DNS and Scalix 11.2

[bcarruthers]

Hi,

Ever since we have purchased and installed Scalix for almost a year (small business and licensed) I have had some odd problems with almost all the scalix clients.

I believe I may be missing some DNS entries in my DNS server - I run the BIND on the same server as scalix. Our mail server is called 'mailserv', can anyone please let me know if I am missing some forward/reverse zone records for our scalix server?

Periodically scalix will have mail stuck in the outbox and the only solution is to release and renew the ip address before the mail will send.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I have been recieved alot of flak over scalix both with these issues and the wait for outlook 2007 to come (will upgrade to 11.3 very shortly - just waiting to see if things are stable).

Here is my bind named config files;
$TTL 1M

iii.net.au. IN SOA mailserv.iii.net.au bcarruthers.iii.net.au. (
200704022 ; serial
2H ; refresh slaves
5M ; retry
1W ; expire
1M ; Negative TTL
)

@ IN NS 192.168.0.9
mailserv.iii.net.au. IN A 192.168.0.9 ; Mail/DNS/Web server
mailserv. IN A 192.168.0.9
fileserv.iii.net.au. IN A 192.168.0.8 ; Samba/LDAP file server
firewall.iii.net.au. IN A 192.168.0.1 ; Cisco PIX firewall
nas01.iii.net.au. IN A 192.168.0.12 ; NAS01 iii Networked Attached Storage
wireless1.iii.net.au. IN A 192.168.0.4 ; Upstairs wireless
optserv.iii.net.au IN A 192.168.0.151 ; Optrix server
www IN CNAME mailserv ; Internal mapping for webserver
#mailserv IN CNAME mailserv.iii.net.au. ; Alias for mailserv
#webserv IN CNAME webserv.iii.net.au. ; Alias for webserv

@ IN MX 10 mailserv.iii.net.au.

And reverse zone;
$TTL 3M

@ IN SOA mailserv.iii.net.au bcarruthers. (
20070730 ; serial
2H ; refresh slaves
5M ; retry
1W ; expire
1M ; Negative TTL
)

IN NS mailserv.iii.net.au.
1 IN PTR firewall.iii.net.au.
4 IN PTR wireless1.iii.net.au.
8 IN PTR fileserv.iii.net.au.
9 IN PTR mailserv.iii.net.au.
#9 IN PTR www.iii.net.au.
#11 IN PTR webserv.iii.net.au.
12 IN PTR nas01.iii.net.au.
151 IN PTR optserv.iii.net.au.

Regards,
Brett

[Kris]

One thing I'm "missing" is a CNAME record for scalix-default-mail, pointing to the record of your name-server. If you add this record, you won't have to add the server-address manually everytime you create a new Outlook profile.

Just a question.. what odd problems are you talking about and why do you think it's DNS related?

[bcarruthers]

I frequently lose connectivity with scalix using outlook 2003 where mail wont send. When this happens I cannot 'ping mailserv' but I can ping the IP address of mailserv. Releasing and renewing my IP address will fix this and the mail in the outbox will send once the IP address is refreshed.

This is why I am leaning towards my DNS setup being a culprit...

[mikevl]

Hi

Yep I (among others) have learned the hard way that correct DNS is ESSENTAIL to the correct operation of Scalix. You need correct forward & reverse records as well as a cname for scalix-default-mail that points to your mail server. MX records are handy as well.
Your /etc hosts file should als contain your server records
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx mailserver.mydomain.com or (mailserver.mydomain.local) mailserver

Mike

[bcarruthers]

The addition of scalix-default-mail in my DNS server i handy when creating a profile but has not fully resolved my DNS problems.

mikevl - I noticed you said you /etc/hosts file should contain your server records - isn't that defeating the purpose of a DNS server in the first place? That would require me to go to every client and manually add the server records, something I dont want to do...

[mikevl]

Hi

No this is not correct

Add entries to your Scalix server /etc/hosts will not necessitate you to add corresponding entries to all your workstations.

The entries in your /etc/hosts on your server are for Scalix to work well on the server. If Scalix boots up and for ANY reason can't see entries for hostname and DNS in the format mail.servername.com mail, then it may fail I've seen a few servers trashed because of this.

You will find documentation on this without searching to hard.

However the Workstations Need to be pointed to a DNS server which has entries as stated above or they will not function correctly. Where does do you get the suggestion of running round each workstation and editing the hosts files from, or that adding entries to the server hosts file will automatically necessitate the adding of entries to workstations? I am sorry that you may have read this into what I had written

Mike

[bcarruthers]

Hi mike,

Im sorry I have misunderstood you.

In my hosts file I currently only have the mailserv and IP not mailserv.iii.net.au are you suggesting I need to add this to my server /etc/hosts?

Maybe a silly question, but why would this cause a connectivity problem between the client and scalix when that /etc/host is local to the server?

Regards,
Brett

[mikevl]

Hi Brett

There are two very seperate issues here

Server hosts which need to be correct for Scalix to operate correctly for the server to do lookups such as
[root@mail1 ~]# hostname -f
mail1.company.internal
[root@mail1 ~]# omcheckgc -h
mail1.company.internal
[root@mail1 ~]# hostname --fqdn
mail1.company.internal
[root@mail1 ~]# omshowmnmp
mail1,company mail1.company.internal

xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx scalixserver.domain.com.au scalixserver

ETC

2nd issue

Workstation connectivity

Workstation ESPECIALLY Outllook connector relies, as the rest of the server on DNS. In the server that your workstation points to for DNS resolution you need these entries

scalixserver.domain.com.au xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
or
scalixserver.domain.local xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Reverse DNS xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx scalixserver.domain.com.au (

Then

CNAME scalix-default-mail scalixserver.domain.com.au

Any other configuration may fail

Mike

[bcarruthers]

Here is the output of the lookups you posted and lookups/pings from a client. Do the server hostname lookups look right to you? They look OK to me...

[root@mailserv ~]# hostname -f
mailserv.iii.net.au
[root@mailserv ~]# omcheckgc -h
mailserv.iii.net.au
[root@mailserv ~]# hostname --fqdn
mailserv.iii.net.au
[root@mailserv ~]# omshowmnmp
mailserv mailserv.iii.net.au
internet

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\bcarruthers>ping mailserv

Pinging mailserv.iii.net.au [192.168.0.9] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 192.168.0.9: bytes=32 time=6ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.0.9: bytes=32 time=6ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.0.9: bytes=32 time=6ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.0.9: bytes=32 time=6ms TTL=64

Ping statistics for 192.168.0.9:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 6ms, Maximum = 6ms, Average = 6ms

C:\Documents and Settings\bcarruthers>ping mailserv.iii.net.au

Pinging mailserv.iii.net.au [192.168.0.9] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 192.168.0.9: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.0.9: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.0.9: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.0.9: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64

Ping statistics for 192.168.0.9:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 2ms, Maximum = 2ms, Average = 2ms

C:\Documents and Settings\bcarruthers>nslookup mailserv
Server: mailserv.iii.net.au
Address: 192.168.0.9

Name: mailserv.iii.net.au
Address: 192.168.0.9


C:\Documents and Settings\bcarruthers>nslookup mailserv.iii.net.au
Server: mailserv.iii.net.au
Address: 192.168.0.9

Name: mailserv.iii.net.au
Address: 192.168.0.9

[mikevl]

Hi

Just two more
can you please post the output of the server
more /etc/hosts I don't mind if you change the domain name

On the/a workstation

ping scalix-default-mail

Mike

[bcarruthers]

# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
192.168.0.9 mailserv
192.168.0.8 fileserv

[root@mailserv ~]#

C:\Documents and Settings\bcarruthers>ping scalix-default-mail

Pinging mailserv.iii.net.au [192.168.0.9] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 192.168.0.9: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.0.9: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.0.9: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.0.9: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=64

Ping statistics for 192.168.0.9:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 1ms, Maximum = 3ms, Average = 2ms

Thanks
Brett

[les]

# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
192.168.0.9 mailserv
192.168.0.8 fileserv

You should change the /etc/hosts entry for mailserv to

192.168.0.9 mailserv.iii.net.au mailserv

Always have the FQDN in /etc/hosts first on a line. At the very least apache doesn't like it if you only have a short hostname specified.

[bcarruthers]

I have added the FQDN to the server's hosts file but I am still having my original problem.

Outlook clients sending mail will get stuck in the outbox and wont send until a ipconfig release and renew is done. The connection to scalix in outlook also fails when starting up more regularly than not.

This is happening on my laptop over a wireless connection and the rest of my network is contactable (fileserver, printers). I can ping everything on the network but the name resolution for mailserv does not work from a ping (but it does with other hosts).

Eg.
C:\Documents and Settings\bcarruthers>ping mailserv
Ping request could not find host mailserv. Please check the name and try again.

C:\Documents and Settings\bcarruthers>ping fileserv

Pinging fileserv.iii.net.au [192.168.0.8] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 192.168.0.8: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.0.8: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.0.8: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.0.8: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=64

Ping statistics for 192.168.0.8:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 2ms, Maximum = 3ms, Average = 2ms

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Brett

[bcarruthers]

See my post here
viewtopic.php?p=46287#46287

Problem is looking resolved, am giving it a few days first...