Removing hostname from hosts file fixed prob.

[lemur]

So I think I tried every fix in the forums over the past week, several RedHat reinstalls and what feels like dozens of Zimbra reinstalls. Nothing helped. what finally did help was actually removing my hostname.mydomain from the hosts file so it simply read:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost

One I did that, the Zimbra install went smoothly, I got conformation that the services started, I was able to login to the admin page (took about 30 sec) and am now looking at the Zimbra Admin console.

I'm not going to bother posting my previous install errors unless you guys want something from them, just wanted to throw out what solved my installation problem.

[joshuamorgan]

i had the same problem when initially installing it on centos4.1

my hosts file read:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain mail.mydomain.com

as the installation script said, i removed mail.mydomain.com from that line and moved it to its own so it looked like this:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
127.0.0.1 mail.mydomain.com mail

installation then started but when starting zimbra-tomcat i got many errors stating that mail.mydomain.com couldn't be resolved. this is because the fqdn host name (except localhost.localdomain) has to be a WAN/LAN ip address and not the loopback address.

is this what you meant by your post?

[riegersteve]

add a . at the end of your addition

[lemur]

joshuamorgan,

Actually, my hosts file initially looked like this:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain
192.168.xxx.x mailserver.mydomain.com

So the hostfile had a non-loopback IP address and the fully qualified domain name on a second, separate line. When I deleted the second line and had only the loopback and localhost.localdomain, Tomcat started on it's own and I was able to login to the Admin console. Don't really understand it since I do an nslookup and it still resolves exactly what I had in my hosts file.


riegersteve,

Didn't quite understand where you were suggesting putting the period,

Are you talking about after domain.com like in a bind dns zone file?

[KevinH]

For the record we reccomend a /etc/hosts that looks like:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
192.168.xxx.x mailserver.mydomain.com mailserver

You need the localhost and mailserver parts from our experience. A good test of everything working is to run:

nslookup `hostname`


This should report the same IP address as you see with /sbin/ifconfig -a and of course be the right host name.

[lemur]

Yea, no idea why the recommended config breaks my Zimbra.

I'm going to list two startups. The first one with the recommended hosts file config and second startup, with only loopback and localhost.localdomain localhost

-=-=-

First, if my hostfile looks like the following, everything works fine. All services start up and I can login.

[root@muscrat ~]# cat /etc/hosts
# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain localhost

Now I'm going to insert the second, fully qualified name and IP address line in my hosts file, reboot and do a ps -ef |grep zimbra.

[root@muscrat ~]# cat /etc/hosts
# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain localhost
192.168.xxx.xxx muscrat.xxxxxxxxxx.com muscrat

[root@muscrat ~]# ps -ef |grep zimbra
zimbra    3347     1  0 11:18 ?        00:00:00 /opt/zimbra/openldap/libexec/slapd -4 -u zimbra -h ldap://:7389/ -f /opt/zimbra/conf/slapd.conf
zimbra    3415     1  0 11:18 ?        00:00:00 perl /opt/zimbra/bin/zmmon
zimbra    3435  3415  0 11:18 ?        00:00:00 perl /opt/zimbra/bin/zmmon
zimbra    3436  3415  0 11:18 ?        00:00:00 perl /opt/zimbra/bin/zmmon
root      4590  4522  0 11:20 pts/1    00:00:00 grep zimbra
[root@muscrat ~]#

After adding the second, recommended line into my hosts file, the Zimbra services do not start as they should.

Now I get Zimbra back up and running by doing removing the second line from the host file.

[root@muscrat ~]# cat /etc/hosts
# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain localhost
#192.168.xxx.xxx muscrat.xxxxxxxxxx.com muscrat

I then reboot, do a ps -ef|grep zimbra and get these results:

[root@muscrat ~]# ps -ef |grep zimbra
root      3136  1982  0 11:23 ?        00:00:00 initlog -q -c /etc/rc5.d/S99zimbra start
root      3137  3136  0 11:23 ?        00:00:00 /bin/bash /etc/rc5.d/S99zimbra start
root      3138  3137  0 11:23 ?        00:00:00 su - zimbra -c zmcontrol startup
zimbra    3143  3138  0 11:23 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/perl /opt/zimbra/bin/zmcontrol startup
zimbra    3346     1  0 11:23 ?        00:00:00 /opt/zimbra/openldap/libexec/slapd -4 -u zimbra -h ldap://:7389/ -f /opt/zimbra/conf/slapd.conf
zimbra    3799     1  2 11:24 ?        00:00:00 amavisd (master)
zimbra    4023  3799  0 11:24 ?        00:00:00 amavisd (virgin child)
zimbra    4024  3799  0 11:24 ?        00:00:00 amavisd (virgin child)
zimbra    4025  3799  0 11:24 ?        00:00:00 amavisd (virgin child)
zimbra    4026  3799  0 11:24 ?        00:00:00 amavisd (virgin child)
zimbra    4027  3799  0 11:24 ?        00:00:00 amavisd (virgin child)
zimbra    4210     1  0 11:24 ?        00:00:00 /opt/zimbra/clamav/bin/freshclam --config-file=/opt/zimbra/conf/freshclam.conf -d --checks=12
zimbra    4213     1  0 11:24 ?        00:00:00 /opt/zimbra/clamav/sbin/clamd --config-file /opt/zimbra/conf/clamd.conf
zimbra    4365     1  0 11:24 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/perl /opt/zimbra/bin/zmmtaconfig
zimbra    4499     1  0 11:24 ?        00:00:00 /bin/sh /opt/zimbra/mysql/bin/mysqld_safe --defaults-file=/opt/zimbra/conf/my.cnf --ledir=/opt/zimbra/mysql/bin
zimbra    4556  4499  8 11:24 ?        00:00:00 /opt/zimbra/mysql/bin/mysqld --defaults-file=/opt/zimbra/conf/my.cnf --basedir=/opt/zimbra/mysql --datadir=/opt/zimbra/db/data --pid-file=/opt/zimbra/db/mysql.pid --skip-locking --port=3306 --socket=/opt/zimbra/db/mysql.sock
zimbra    4591  4556  0 11:24 ?        00:00:00 /opt/zimbra/mysql/bin/mysqld --defaults-file=/opt/zimbra/conf/my.cnf --basedir=/opt/zimbra/mysql --datadir=/opt/zimbra/db/data --pid-file=/opt/zimbra/db/mysql.pid --skip-locking --port=3306 --socket=/opt/zimbra/db/mysql.sock
zimbra    4592  4591  0 11:24 ?        00:00:00 /opt/zimbra/mysql/bin/mysqld --defaults-file=/opt/zimbra/conf/my.cnf --basedir=/opt/zimbra/mysql --datadir=/opt/zimbra/db/data --pid-file=/opt/zimbra/db/mysql.pid --skip-locking --port=3306 --socket=/opt/zimbra/db/mysql.sock
zimbra    4593  4591  0 11:24 ?        00:00:00 /opt/zimbra/mysql/bin/mysqld --defaults-file=/opt/zimbra/conf/my.cnf --basedir=/opt/zimbra/mysql --datadir=/opt/zimbra/db/data --pid-file=/opt/zimbra/db/mysql.pid --skip-locking --port=3306 --socket=/opt/zimbra/db/mysql.sock
zimbra    4594  4591  0 11:24 ?        00:00:00 /opt/zimbra/mysql/bin/mysqld --defaults-file=/opt/zimbra/conf/my.cnf --basedir=/opt/zimbra/mysql --datadir=/opt/zimbra/db/data --pid-file=/opt/zimbra/db/mysql.pid --skip-locking --port=3306 --socket=/opt/zimbra/db/mysql.sock
zimbra    4595  4591  0 11:24 ?        00:00:00 /opt/zimbra/mysql/bin/mysqld --defaults-file=/opt/zimbra/conf/my.cnf --basedir=/opt/zimbra/mysql --datadir=/opt/zimbra/db/data --pid-file=/opt/zimbra/db/mysql.pid --skip-locking --port=3306 --socket=/opt/zimbra/db/mysql.sock
zimbra    4604  4591  0 11:24 ?        00:00:00 /opt/zimbra/mysql/bin/mysqld --defaults-file=/opt/zimbra/conf/my.cnf --basedir=/opt/zimbra/mysql --datadir=/opt/zimbra/db/data --pid-file=/opt/zimbra/db/mysql.pid --skip-locking --port=3306 --socket=/opt/zimbra/db/mysql.sock
zimbra    4605  4591  0 11:24 ?        00:00:00 /opt/zimbra/mysql/bin/mysqld --defaults-file=/opt/zimbra/conf/my.cnf --basedir=/opt/zimbra/mysql --datadir=/opt/zimbra/db/data --pid-file=/opt/zimbra/db/mysql.pid --skip-locking --port=3306 --socket=/opt/zimbra/db/mysql.sock
zimbra    4606  4591  0 11:24 ?        00:00:00 /opt/zimbra/mysql/bin/mysqld --defaults-file=/opt/zimbra/conf/my.cnf --basedir=/opt/zimbra/mysql --datadir=/opt/zimbra/db/data --pid-file=/opt/zimbra/db/mysql.pid --skip-locking --port=3306 --socket=/opt/zimbra/db/mysql.sock
zimbra    4607  4591  0 11:24 ?        00:00:00 /opt/zimbra/mysql/bin/mysqld --defaults-file=/opt/zimbra/conf/my.cnf --basedir=/opt/zimbra/mysql --datadir=/opt/zimbra/db/data --pid-file=/opt/zimbra/db/mysql.pid --skip-locking --port=3306 --socket=/opt/zimbra/db/mysql.sock
zimbra    4608  4591  0 11:24 ?        00:00:00 /opt/zimbra/mysql/bin/mysqld --defaults-file=/opt/zimbra/conf/my.cnf --basedir=/opt/zimbra/mysql --datadir=/opt/zimbra/db/data --pid-file=/opt/zimbra/db/mysql.pid --skip-locking --port=3306 --socket=/opt/zimbra/db/mysql.sock
zimbra    4678     1 71 11:24 ?        00:00:00 /opt/zimbra/java/bin/java -client -XX:NewRatio=2 -Xms303m -Xmx303m -Djava.library.path=/opt/zimbra/lib -Djava.endorsed.dirs=/opt/zimbra/tomcat/common/endorsed -classpath :/opt/zimbra/tomcat/bin/bootstrap.jar:/opt/zimbra/tomcat/bin/commons-logging-api.jar -Dcatalina.base=/opt/zimbra/tomcat -Dcatalina.home=/opt/zimbra/tomcat -Djava.io.tmpdir=/opt/zimbra/tomcat/temp org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap start
zimbra    4703  4365 51 11:24 ?        00:00:00 /opt/zimbra/java/bin/java -client -Dzimbra.home=/opt/zimbra -Djava.library.path=/opt/zimbra/lib -Djava.ext.dirs=/opt/zimbra/java/jre/lib/ext:/opt/zimbra/lib com.zimbra.cs.account.ProvUtil gs muscrat.xxxxxxxxxx.com
zimbra    4785  3143  0 11:24 ?        00:00:00 sh -c /opt/zimbra/bin/zmsaslauthdctl start > /dev/null 2>&1
zimbra    4786  4785  0 11:24 ?        00:00:00 /bin/bash /opt/zimbra/bin/zmsaslauthdctl start
root      4790  3945  0 11:24 pts/1    00:00:00 grep zimbra
zimbra    4797  4786  0 11:24 ?        00:00:00 /bin/bash /opt/zimbra/bin/zmlocalconfig -q -m shell zimbra_home zimbra_log_directory
[root@muscrat ~]#

I have no idea why adding the fully qualified name and ip address breaks my Zimbra, but it does.

By the way, ifconfig -a returns the same IP address as I am adding to the second line of my hosts file.

Now I have to figure out why SMTP TLS isn't letting me authenticate via Thunderbird... ;-)

Cheers!

[anand]

Now I have to figure out why SMTP TLS isn't letting me authenticate via Thunderbird... ;-)

If you are having trouble with SMTP auth, and if the problem is authenticating an account that is not in the default domain, see also this thread:
SMTP SASL authentication failure

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by lemur

Yea, no idea why the recommended config breaks my Zimbra.

I'm going to list two startups. The first one with the recommended hosts file config and second startup, with only loopback and localhost.localdomain localhost

You have to install with the reccomended config, not just reboot/run with it.

[joshuamorgan]

yes,

i put an incomplete hosts file in my post it was supposed to read like this:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
127.0.0.1 mail.mydomain.com mail

when writing the post i forgot to put the 'localhost' and 'mail' entries.

[sanchiro]

Does anyone run zimbra on a system with a dynamic IP? Is this possible?