DNS, Email and exchange. - email stays on linux box

fedder22 · 01-27-2009, 10:41 AM

okay to give a background heres my situation:

I'm working with Fedora 6 - a few years ago I believe this was the only server in my current organization. there are now windows servers that are predominantly used with the same domain. When I try to send an email from the fedora box to a users outlook account (which is the same address that it was on the linux box) it stays in the linux box instead of sending the email to their outlook. I'm able to view the emails using sendmail but I want them to go to my outlook account.

I believe this to be a weird dns issue because the linux box probably is sending the mail correctly to the email it has configured on its own instead of using the windows exchange server - can anyone help point me in any direction? any logs I should look at or conf files?

okcomputer44 · 01-28-2009, 11:01 AM

I think if you point the windows dns server in the linux box that could help.

Cos I think the linux box uses its own dns server right now and that is why it can't send the mails in to exchange.(MTA does not forward internal mails outside)

On the linux box the domain's mx record must be point into windows box.

So look at the resolv.conf in /etc and sometimes have to change the /etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/default/resolv.conf cos the networkmanager rewrite it with the old dns record.

You can check where to point your linux box's mx record with the dig command.

dig mx yourdomain.com

Laz

fedder22 · 01-29-2009, 10:58 AM

Okay My resolv.conf looks like this

etc]# cat resolv.conf

search localdomain
nameserver xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
nameserver xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

The IP's are referencing my windows server

default]# cat hosts
# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx dns.name.windows.server1
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx dns.name.windows.server2
::1 dns.name.linux.server
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx dns.name.linux.server

should I change the localhost.localdomain entry to the IP of my exchange server?

rossonieri#1 · 01-29-2009, 09:58 PM

hi fedder,

Quote:

Originally Posted by fedder22

I believe this to be a weird dns issue because the linux box probably is sending the mail correctly to the email it has configured on its own instead of using the windows exchange server - can anyone help point me in any direction? any logs I should look at or conf files?

i'm not too clear about this,
what email client you used to use when using linux? was it evolution or thunderbird or kmail or anything else?

i'm seeing that your problem is not DNS/MX-record related - as long as your other client (outlook) has received any email normally using the exchange server then its your linux mail client config problem. try to reconfigure the SMTP and POP or IMAP address of your mail client to point to the new mailserver (exchange). and make sure that you've enabled POP service on your exchange server - because by default (from any Active Directory initial installation) it will only use the SMTP and IMAP TCP 143 to send/receive emails.

and dont change that /etc/hosts file - you dont need to.

HTH.

fedder22 · 02-02-2009, 03:13 PM

im using sendmail and webmin, the software I'm trying to send mail from is OTSR trouble ticket - but when I ssend it instead of going to my exchange email it goes directly on my linux box to the corresponding emails I tried sending it to.

I'm willing to entirely start from scratch if someone can recommend something besides sendmail or a good how-to for sendmail (or other mail server)

also - if I try to compose from sendmail directly it doesnt work - I dont even know where it went

rossonieri#1 · 02-03-2009, 09:34 AM

hi fedder,

i dont understand clearly what you were trying to accomplished here,
but those 2 sendmail and OTRS are 2 different apps :
sendmail is pure an MTA, OTRS on the other hand is an application that being sendmail's or MTA mail client.

if you already create OTRS user account on the exchange server - than you should point its mailer config to your exchange server - not using the default sendmail.

here's the doc - in case you are wondering?
on chapter 7 : http://doc.otrs.org/2.3/en/html/

Code:

7.1.2. Via SMTP relay/smarthost

# SendmailModule
    $Self->{"SendmailModule"} = "Kernel::System::Email::SMTP";
    $Self->{"SendmailModule::Host"} = "mail.example.com";
    $Self->{"SendmailModule::AuthUser"} = "";
    $Self->{"SendmailModule::AuthPassword"} = "";

HTH.

rossonieri#1 · 02-03-2009, 09:34 AM

sorry - this network problem keep getting me posting errors.