DNS issues with Zimbra desktop on Ubuntu

[y@w]

Originally Posted by phoenix

The issue is with using a CNAME and incorrect set-up of DNS records.

Beware Using CNAME and MX at the Same Time
Why You Shouldn’t Mix CNAME and MX
How Best to Use a CNAME

While using a CNAME can work and it's use is rather ambiguous in the RFC, it's far better to avaoind it's use when pointing to a mail server.

Agreed, but we're not talking about using the CNAME as the MX record. In this case they are trying to use Zdesktop to connect to Yahoo mail. Zdesktop needs to get to the mailbox server, not the MTA which appear to be different hosts (I would assume they are). Yahoo does not use a CNAME in its MX records, however the IMAP and SMTP servers for public use do appear to be CNAMEs.

The one the OP mentioned was zimbra.imap.mail.yahoo.com which the mail client actually has to follow a trail of CNAMEs to get to an A record for. If the problem lies in using a CNAME to get to a mailbox server, I would have thought this would be a lot bigger issue for the product. Both Yahoo Mail and Gmail use CNAMEs for their IMAP servers. But again, they don't use CNAME records for their MX records. It very well could be that the issue in this case was something machine-specific for this person that caused it to not be able to, but retrieving mail from a host using a CNAME DNS entry is quite common.

[phoenix]

I think you're missing the point of my post. It was in reply to this question:

Originally Posted by ajc13

Is there a problem with those addresses which are a cname (as many mailservers seem to have).

[y@w]

Originally Posted by phoenix

I think you're missing the point of my post. It was in reply to this question:

I guess I'm confused on why you quoted my post then .. At any rate, the articles you mentioned only mention an issue with using a CNAME as an MX record (as well as other things I've read). I'm still not convinced that using a CNAME to reference an IMAP server is a problem. I can't imagine that Yahoo Mail and Gmail are run by a bunch of n00bs who don't know how to setup DNS...

[ajc13]

unfortunately none of the cname vs dns records solves the ubuntu users issues in resolving mail servers or following links in messages without adding entries into their /etc/hosts file.

[y@w]

What happens if you use the actual A record that the CNAME point to in your config? For instance, zimbra.imap.mail.yahoo.com points to imap-ssl.mail.yahoo.com which points to a couple of other CNAME records which eventually point to imap-ssl.mail.us.a1.b.yahoo.com.

[gbr]

I am having the same issue. I just upgraded from Ubuntu 8.10, which had all of my accounts running perfectly.

I installed fresh under Jaunty, and zDesktop can't find any of the servers I used to connect to. This includes 2 Zimbra servers, and GMail.

Is there a solution to this issue yet?

Gerald

[juniper]

I am also experiencing this issue on Ubuntu 8.04, but more interestingly, it doesn't matter whether it's for a CName, an A record, or an MX record. The whole client appears to completely unable to do DNS lookups. It has no problems with /etc/hosts, so I've managed a workaround that way, but I can't ask our entire user community to do that.

[gbr]

Hi,

This is definitely a DNS lookup issue. Even clicking on a web link fails to resolve the name.

Is there a way I can force zd to use firefox instead of opening the page locally?

Gerald

[AdrianCox]

Originally Posted by gbr

Hi,

This is definitely a DNS lookup issue. Even clicking on a web link fails to resolve the name.

Is there a way I can force zd to use firefox instead of opening the page locally?

Gerald

The advice about lib32nss-mdns cured the problem for me, with one extra step. I copied the library /usr/lib32/libnss_mdns4_minimal.so.2 into the lib directory of my Zimbra Desktop install.

There's more on the underlying problem in this Debian bug and a Stack Overflow discussion.

[bquinata]

Ubuntu 9.04 64-bit
Zimbra Desktop 1.0.3

Installing lib32nss-mdns also resolved my dns resolution issue.