user zimbra can't ping localhost, but root can?

[gtr33m]

I'm having trouble with my server starting certain zimbra services which rely on localhost.

For some strange reason, user zimbra or any other user can't ping localhost, but for some reason root can.

User zimbra get's a valid host localhost but can't ping localhost. Response is:

ping: unknown host localhost

Any ideas? I've checked the permissions on the bind folder and they all look alright.

User zimbra can ping 127.0.0.1 so it must be an inability to resolve localhost, though it can resolve internet addresses.

[phoenix]

What's the output of the following:

cat /etc/hosts

[gtr33m]

As either root or zimbra the result is:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain	localhost
192.168.2.5 server1.medalist.com.au server1

# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1 ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
ff02::3 ip6-allhosts

[uxbod]

Check perms on /etc/hosts and /etc/resolv.conf

[gtr33m]

/etc/hosts:
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 287 2009-04-20 14:27 /etc/hosts

/etc/resolv.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 148 2009-04-22 11:38 /etc/resolv.conf

[gtr33m]

for some reason there is a directory /etc/resolvconf/ in this server that my new server does not have. I don't know if it's significant, but here's the structure:

root@server1:~# ls -l -R /etc/resolvconf/
/etc/resolvconf/:
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-01-08 12:42 update-libc.d

/etc/resolvconf/update-libc.d:
total 8
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 249 2008-03-21 21:40 avahi-daemon
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 162 2007-11-15 19:50 fetchmail

[phoenix]

What did you use to edit the hosts file? There seems to be a stray character in there (unless it's your copy/paste), notice there's no space in you post above:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost

Make sure that there's is actually a space before the last 'localhost' and not some unprintable character.

[gtr33m]

Edited with nano. I think it's just an artifact of the copy paste as looking at the file it's definitively got a space in there, and in any case root can resolve localhost, so unless root looks elsewhere, it doesn't look like /etc/hosts is the issue.

I wouldn't worry about it anymore Bill. I managed to get the services fired up by modifying any reference to localhost in zmlocalconfig to 127.0.0.1, doing the same in my.cnf and my-logger.cnf and starting slapd manually using sudo (I coudln't figure out where the slpad conf file was) before doing a zmcontrol start.

It's ugly, but it's up. It's only there long enough to transfer the data over to the new server, then the whole thing gets wiped.

I'd like to know what the problem is, but it's one of those things that not likely to happen again and I've got a workaround that will suffice for now.

[uxbod]

Thats not a good idea to be honest as you may encounter other issues later. What is in /etc/nsswitch.conf ?

[Rich Graves]

I caused this problem once by scp'ing /etc/hosts from elsewhere, which changed the selinux label. What's the output of "getenforce"?