Problems sending mail to users on my mail server

[Ed McCorduck]

O.K., starfish, or anyone else who can help, I've got another problem with my Linux server. Instead of giving again the details of my setup, I refer you to everything I've said about it above in connection with the Web server issue. The new issue involves e-mail: I can send e-mails out and they are received as coming from "Ed@McCorduck.ws" (my main e-mail address on the server), but I can't send any e-mails to my Linux server; I usually get a bounce-back message saying the server mccorduck.ws "can't be found".

Here's the record of a typical e-mail I send out that does reach its recipient outside of my network:


Received: from edsgate.mccorduck.ws ([24.24.15.155])
by exfe1.cortland.edu (SMSSMTP 4.0.0.59) with SMTP id M2004060602400508122
for <Ed.McCorduck@Cortland.edu>; Sun, 06 Jun 2004 02:40:05 -0400
Received: from edsgate.mccorduck.ws (edsgate.mccorduck.ws [127.0.0.1])
by edsgate.mccorduck.ws (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id i566bwiH008478
for <Ed.McCorduck@Cortland.edu>; Sun, 6 Jun 2004 02:38:55 -0400


Now, I had originally set up my Linux box's e-mail server, sendmail, using instructions from the linuxhomenetworking.com Web site. As indicated in my first post in this thread, I have subsequently sprung for the latest version of Peter Harrison's instructions in the .pdf book Linux Home Networking II (dated May 12). I'm revisiting his instructions in chapter 9 on setting up my e-mail server, and I note on p. 105 his example for how to check where Sendmail is listening:


[root@bigboy tmp]# netstat -an | grep :25 | grep tcp
tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:25 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
[root@bigboy tmp]#


When I do this on my machine, this is what I get:


[root@edsgate root]# netstat -an | grep :25 | grep tcp
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:25 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
[root@edsgate root]#


The difference in output here naturally spurs my newbie instincts to tell me that there might be some configuration problem, reflected in this output, that's preventing my incoming mail from arriving. Am I correct about this? And if so, how might I go about resolving the problem?


Ed McCorduck
Department of English
State University of New York College at Cortland
http://mccorduck.cortland.edu
ICQ: http://mccorduck.cortland.edu/pager
AIM: EdMcCorduck

[starfish]

Ed,

Sendmail is listening OK on your server. The 0.0.0.0 means that the server is listening on all interfaces (as it should for a mail server for your domain) not just the 127.0.0.1 loopback interface.

I think you may be having problems with DNS. The DNS record for your mail server may be pointing to the server's puplic Internet IP address, not the 192.168.x.x address I suspect you may have actually assigned to it. This can result in your mail server getting a public IP address for itself from the DNS server. It then will try to access itself using the public IP address which may very well be a NAT IP address, and that would break.

You may want to set up DNS "views" so that all servers on your home network get 192.168.x.x addresses for your web site and mail server, and everyone on the Internet gets teh public IP address versions.

You may not want to bother with all this. A really simple, though possibly inadequate, solution would be to just send mail to people on your mail server using their Linux username not "username@mccorduck.ws"

P.S. I'm a forum moderator and decided to split the thread from http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/f...topic.php?t=39 as this one doesn't cover Apache and could have been over looked by visitors with Sendmail problems.

[Ed McCorduck]

Ed,

Sendmail is listening OK on your server. The 0.0.0.0 means that the server is listening on all interfaces (as it should for a mail server for your domain) not just the 127.0.0.1 loopback interface.

Thanks, starfish. Actually, I see now that I probably misread that part on p. 105 of Linux Home Networking II. It went right over my head that, from the context on pp. 104-105, apparently the 127.0.0.1 loopback interface was not what I wanted to have here anyway (indeed, the next full section on p. 105 begins with "To correct this").

I think you may be having problems with DNS. The DNS record for your mail server may be pointing to the server's puplic Internet IP address, not the 192.168.x.x address I suspect you may have actually assigned to it. This can result in your mail server getting a public IP address for itself from the DNS server. It then will try to access itself using the public IP address which may very well be a NAT IP address, and that would break.

You're probably right. One piece of evidence I have for this is that I use the www.mail2web.com service to test access to my Linux mail, and every time I check mail for the address "Ed@McCorduck.ws" I hear my Linux box churning before mail2web returns the message "No messages found," even when shortly before I had sent a test message to my Linux address from another e-mail address. I always go to www.mail2web.com through the "main" computer of my home network and that's why I'm always nearby to hear if my Linux machine does anything.

You may want to set up DNS "views" so that all servers on your home network get 192.168.x.x addresses for your web site and mail server, and everyone on the Internet gets teh public IP address versions.

Fine, how would I do that? I'm sorry, I'm still mostly flummoxed by the complications of DNS, TCP/IP, you name it, and most everything else that's involved with computer networking.

You may not want to bother with all this. A really simple, though possibly inadequate, solution would be to just send mail to people on your mail server using their Linux username not "username@mccorduck.ws"

Unfortunately, I do need to get this working because in fact I'm currently the only user of my Linux box and all the mail that I intend to receive through this address is going to be coming from other Internet servers. (And again, apparently there isn't an Internet address on the planet that I currently can't send e-mail to from my Linux e-mail server.)

P.S. I'm a forum moderator and decided to split the thread from http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/f...topic.php?t=39 as this one doesn't cover Apache and could have been over looked by visitors with Sendmail problems.

No problem at all. As always, I really appreciate all your help.

Ed McCorduck
Department of English
State University of New York College at Cortland
http://mccorduck.cortland.edu
ICQ: http://mccorduck.cortland.edu/pager
AIM: EdMcCorduck

[starfish]

Ed,

It is probably a DNS issue, but not the "views" problem as i suggested before.

I used the command:

[root@zero updates]# dig mccorduck.ws mx

and realized that you don't have an DNS MX record defined for your domain. Compare this with:

[root@zero updates]# dig yahoo.com mx

An MX record is needed for your domain to let DNS know the IP address of your mail server. No MX record, no inbound mail.

I suspect your mail server and web server are the same server, so you need two entries like this in your DNS zone file.

mccorduck.ws. IN MX 10 mail ; Primary Mail Exchanger
mail IN CNAME www

The DNS pages on this site explain this in more detail.

The churning groaning noise from your server is probably not a nauseated sendmail, but DNS getting a migrane.

[Ed McCorduck]

Thanks again so much, Starfish. Before buying the Linux Home Networking II book, I did use information from the linuxhomenetworking.com site to try to set up my zone files and my MX record. Specifically, here are the sections I used:

-----------------------------------------------------
"Configuring A Regular Nameserver

For the purposes of this tutorial, the subnet that has been assigned to you by your ISP is 97.158.253.24 with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.248 (/29).
Configuring named.conf

o The main DNS configuration is kept in the named.conf file which is used to tell BIND where to find the configuration files for each domain you own. There are usually two zone areas in this file:

+ Forward zone file definitions which list files to map domains to IP addresses

+ Reverse zone file definitions which list files to map IP addresses to domains


o In this example the forward zone for www.my-site.com is being set up by placing the following entries at the bottom of the named.conf file. The zone file is named my-site.zone and, though not explicitly stated, the file my-site.zone should be located in the default directory of /var/named/chroot/var/named in Fedora Core and in /var/named in RedHat 9 and older.


zone "my-site.com" {


type master;
notify no;

allow-query { any; };
file "my-site.zone";


};

You can also insert additional entries in the named.conf file to reference other web domains you host. Here is an example for my-other-site.com using a zone file named my-other-site.zone.


zone "my-other-site.com" {


type master;
notify no;

allow-query { any; };
file "my-other-site.zone";


};


o The reverse zone definition below is optional for a home / SOHO DSL based web site. It just makes you able to do an nslookup query on the 97.158.253.x IP address and get back the true name of the server assigned that IP address. This is rarely done for home based sites. It is especially difficult to do this with your DSL ISP if you have less than 256 static IP addresses (also known as a "Class C" block of addresses).

Note: the reverse order of the IP address in the zone section is important.


zone "253.158.97.in-addr.arpa" {

type master;
notify no;
file "253.158.97";

};

Configuring The Zone Files

o In all zone files, you can place a comment at the end of any line by inserting a semi-colon ";" character then typing in the text of your comment.

o By default, your zone files are located in the directory /var/named.

o Each zone file contains a variety of records (eg. SOA, NS, MX, A and CNAME) which govern different areas of BIND. I'll explain of them below and then follow it all up with an example."
-----------------------------------------------------

So following these directions, I added some entries to my /etc/named.conf, and this is my file named.conf file now:


## named.conf - configuration for bind
#
# Generated automatically by redhat-config-bind, alchemist et al.
# Any changes not supported by redhat-config-bind should be put
# in /etc/named.custom
#
controls {

inet 127.0.0.1 allow { localhost; } keys { rndckey; };


};


include "/etc/named.custom";

include "/etc/rndc.key";


zone "mccorduck.ws" {


type master;
notify no;
allow-query { any; };
file "mccorduck.zone";

};


zone "155.15.15.24.in-addr.arpa" {

type master;
notify no;
file "155.15.15.24";

};



Here are the contents of the file "mccorduck.zone" under my /var/named:

$TTL 3D

@ IN SOA www.mccorduck.ws. hostmaster.mccorduck.ws. (
4 ; serial
28800 ; refresh
7200 ; retry
604800 ; expire
86400 ; ttl
)

NS www

mccorduck.ws. MX 10 mail
localhost A 127.0.0.1
www A 24.24.15.155
mail CNAME www


So as you indicated, what I am lacking here is "IN" between "mccorduck.ws" and "MX" on one line and another "IN" after "mail" and before "CNAME". (I didn't put in "; Primary Mail Exchanger" though; I assumed this was a comment, but I wouldn't be surprised if I was wrong and this was a key omission.) I put these in, saved the file and then rebooted. Then I tried to send an e-mail to "Ed@McCorduck.ws" from another domain, and after a few hours I got a delay error message which included the line

451 McCorduck.ws: Name server timeout

As of this morning, this message still hasn't been delivered, so I assume my DNS, MX and/or something else still isn't configured right. One other detail: I noticed that my /var/named has three other files, some of which may be the result of my previous experimentation with trying to get my Linux Web and e-mail servers going. The file names are:

0.0.127.in-addr.arpa.zone
192-168-1.zone
mccorduck.ws.zone


From the above, I'm wondering not only if these files have any use but whether I shouldn't also have a file "155.15.15.24.in-addr.arpa" or "155.15.15.24" in this directory. Again, your sage advice in straightening this all out would be appreciated.


Ed McCorduck
Department of English
State University of New York College at Cortland
http://mccorduck.cortland.edu
ICQ: http://mccorduck.cortland.edu/pager
AIM: EdMcCorduck

[starfish]

Ed,

Two things may have gone wrong.

1) Did you increment the serial number of the zone file before restarting?

2) Your named.conf refers to file "mccorduck.zone" and yet you mentioned that the file is actually named "mccorduck.ws.zone".

Now www.mccorduck.ws doesn't resolve at all either. This could be because of the file name mismatch.

Restart "named" and then use the "tail -50 /var/log/messages" command to view the error log. You may see something that points to the problem.

The reverse pointer file for 24.24.15.155 isn't really necessary for home networks. Your ISP will usually handle this for you and in this case will give a RoadRunner name, syr-24-24-15-155.twcny.rr.com.

The reverse pointer is most important if your webserver is running a shopping cart. If you are using a shopping cart from someone else, then there really isn't an overwhelming need to use it.

[Ed McCorduck]

Ed,

Two things may have gone wrong.

1) Did you increment the serial number of the zone file before restarting?

No, I didn't, and I remember now reading in the book somewhere that I had to do this, too. So I incremented the serial number from "4" to "5" in the file "mccorduck.zone", I rebooted but I'm still having the same problems: my Web server works file, I can send mail from the mail server on my Linux box but any mail I try to send to it, to the same address that the mail comes from, runs into a problem as indicated by this type of error message I receive:

------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Mail Delivery Subsystem [MAILER-DAEMON@edsgate.mccorduck.ws]
Sent: Monday, June 14, 2004 7:23 AM
To: Ed McCorduck
Subject: Warning: could not send message for past 4 hours

**********************************************
** THIS IS A WARNING MESSAGE ONLY **
** YOU DO NOT NEED TO RESEND YOUR MESSAGE **
**********************************************

The original message was received at Mon, 14 Jun 2004 02:23:08 -0400 from exbe1.cortland.edu [137.123.221.210]

----- Transcript of session follows -----
451 McCorduck.ws: Name server timeout
Warning: message still undelivered after 4 hours
Will keep trying until message is 5 days old
------------------------------------------------------------------

This error e-mail came with two attachments, one being my original attempted reply to the message I sent to Ed.McCorduck@Cortland.edu from Ed@McCorduck.ws, and the other a file named "ATT187809.txt" whose contents were the following:

------------------------------------------------------------------
Reporting-MTA: dns; edsgate.mccorduck.ws
Arrival-Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 02:23:08 -0400

Final-Recipient: RFC822; Ed@McCorduck.ws
X-Actual-Recipient: RFC822; ed@edsgate.mccorduck.ws
Action: delayed
Status: 4.4.3
Last-Attempt-Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 07:22:33 -0400
Will-Retry-Until: Sat, 19 Jun 2004 02:23:08 -0400
------------------------------------------------------------------

2) Your named.conf refers to file "mccorduck.zone" and yet you mentioned that the file is actually named "mccorduck.ws.zone".

Now www.mccorduck.ws doesn't resolve at all either. This could be because of the file name mismatch.

Sorry for the confusion. There actually are two files "mccorduck.zone" and "mccorduck.ws.zone" in my /var/named directory; "mccorduck.ws.zone" represents an earlier failed attempted to configure my system properly, but I just left it there after I created "mccorduck.zone" and put it in this directory, thinking the presence of the former file wouldn't hurt anything since my named.conf file no longer referred to it.

Restart "named" and then use the "tail -50 /var/log/messages" command to view the error log. You may see something that points to the problem.

O.K., here are the results when I used this command:

root@edsgate root]# tail -50 /var/log/messages
Jun 12 04:21:19 edsgate kernel: ip_tables: (C) 2000-2002 Netfilter core team
Jun 12 04:21:19 edsgate named[1709]: starting BIND 9.2.1 -u named
Jun 12 04:21:19 edsgate named[1709]: using 1 CPU
Jun 12 04:21:19 edsgate named: named startup succeeded
Jun 12 04:21:20 edsgate named[1713]: loading configuration from '/etc/named.conf'
Jun 12 04:21:20 edsgate named[1713]: /etc/named.conf:18: open: /etc/named.custom: file not found
Jun 12 04:21:20 edsgate named[1713]: loading configuration: file not found
Jun 12 04:21:20 edsgate named[1713]: exiting (due to fatal error)
Jun 12 04:21:20 edsgate sshd: succeeded
Jun 12 04:21:23 edsgate xinetd[1736]: xinetd Version 2.3.11 started with libwrap loadavg options compiled in.
Jun 12 04:21:23 edsgate xinetd[1736]: Started working: 3 available services
Jun 12 04:21:24 edsgate xinetd: xinetd startup succeeded
Jun 12 04:21:25 edsgate kernel: ip_tables: (C) 2000-2002 Netfilter core team
Jun 12 04:21:25 edsgate ntpdate[1749]: step time server 66.187.233.4 offset -0.495338 sec
Jun 12 04:21:25 edsgate ntpd: succeeded
Jun 12 04:21:25 edsgate ntpd: ntpd startup succeeded
Jun 12 04:21:25 edsgate ntpd[1753]: ntpd 4.1.1c-rc1@1.836 Thu Feb 13 12:17:19 EST 2003 (1)
Jun 12 04:21:26 edsgate ntpd[1753]: precision = 14 usec
Jun 12 04:21:26 edsgate ntpd[1753]: kernel time discipline status 0040
Jun 12 04:21:26 edsgate ntpd[1753]: frequency initialized 44.631 from /etc/ntp/drift
Jun 12 04:21:28 edsgate sendmail: sendmail startup succeeded
Jun 12 04:21:28 edsgate sendmail: sm-client startup succeeded
Jun 12 04:21:36 edsgate spamassassin: spamd startup succeeded
Jun 12 04:21:36 edsgate gpm: gpm startup succeeded
Jun 12 04:21:43 edsgate httpd: httpd startup succeeded
Jun 12 04:21:45 edsgate canna: succeeded
Jun 12 04:21:46 edsgate crond: crond startup succeeded
Jun 12 04:21:49 edsgate kernel: parport0: PC-style at 0x378 [PCSPP,TRISTATE]
Jun 12 04:21:49 edsgate kernel: lp0: using parport0 (polling).
Jun 12 04:21:49 edsgate kernel: lp0: console ready
Jun 12 04:21:51 edsgate modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module char-major-188
Jun 12 04:21:52 edsgate last message repeated 15 times
Jun 12 04:21:53 edsgate cups: cupsd startup succeeded
Jun 12 04:21:57 edsgate xfs: xfs startup succeeded
Jun 12 04:21:58 edsgate anacron: anacron startup succeeded
Jun 12 04:21:59 edsgate atd: atd startup succeeded
Jun 12 04:21:59 edsgate xfs: ignoring font path element /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic (unreadable)
Jun 12 04:21:59 edsgate rhnsd: rhnsd startup succeeded
Jun 12 04:21:59 edsgate rhnsd[1941]: Red Hat Network Services Daemon starting up.
Jun 12 04:22:51 edsgate gdm(pam_unix)[1996]: session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jun 12 04:22:56 edsgate gconfd (root-2080): starting (version 2.2.0), pid 2080 user 'root'
Jun 12 04:22:56 edsgate gconfd (root-2080): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory" to a read-only config source at position 0
Jun 12 04:22:56 edsgate gconfd (root-2080): Resolved address "xml:readwrite:/root/.gconf" to a writable config source at position 1
Jun 12 04:22:56 edsgate gconfd (root-2080): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults" to a read-only config source at position 2
Jun 12 04:23:10 edsgate kernel: ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
Jun 12 04:23:13 edsgate kernel: hdc: attached ide-cdrom driver.
Jun 12 04:23:13 edsgate kernel: hdc: ATAPI 32X CD-ROM drive, 256kB Cache, DMA
Jun 12 04:23:13 edsgate kernel: Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12
Jun 12 04:23:16 edsgate kernel: cdrom: This disc doesn't have any tracks I recognize!
Jun 12 04:24:43 edsgate ntpd[1753]: kernel time discipline status change 41
[root@edsgate root]#


I noticed something else as my Linux machine was shutting down before booting up again, and this may or may not be significant: there was a line "stopping named; rndc ; connect failed; connection refused [FAILED]".

The reverse pointer file for 24.24.15.155 isn't really necessary for home networks. Your ISP will usually handle this for you and in this case will give a RoadRunner name, syr-24-24-15-155.twcny.rr.com.

The reverse pointer is most important if your webserver is running a shopping cart. If you are using a shopping cart from someone else, then there really isn't an overwhelming need to use it.

O.K., thanks. At this time, I have no plans for this site to be commercial in any way, so I don't see myself needing a shopping cart or anything like that. I intend it to be both a personal and professional site, by professional meaning it will host some of my course Web pages and perhaps other pages relating to my teaching and research duties. And I intend to play around with applications like Perl, but that's about it. I just want a working e-mail server that can go both ways to complement this Web site.

This is getting way complicated, I realize; I'm really sorry about that. But I hope I can count on your continued sage advice, and I'm very grateful for all the help you've given me already.


Ed McCorduck
Department of English
State University of New York College at Cortland
http://mccorduck.cortland.edu
ICQ: http://mccorduck.cortland.edu/pager
AIM: EdMcCorduck

[starfish]

Ed,

You've changed something in your DNS configuration files. There is a "file not found" error now, and http://www.mccorduck.ws/ doesn't seem to be resolving correctly as a result to this.

Try and fix this. Restart named "/etc/init.d/named restart" and tail the /var/log/messages file after doing so until you get no more errors.

Jun 12 04:21:19 edsgate named[1709]: starting BIND 9.2.1 -u named
Jun 12 04:21:19 edsgate named[1709]: using 1 CPU
Jun 12 04:21:19 edsgate named: named startup succeeded
Jun 12 04:21:20 edsgate named[1713]: loading configuration from '/etc/named.conf'
Jun 12 04:21:20 edsgate named[1713]: /etc/named.conf:18: open: /etc/named.custom: file not found
Jun 12 04:21:20 edsgate named[1713]: loading configuration: file not found
Jun 12 04:21:20 edsgate named[1713]: exiting (due to fatal error)

Also try putting the

include "/etc/rndc.key";
include "/etc/named.custom";

statements at the very end of /etc/named.conf

That way, the "named" startup doesn't abort before reading in your

zone "mccorduck.ws" {


type master;
notify no;
allow-query { any; };
file "mccorduck.zone";

};

[Ed McCorduck]

Thanks so much, starfish. O.K., first I edited my named.conf file in the manner you suggested at the end of your message. In my original file the statement "/etc/named.custom ;" preceded the statement "/etc/rndc.key ;" and just to be on the safe side when I moved these to the end of named.conf I put them in reverse order as you had them in your last message, i.e. I put "/etc/rndc.key ;" first.

I then entered the command "/etc/init.d/named restart" as you directed, but a funny (I think) thing happened as the output. Fiirst, I got a line "Stopping named: rndc: connect failed: connection refused [FAILED], then a second later this line was replaced with "[OK]" to the far right of my prompt "[root@edsgate root]#". Then here is what I got after running "tail -50 /var/log/messages" this time:

Jun 20 06:38:20 edsgate gdm(pam_unix)[1996]: session closed for user root
Jun 20 06:38:52 edsgate gdm(pam_unix)[1996]: session opened for user ed by (uid=0)
Jun 20 06:38:59 edsgate gconfd (ed-2246): starting (version 2.2.0), pid 2246 user 'ed'
Jun 20 06:38:59 edsgate gconfd (ed-2246): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory" to a read-only config source at position 0
Jun 20 06:38:59 edsgate gconfd (ed-2246): Resolved address "xml:readwrite:/home/ed/.gconf" to a writable config source at position 1
Jun 20 06:38:59 edsgate gconfd (ed-2246): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults" to a read-only config source at position 2
Jun 20 06:39:19 edsgate kernel: cdrom: This disc doesn't have any tracks I recognize!
Jun 20 06:40:32 edsgate gconfd (root-2084): GConf server is not in use, shutting down.
Jun 20 06:40:33 edsgate gconfd (root-2084): Exiting
Jun 20 15:50:32 edsgate dhclient: DHCPREQUEST on eth0 to 192.168.1.1 port 67
Jun 20 15:50:32 edsgate dhclient: DHCPACK from 192.168.1.1
Jun 20 15:50:33 edsgate dhclient: bound to 192.168.1.101 -- renewal in 33391 seconds.
Jun 21 01:07:05 edsgate dhclient: DHCPREQUEST on eth0 to 192.168.1.1 port 67
Jun 21 01:07:05 edsgate dhclient: DHCPACK from 192.168.1.1
Jun 21 01:07:06 edsgate dhclient: bound to 192.168.1.101 -- renewal in 42944 seconds.
Jun 21 04:06:34 edsgate su(pam_unix)[11615]: session opened for user news by (uid=0)
Jun 21 04:06:34 edsgate su(pam_unix)[11615]: session closed for user news
Jun 21 13:02:51 edsgate dhclient: DHCPREQUEST on eth0 to 192.168.1.1 port 67
Jun 21 13:02:51 edsgate dhclient: DHCPACK from 192.168.1.1
Jun 21 13:02:52 edsgate dhclient: bound to 192.168.1.101 -- renewal in 35759 seconds.
Jun 21 22:58:52 edsgate dhclient: DHCPREQUEST on eth0 to 192.168.1.1 port 67
Jun 21 22:58:52 edsgate dhclient: DHCPACK from 192.168.1.1
Jun 21 22:58:53 edsgate dhclient: bound to 192.168.1.101 -- renewal in 40645 seconds.
Jun 22 04:06:36 edsgate su(pam_unix)[22032]: session opened for user news by (uid=0)
Jun 22 04:06:36 edsgate su(pam_unix)[22032]: session closed for user news
Jun 22 10:16:18 edsgate dhclient: DHCPREQUEST on eth0 to 192.168.1.1 port 67
Jun 22 10:16:18 edsgate dhclient: DHCPACK from 192.168.1.1
Jun 22 10:16:20 edsgate dhclient: bound to 192.168.1.101 -- renewal in 36434 seconds.
Jun 22 20:23:34 edsgate dhclient: DHCPREQUEST on eth0 to 192.168.1.1 port 67
Jun 22 20:23:34 edsgate dhclient: DHCPACK from 192.168.1.1
Jun 22 20:23:35 edsgate dhclient: bound to 192.168.1.101 -- renewal in 37345 seconds.
Jun 23 04:06:49 edsgate su(pam_unix)[32362]: session opened for user news by (uid=0)
Jun 23 04:06:50 edsgate su(pam_unix)[32362]: session closed for user news
Jun 23 05:26:07 edsgate gdm(pam_unix)[1996]: session closed for user ed
Jun 23 05:26:57 edsgate gdm(pam_unix)[1996]: session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jun 23 05:27:02 edsgate gconfd (root-629): starting (version 2.2.0), pid 629 user 'root'
Jun 23 05:27:03 edsgate gconfd (root-629): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/etc/g
conf/gconf.xml.mandatory" to a read-only config source at position 0
Jun 23 05:27:03 edsgate gconfd (root-629): Resolved address "xml:readwrite:/root/.gconf" to a writable config source at position 1
Jun 23 05:27:03 edsgate gconfd (root-629): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/etc/g
conf/gconf.xml.defaults" to a read-only config source at position 2
Jun 23 05:27:19 edsgate kernel: cdrom: This disc doesn't have any tracks I recog
nize!
Jun 23 05:28:02 edsgate gconfd (ed-2246): GConf server is not in use, shutting down.
Jun 23 05:28:04 edsgate gconfd (ed-2246): Exiting
Jun 23 05:33:51 edsgate named: named shutdown failed
Jun 23 05:34:04 edsgate named[803]: starting BIND 9.2.1 -u named
Jun 23 05:34:04 edsgate named[803]: using 1 CPU
Jun 23 05:34:04 edsgate named: named startup succeeded
Jun 23 05:34:05 edsgate named[807]: loading configuration from '/etc/named.conf'
Jun 23 05:34:05 edsgate named[807]: /etc/named.conf:41: open: /etc/named.custom: file not found
Jun 23 05:34:05 edsgate named[807]: loading configuration: file not found
Jun 23 05:34:05 edsgate named[807]: exiting (due to fatal error)
[root@edsgate root]#


My Web server is still accepting connections to "http://McCorduck.ws" and I'm still able to send e-mail to outside domains, but any e-mail sent to "Ed@McCorduck.ws" still bounces. And as shown by the last three lines of the messages log above, something is obviously still wrong. Unfortunately, though you say "There is a 'file not found' error now . . . Try and fix this" I'm not sure how. I assume it has to do with this "named.custom" file which can't be found. So I guess the obvious question is do I really need this file and if so, what should it contain? There's no file with this name in my /etc directory, and for the hell of it I searched my whole Linux computer for it but nothing with that name was found anywhere. Or how about that "GConf server" (gconfd) mentioned in the messages log? Again, your advice for this poor lost newbie would be much appreciated, as is all the help you've given me already.


Ed McCorduck
Department of English
State University of New York College at Cortland
http://mccorduck.cortland.edu
ICQ: http://mccorduck.cortland.edu/pager
AIM: EdMcCorduck