gather, it needs to see a real ethernet device like eth0, of which there is only one on my server.

I'm nervous about an upgrade anyway, given that "leave well alone" is so true. So if I can avoid the upgrade path, I'd like to. But there is something obviously wrong with some of the networking here....

Anyone fancy the challenge??!!! Thanks in advance.

Mike.

[smpoole7]

It looks like you have a network problem. I'd get that straight before attempting to (re)install Scalix.

As for your initial problem, it doesn't make sense that you couldn't start scalix-postgres, and yet, external mail clients were able to send and receive through the server.

One other possibility is that you've got a port blocked in your firewall (though I'm sure you've thought of that! ).

Other than that, dunno. Maybe one of the Scalix gurus here will have an idea.

[les]

your eth0 is 192.168.1.254 but you dont have an entry in your /etc/hosts file for that.

Add an entry in your /etc/hosts with appropriate short and long names and then you should be right.

[apollo_jones]

Thanks Les and smpoole7:

Les, you were right. I added the short and FQDN entries against my eth0, and now at least I can move on a stage in the installer. I appreciate your help (you also unwittingly helped me by some of your other replies, with getting SpamAssassin working with Scalix!).

When I've got time and all my users are off the system, I'll do a reboot, and see if this resolves the webmail problem.

Step closer though, so thanks again.

[les]

Thanks Les and smpoole7:

Les, you were right. I added the short and FQDN entries against my eth0, and now at least I can move on a stage in the installer. I appreciate your help (you also unwittingly helped me by some of your other replies, with getting SpamAssassin working with Scalix!).

When I've got time and all my users are off the system, I'll do a reboot, and see if this resolves the webmail problem.

Step closer though, so thanks again.

Glad to help :)

[apollo_jones]

Hi Les:

Rebooting the server brought everything back to normal operation. Thanks again.