Question about host names

[OverZealous]

I don't completely understand everything reguarding the MTA, but I have a possible installation mistake.

The question: Does the hostname given by the MTA on connect have to be routeable back to the server for some reason?

When I installed Zimbra, I gave it the internal hostname for the server (eg, a.domain.com). However, I realized later I really wanted Zimbra to work as mail.domain.com. All of my outside DNS entries are set up for mail.domain.com. My internal DNS server (because I am behind a NAT) is also configured for a.domain.com. Mail seems to be sent and received just find. When a server connects to my MTA, it gives its hostname as a.domain.com - which cannot be routed back using a DNS lookup.

Due to the way I have the server set up, I would really prefer to not set up the DNS entry for a.domain.com.

A followup question: If this could be a problem, should I try to reconfigure Zimbra to use the mail.domain.com as explained in the Wiki?

Thanks,
- Phil DeJarnett

[jholder]

Hi Phil,
You can create as many domains as you wish, and yes, you're gonna want to create a special domain.

There is no huge reason why it needs to be traceable, it just has to be resolvable.

[OverZealous]

I think I might have been a bit confusing.

When you connect to port 25, the server announces itself as a.domain.com:

host$ telnet mail.domain.com
220 a.domain.com ESMTP Postfix

a.domain.com is not resolveable, currently. Is there a way to update zimbra so that the domain that is listed above is changed to mail.domain.com? Is this even necessary?

Thanks again.

[soxfan]

The "220" message by default returns the hostname of the system. In the Postfix configuration, main.cf file, there is a variable you can change called "smtpd_banner" to customize the message. With Zimbra I'd be careful about directly editing files Postfix configuration files. The changes may not survive an upgrade. You may want to search around on the proper way to make the change.

[OverZealous]

Yes, I'd rather make a more permanent change. Also, I didn't see an existing smtpd_banner in mail.cf, nor did changing myhostname to the correct domain seem to have an effect (after restarting Postfix, of course). I think .cf files need to be processed before they update, so that may be why.

Thanks.

[soxfan]

Since the smtpd_banner is not in the main.cf file it should assume the Postfix default, which is "$myhostname ESMTP $mail_name". I'm guessing that changing the $myhostname variable didn't work because it repopulated that value when you restarted, probably from the localconfig.xml file. I would think if you manually added the smtpd_banner variable to the main.cf file it would work, but again not sure about surviving an upgrade.

[OverZealous]

I decided to just try ZmSetServerName at http://wiki.zimbra.com/index.php?title=ZmSetServerName.

If you follow the directions exactly (stopping the services first), you get an error. If, instead, you just run the command, there is no error, and it stops the services automatically. That seems to have solved my "problem", or at least alleviated my fears. Since the internal DNS lists both domains fully, I'm not too worried about any leftover domain issues.

[auanton]

i had to switch the domain name and found troubles with the logger and server statistics:

zimbra 4.5.5 on ubuntu 6.06:

these two hints worked fine:

1)

Originally Posted by OverZealous

I decided to just try ZmSetServerName at ZmSetServerName - ZimbraWiki.

If you follow the directions exactly (stopping the services first), you get an error. If, instead, you just run the command, there is no error, and it stops the services automatically. That seems to have solved my "problem", or at least alleviated my fears. Since the internal DNS lists both domains fully, I'm not too worried about any leftover domain issues.

then:
change of /etc/hosts
and
hostname newhostname

followed by :

2)

Originally Posted by rnuno

Ok it's working now thanks for the support of the Zimbra team.

For the record this has what fixed:

su - zimbra
zmloggerctl stop
ps aux | grep zmlogger
kill any logger processes
zmloggerctl start
/opt/zimbra/libexec/zmlogprocess

And my graps started working on the fly.

Regards,
Ricardo

3) after this, i had TWO server-statistics:

-- the old ones with the old servername
-- a new - empty - set with the new servername.

at this point
dnsdomainname still gave me the old domain !

-- i changed the content of the filename /etc/hostname (containing the old hostname ) and did a reboot.

now serverstatistics gives me only one servername, the new one, with the old statistical data still there and the new one displayed in a new set of graphs.

Beware:
before going the way described above, i had tried to solve the logging problem with:
zmprov mcf zimbraLogHostname newhostname
i finished up with a big mess and had to reverse completely to the old hostname to get the admin-console working again.

thanks for the hints

anton