[SOLVED] Absolute Mail Server Newbie Doesn't know where to start!

[ukturtle]

Hi

I'm embarassed! I've been in IT for 19 years and still don't know where to start with this one.

At work we currently use MS Exchange hosted by another company. I want to bring mail in-house now and I want to do it using Zimbra zcs. So I thought I'd have a go at setting it all up at home first in a VirtualBox environment.

I've got a vanilla install of Ubuntu 10.04(LTS) Desktop with all latest patches. I've downloaded ZCS7 and run the install. It runs through fine until I get to the bit where it says about MX records. It can't find an MX record on my domain and then this is where I realise I'm WAY out of my depth.

So, here's my setup. I have just registered a domain with hostingUK and for the sake of this post lets call it newbie.me.uk. I've added nothing to it yet (I have but lets assume I haven't cos what I've added doesn't work so will delete it). I'm on BT broadband at home at the moment so I have DynDNS setup to keep track of my dynamic IP (getting static IP when I move to PlusNet next month). My DynDNS for the sake of this exercise we'll call nastyBT.homedns.org. That's possibly all you clever people need to know.

I'm going to ask if someone out there has a detailed guide on what I need to do to set this up but if that's asking a bit much (which I fear it is seeing as this is quite a minefield) then maybe someone would be able to give me a highlevel list of the steps I need to go through to get ZCS7 working with my setup?

For example, I was starting to wonder if I needed to set up BIND first before I can do any of this but I really don't have a clue!

ANY help at all will probably be better than the dark place I'm in at the moment!

Thanks very much in anticipation.

[phoenix]

Welcome to the forums.

If you are behind a NAT router you will need a Split DNS set-up, go to that article and follow those instructions. You will need to set-up BIND but it's not that difficult, I'd suggest you use the same domain name as your external (registered) domain name it will save any later confusion. Have a look at those instructions first and see how you get on with them before you actually install Zimbra.

Don't be put-off by BIND it really is simple if you follow the instructions.

[ukturtle]

Am I behind a NAT router? I'm using a BT HomeHub.

Thanks for your amazingly quick reply. I'll check out your suggestions and get to it.

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by ukturtle

Am I behind a NAT router? I'm using a BT HomeHub.

I'm afraid I don't know anything about the BT Home Hub (it's been a while since I lived in the UK) but my guess is it's some for of NAT device. If you have an IP address on your PCs that are similar to 192.168.x.x then it does NAT. Do you have multiple PC connected to the BT device?

[ukturtle]

Yes, of course! I'm being stupid, so sorry! Doh! Yes, I have internal 192.168.x.x IP's on about 3 PC's/Laptops directly connection to the BT Hub and then another 8 or 9 VirtualBox virtual machines I use for work.

[ukturtle]

My server is called zimbra and is installed with bind9. My domain is brynjellis.me.uk. The internal IP's shown in this post are different from the originals I posted because I've taken my machine in to work today to try to get this sorted and the domain uses a different IP setup.

OK, I've been having a go at this today and have got bind starting but I'm getting the following errors in /var/log/daemon.log:

Mar 21 14:33:19 zimbra named[2619]: zone 0.in-addr.arpa/IN: loaded serial 1
Mar 21 14:33:19 zimbra named[2619]: zone 127.in-addr.arpa/IN: loaded serial 1
Mar 21 14:33:19 zimbra named[2619]: zone 255.in-addr.arpa/IN: loaded serial 1
Mar 21 14:33:19 zimbra named[2619]: zone localhost/IN: loaded serial 2
Mar 21 14:33:19 zimbra named[2619]: /etc/bind/db.zimbra.brynjellis.me.uk:4: no TTL specified; using SOA MINTTL instead
Mar 21 14:33:19 zimbra named[2619]: zone zimbra.brynjellis.me.uk/IN: NS '10.xxx.x.226.zimbra.brynjellis.me.uk' has no address records (A or AAAA)
Mar 21 14:33:19 zimbra named[2619]: zone zimbra.brynjellis.me.uk/IN: not loaded due to errors.
Mar 21 14:33:19 zimbra named[2619]: running

This is what my named.conf.options file looks like:

options {
directory "/var/cache/bind";

// If there is a firewall between you and nameservers you want
// to talk to, you may need to fix the firewall to allow multiple
// ports to talk. See US-CERT Vulnerability Note VU#800113

// If your ISP provided one or more IP addresses for stable
// nameservers, you probably want to use them as forwarders.
// Uncomment the following block, and insert the addresses replacing
// the all-0's placeholder.

forwarders { 10.xxx.x.x; };
};
include "/etc/bind/rndc.key";

//auth-nxdomain no; # conform to RFC1035
// listen-on-v6 { any; };

// we are the mast server for zimbra.brynjellis.me.uk
zone "zimbra.brynjellis.me.uk" {
type master;
file "/etc/bind/db.zimbra.brynjellis.me.uk";
};

and this is my /etc/bin/db.zimbra.brynjellis.me.uk:
;
; Addresses and other host information.
;
@ IN SOA zimbra.brynjellis.me.uk. hostmaster.zimbra.brynjellis.me.uk. (
10118 ; Serial
43200 ; Refresh
3600 ; Retry
3600000 ; Expire
2592000 ) ; Minimum
; Define the nameservers and the mail servers
IN NS 10.xxx.xxx.xx6
IN MX 10 mail.brynjellis.me.uk.
mail IN A 10.xxx.xxx.xx6

Where am I going wrong please? I'm assuming I need to create some A and/or AAA records somewhere but if I'm honest I don't know where.

Like I said, I'm hopeless at this stuff so please go gentle with me!

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by ukturtle

and this is my /etc/bin/db.zimbra.brynjellis.me.uk

That file is incorrectly named, it should be as follows:

/etc/bin/db.brynjellis.me.uk

The same goes for the zone information, you're actually using a subdomain and it should be the domain which is "brynjellis.me.uk". - you need to modify all the bind setting to reflect that.

Here is a "how to" for Ubuntu that should explain it clearly: How to to configure BIND9 in Ubuntu | Techgurulive.com

[ukturtle]

Thanks again for your post Bill. You were right, that URL certainly explained things better than a lot of posts I've seen on setting up BIND.

Anyhow, I've followed it and am relatively happy I've followed it to the letter but I'm still getting the following error in my daemon.log:

Mar 22 07:21:21 zimbra named[3906]: command channel listening on 127.0.0.1#953
Mar 22 07:21:21 zimbra named[3906]: command channel listening on ::1#953
Mar 22 07:21:21 zimbra named[3906]: zone 0.in-addr.arpa/IN: loaded serial 1
Mar 22 07:21:21 zimbra named[3906]: zone 127.in-addr.arpa/IN: loaded serial 1
Mar 22 07:21:21 zimbra named[3906]: zone 255.in-addr.arpa/IN: loaded serial 1
Mar 22 07:21:21 zimbra named[3906]: zone localhost/IN: loaded serial 2
Mar 22 07:21:21 zimbra named[3906]: zone brynjellis.me.uk/IN: NS 'zimbra.brynjellis.me.uk' has no address records (A or AAAA)
Mar 22 07:21:21 zimbra named[3906]: zone brynjellis.me.uk/IN: not loaded due to errors.
Mar 22 07:21:21 zimbra named[3906]: running

My db.brynjellis.me.uk file looks like this now:

;
; BIND data file for local loopback interface
;
$TTL    604800
@       IN      SOA     zimbra.brynjellis.me.uk. hostmaster.brynjellis.me.uk. (
                   201103220721         ; Serial
                         604800         ; Refresh
                          86400         ; Retry
                        2419200         ; Expire
                         604800 )       ; Negative Cache TTL
;
@       IN      NS      zimbra.brynjellis.me.uk.
@       IN      A       
ns      IN      A       

..and this is my named.conf.local:

//
// Do any local configuration here
//

// Consider adding the 1918 zones here, if they are not used in your
// organization
//include "/etc/bind/zones.rfc1918";

zone "brynjellis.me.uk" {
        type master;
        file "/etc/bind/db.brynjellis.me.uk";
};

...and named.conf.options:

options {
        directory "/var/cache/bind";

        // If there is a firewall between you and nameservers you want
        // to talk to, you may need to fix the firewall to allow multiple
        // ports to talk.  See US-CERT Vulnerability Note VU#800113

        // If your ISP provided one or more IP addresses for stable
        // nameservers, you probably want to use them as forwarders.
        // Uncomment the following block, and insert the addresses replacing
        // the all-0's placeholder.

        forwarders      {
                                ;
                                ;
                         };
};
//include "/etc/bind/rndc.key";

        //auth-nxdomain no;    # conform to RFC1035
        // listen-on-v6 { any; };

        // we are the mast server for zimbra.brynjellis.me.uk
        //zone "brynjellis.me.uk" {
        //      type master;
        //      file "/etc/bind/db.brynjellis.me.uk";
//};

Where am I going wrong now? Is there something I need to change in the DNS settings where my brynjellis.me.uk domain is registered on the internet?

[phoenix]

You seem to have left-out the IP address in your A records you've posted above.

[ukturtle]

Oh! That's strange. When I pasted it in originally I replaced the IP addresses with . I wonder why that got lost? That's what's in there anyway.

Sorry about that, I don't know how that happened as I didn't place them in those code boxes either. I just pasted them into the post directly.

There's gremlins about!