Newbie question about installation and DNS/domain setup

[ryanmc]

I'm coming from a windows background and little experience with linux and DNS. I'm at a company that is growing and needs the benefits of shared calendaring but Nobody wants to go with exchange. I'm personally trying to set up the open version of Zimbra on a copy of Suse Linux to get a feel, I have a domain that I purchased and am using http://www.dyndns.com/ for dynamic DNS to point to my comcast ip and I'm behind a NAT router.

I'm having a time figuring out how to set up zoning at dyndns and whether or not I need a DNS server on my home machine.

I'm assuming my linux machine has to have a host name on my domain? Something like host.example.com
I want to be able to set up a mail server that is called something like mail.example.com that can recieve email at something like ryan@example.com

Currently when I go through the Zimbra set up I get this:

DNS ERROR resolving host.example.com
It is suggested that the hostname be resolveable via DNS

I have "host" resolving to to my private IP in my hosts file. I read in another thread that I might need to set up a DNS server so that Zimbra will resolve host.example.com to my private IP rather then my public IP Address before it looks at my ISP's DNS servers that resolve my domain to my public IP Address?
Also what should I have in my dyndns zoning file?

Currently in my ZOning file I have mail.example.com as my Mail Exchanger.

Also is the fact that LDAP fails to load possibly because of this domain confusion?

[dbo]

Make sure you have an MX record set up for your domain name at DynDns. You'll also need to add your domain name to the hosts file. For my distro it's located at /etc/hosts.

I would get those errors fixed before you worry about others as it may clear up the other problems.

[dbo]

In the /etc/hosts file leave the first line alone. On the line below that you'll put your internal ip address, your hostname and then server name. For example.

192.168.0.111 example.com SERVER

You don't need to run your own DNS server if your machine is specifying a DNS server to look at. Mine just looks at my router and then my router has a DNS server it looks at.

So yeah, add that line to the hosts file and make sure an MX is set up at DynDns.

[dijichi2]

this is not quite right, the hosts file binds canonical names to an ip address, such that short names and fqdns can be added on the same line, eg:
192.168.1.1 host host.example.com

adding a domain name here would just create a mapping to the @ A record for the domain

assuming your nsswitch resolves file before dns (/etc/nsswitch.conf), and zimbra honours nsswitch resolv order you should be ok.

[marcmac]

Zimbra honors nsswitch.conf, but postfix does not, unless you disable dns lookups in the mta.

Also, in /etc/hosts, you should have
ip fqdn name
rather than
ip name fqdn
or the installer will complain.

[ryanmc]

I think I have dynDNS setup correct, here is my A list

rlinux2.example.com 192.168.2.102
example.com 60.161.38.100

My MX list:

host Data
rlinux2.example.com rlinux2.exmple.com

I have the hosts file setup:
192.168.2.102 rlinux2.example.com rlinux2

Everything seems to go fine through installation but when everything is starting I get a (256) error initializing LDAP and configuration is stopped.

This is the open source version running on SUSE 10

[phoenix]

This line is incorrect:

rlinux2.example.com 192.168.2.102

You can't have a public DNS server point to a private IP behind a router, it should only point to your public IP and then be forwarded (port 25) to your local server on the LAN.

You also need the 127.0.0.1 entry in your hosts file, is that there?

[ryanmc]

I'm forwarding port 25. For some reason pointing rlinux2.example.com to the private address was the only way it would not give me the "It is suggested that the domain name have an MX record configured in DNS" during setup.

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by ryanmc

I'm forwarding port 25. For some reason pointing rlinux2.example.com to the private address was the only way it would not give me the "It is suggested that the domain name have an MX record configured in DNS" during setup.

Well, I'm afraid you'll have to set-up your DNS correctly to get it working as it should. That means pointing an MX record to a valid external address and then running a DNS server + correct hosts file on your LAN.

[bobby]

this thread has some confusing information. you should be able to do something like the following (note that dns returns the same (private) ip that is in the hosts file):

$ cat /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
10.10.130.165 support01.liquidsys.com support01 s1

$ host support01.liquidsys.com
support01.liquidsys.com has address 10.10.130.165

for testing, it will be goofy, but functional on the lan with the zimbra server, to register private ip's in the public dns. phoenix is right, however, that you probably want to run split dns in order to route mail between the zimbra server and the internet.

"First, remember that you need to set up an MX record for the DOMAIN, which points to the A record for the HOST, which will be the IP ADDRESS of the box running zimbra." -from zimbra wiki - dns