Zimbra Appliance Demo problem (can't receive mail)

[AndreyFyodorov]

Hi all.

I have been tinkering with the appliance demo

Version
Release 6.0.7_GA_2513_UBUNTU8_64 UBUNTU8_64 NETWORK edition.

When I send mail within the internal domain, it does not get delivered.

We used a fake domain name for this installation.

And we do NOT have MX records in DNS for it. I was hoping that I could trick the system by using hosts files. Hosts files never let me down in the past with any other products.

I can see in the zimbra.log that the messages do not get delivered because:

.......dsn=4.4.3, status=deferred (Host or domain name not found. Name service error for name=ftl1vmlxzim01 type=A: Host not found, try again)

I do have these lines in the hosts file:

10.124.39.221 ftl1vmlxzim01
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost

Why can't it use the hosts file to get the IP address of ftl1vmlxzim01 ?

[AndreyFyodorov]

P.S. I am not a Linux specialist by a long stretch. I can Google myself through simple tasks like editing configuration files, restarting services, etc.
(hey, I was able to get the antivirus to start)

Also I didn't install this demo appliance from the beginning. It was plopped into my lap in a half-working condition.

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by AndreyFyodorov

And we do NOT have MX records in DNS for it. I was hoping that I could trick the system by using hosts files. Hosts files never let me down in the past with any other products

You simply can't do that, Zimbra (actually, postfix) does a DNS lookup to find out where to deliver it's mail and those DNS records are required.

Originally Posted by AndreyFyodorov

I do have these lines in the hosts file:

The hosts file is totally incorrect, go to the 'Verify...' section of the Split DNS article in the wiki and check the required format and contents of the hosts file.

Originally Posted by AndreyFyodorov

Why can't it use the hosts file to get the IP address of ftl1vmlxzim01 ?

For the reason stated above (and all over the forums).

[AndreyFyodorov]

Thanks. I will check the split DNS article for correct format.

Will that help? Or are you saying that there are reasons all over these forums for the hosts file to never work anyway?




P.S. why Is there a need to have DNS to deliver mail to the Internal domain?

I have worked with many an email product - Exchange, Brightmail, Borderware... once you tell those systems that domain xyz.com is internal, they Know how to deliver mail to someone@xyz.com without needing any DNS (or hosts files)