Qmail - less fun than watching grass grow.

CasimirEffect

I've just set up a qmail server and it seems to be working, i.e. it can send and reieve email. This process, however, takes anywhere from two to four minutes from an Outlook Express client after timing out several times. So far I've watched log activity and nothing seems to happen at all for the first few minutes. I've also added the -H and -R arguments to the tcpserver startup script. Does anyont have any ideas? This is my first bout with qmail and there's nothing in LWQ or on the qmail man pages that I was able to find that even suggests a problem like this.
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rac · Posted: Thu Nov 07, 2002 11:16 pm Post subject:

Is there a chance that reverse DNS queries are timing out? Do you have a local dnscache running? How about local host name entries in /etc/hosts?
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CasimirEffect · Posted: Thu Nov 07, 2002 11:49 pm Post subject:

Um. . . There is a good chance that the DNS queries are timing out because the system is in no way connected to a DNS server, yet. (It's a single server and client for testing now.) I take it that a DNS is required by qmail (and any other mail server). If not how can I get around it. The client's IP is configured by DHCP, is there a way to add it to /etc/hosts without forcing it to have a static IP?
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mgirard · n00b Joined: 30 Jul 2002 Posts: 64

Are you interested in running a local DNS cache? That would be my suggestion. I'll walk you though it if you are interested...

-Mg

mooman · Posted: Fri Nov 08, 2002 7:14 pm Post subject:

If CasimirEffect isn't, I am!

My gentoo project is a home lan mail and dns proxy. I'm still in the "work the kinks out of stage 3" part, but will be tackling the apps before long. Any wisdom or insight in the dns part is appreciated...

Thanks!
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splooge · l33t Joined: 30 Aug 2002 Posts: 636

emerge bind
rc-update add named default
/etc/init.d/named start

=)

mgirard · n00b Joined: 30 Jul 2002 Posts: 64

Well BIND would work, I have to say that it is an archaic and etremely insecure setup, IMHO. I figure if you are already running qmail and svscan you might as well run djbdns.

Here is what you do:

mgirard · n00b Joined: 30 Jul 2002 Posts: 64

mooman · Posted: Sat Nov 09, 2002 2:10 am Post subject:

Yeah, I had been doing some reading about djbdns and was probably going to use that. Thanks for the configuration tips. I'll give that a try once I get the box stable enough for it.

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CasimirEffect · Posted: Tue Nov 12, 2002 2:04 am Post subject: THANK YOU!!!

That's what I needed. Thanks for all the help, mgirard, I now have internal email working perfectly. I do have one more question. What would it take to get email working to the rest of the world? Do I need to register an IP with Verisign or should it automaticly work as is? Sorry if this is a dumb question but I have just about nill experience getting things working past the router.
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mgirard · n00b Joined: 30 Jul 2002 Posts: 64

In order to get email from the rest of the world to your machine it has to be registered in DNS. This can be as simple as setting up a http://www.dyndns.org/ domain name. I think that Dyndns is free for getting "yourhostname.dyndns.org" which is not really a full domain but just a branch. It should work well for your purposes though. Once you have that DNS name (and qmail setup to recieve email for that DNS name) anyone could send email to yourname@yourhostname.dyndns.org and it will be handled by your box.

Cheers,
Matt

CasimirEffect · Posted: Tue Nov 12, 2002 7:45 pm Post subject:

If I understand things correctly; we already have a domain registered for a website(www.whatever.com) than the mail server on the same IP will be able to handle mail sent to that domain (myname@whatever.com). Correct?
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dripton · n00b Joined: 16 Aug 2002 Posts: 65 Location: Virginia USA

mgirard · n00b Joined: 30 Jul 2002 Posts: 64

dripton is right on the money.

-Mg

CasimirEffect · Posted: Thu Nov 14, 2002 12:58 am Post subject:

Sweet! With a quick call to the ISP things are going perfectly. No more MS Exchange.

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