[SOLVED] Time Dependance on Multi Server Installation

[jwriteclub]

Good morning all,

I've been trying to set up a second MTA for my Zimbra installation (community edition). My primary server isn't absurdly bogged down, but I want a backup MTA.

In any case, I've had no luck installing the second MTA, the setup appears fine, but on startup it keeps crashing, saying it "cannot authorize" (or something to that effect, I haven't got the log in front of me at the moment.

I recently realized (much to my chagrin) that the clock on the "new" MTA box was nearly 30 hours off (I had forgotten to configure NTP servers).

How time dependent are these setups, and, could such a large disparity prevent the MTA from communicating with the primary server?? This seems a plausible explanation to me, but I wanted to put it out here to see if anyone else thinks this is plausible.

~ Christopher

[brian]

With ZCS 5.0.x it uses SSL and TLS to securely communicate between the components. When you generate new self-signed certs and one of the servers has a date in the past you'll have problems similar to what you described.

The easiest solution is to use NTP to ensure you systems are insync time wise. This is always a good thing for MTA's anyways. You don't want mail being delivered with time stamps off by 30hrs.

The other solution is this is a real problem is to disable the secure interprocess communication between zimbra nodes.

[jwriteclub]

I've been meaning to update this post:

Once I configured an ntp and let the server sync up, I had no further installation trouble.

~ Christopher