On Fri, 23 Feb 2001, Tim Seifert wrote:
> By: Chris Ralph <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> On: Friday, February 23, 2001, 11:04:56 AM
>
> CR> But I can't get YAM to work with their mail setup.
> CR>
> CR> The POP3 server and the SMTP server address is supposed to be just
> CR> "mail", and this is what is shown on the PC ('98), and it sends and
> CR> receives OK, but YAM rejects both and says TCP/IP may be not working
> CR> or the address is invalid. I can d/l mail from my dialup account via
> CR> the cable modem connection with YAM - about 20k speed, but nothing
> CR> else works.
On Fri, 23 Feb 2001, Stephen Illingworth wrote:
> Hello Chris
> On 23-Feb-01, you wrote:
>
> >> Though it is possible that they've called their mail server just "mail"
No it's not. The "real" hostname has to be a FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain
Name). It can have an alias, but that's of limited scope.
> > Actually I think it's a lookup kind of thing and not the client appending.
> > Pinging "mail" should return the full name, and the IP. He could try both
> > in YAM. I just did it on a clone connected to @home and got "Pinging
> > femail.sdc1.sfba.home.com [24.0.95.85]"
Pinging does exactly the same lookup as anything else.
> That's right, it is a DNS thing. Unless you add a dot at the end of an
> address (a fully qualified domain name), then the resolver assumes that
> it's relative to some domain other than the root.
Yes, the *resolver* (Miami(Dx) in this case), not the server.
> The easiest way to add a default domain name for resolution purposes is to
> add your ISPs domain into the domains database.
Yes, and they usually instruct you to do this.
> There is usually another way to sepcify the default domain, but it doesn't
> seem to work in Miami - the default domain name is the machines host name
> without the host node. So if the host name was
>
> linzi.firewall.co.uk.
>
> then the default domain would be
>
> firewall.co.uk.
Miami has this, although it has to be enabled. It's the "auto-add domain"
feature. However, Holger never really liked domains, and MiamiDx doesn't
have it.
On Fri, 23 Feb 2001, Stephen Illingworth wrote:
> Hello Tim
> On 23-Feb-01, you wrote:
>
> > Though it is possible that they've called their mail server just "mail"
>
> ISPs usually do this as a CNAME record for the convenience of the users.
> Hosts are rarely given the real names of "mail", "www" or whatever.
True, but those are still FQDNs. The CNAME issue is orthogonal to the
domain issue.
> > Personally, I wish that mail programs could accept variables in their
> > server configurations, then I could set Miami up to set a variable in a
> > dial script, perhaps; so that when I called my different ISPs, the SMTP
> > server would always be the one for the ISP I actually dialled up, without
> > having to re-configure YAM.
>
> Mail programs do accept variables in a sense. If you declare host "mail",
> or whatever, as your smtp/pop server then the actual host will resolve to
> whatever the /current/ default domain is.
Sort of, but there are a couple of problems with this:
1) It only works when the domain-relative part of the server name is the
same in all cases. This is *often* the case, but not always. Consider
mail.isp1.com vs. smtp.isp2.com.
2) Domains tend to get appended to everything in sight whenever there's a
lookup failure, increasing traffic and adding delay. In fact, most
resolvers *always* try appending domains, but Holger improved it in the
simple case at least by making the first attempt without adding domains if
the "domain relative" name contains at least one dot.
The relatively recent hostalias feature handles this better by simply
providing a fake hostname that maps to a *complete* other hostname in the
Miami(Dx) resolver. Thus, one could map "mysmtpserver" to
"mail.isp1.com" or "ssmtp.isp2.com". The only difficulty (in MiamiDx) is
that, as with domains, there's no provision to make them
interface-specific. What you *can* do with either domains or hostaliases,
however, is manually enable and disable the proper entries when switching
ISPs.
A further problem is that nothing you do at this level helps switch the
configurations of *other* machines on a LAN. However, you could get
around that by using HiJack to remap a local port to the proper outside
server, and then pointing the clients at that local port.
> So long as you had your "Get dynamic host name, priority" is set to 1 or
> higher on each interface, then your host name will be assigned
> automatically by the ISP - and with a bit of luck, the domain name you're
> given will be the same as the domain the mail host is part of.
It's not a question of "luck" - see above. :-)
On Fri, 23 Feb 2001, Tim Seifert wrote:
> However, changing ISPs, and making all my internet software continue to
> work, by changing configurations. Would mean changing all of the
> following configurations:
>
> Miami's (dialup number, DNS server and user log-on details),
> YAM's (SMTP server),
> IBrowse's (SMTP server),
> AWeb (SMTP server),
> Thor's (News posting server, SMTP server).
Not really - see above.
> It would all be a lot easier, for instance, if you could set your mail
> clients to use a $SMTPmailserver variable, news servers for $NNTPnewserver
> variable, etc. And use Miami to set those variables to the right server
> names, depending on which ISP you actually dialled into.
The variable-setting part could be kludged with online scripts, but that's
a bit ugly. Personally, I think the interface-dependent hostalias is
what's really needed here.
On Sat, 24 Feb 2001, Tim Seifert wrote:
> By: Chris Ralph <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> On: Saturday, February 24, 2001, 10:01:24 AM
>
> CR> I got it to work with 'mail.optushome.com.au',
> CR> which is what their tech specifically warned me not to use!
>
> It seems, all too often, that so-called ISP "tech support" staff are the
> last people you should listen to. ;-) At least on large corporations
> (Bigpond, Telstra, Optus, etc.). On smaller ISPs, with less staff, you
> might actually get to talk to a real tech. If you get really stuck, some
> of them will even monitor you log-on, and tell you what's failing.
In this case, they were sort of saying the right thing, since configuring
the FQDN there along with the proper domain name in the right place would
result in some lookups for "mail.optushome.com.au.optushome.com.au".
Plus, if the domain ever changed, it would be easier to change it once in
the network config rather than in each application. The problem is that
the part of the Windoze setup where you enter the domain name got lost in
the translation to Miami(Dx).
> CR> I also bought a longer UTP cable - a crossed one, which is what the tech
> CR> told me the supplied one was. Of course it didn't work, and when we
> CR> compared the 2 in a cable tester at the shop, it turned out that the
> CR> original Optus cable was NOT crossed.
>
> Normally, you only use a cross-over cable to connect two computers
> directly together, or chaining hubs when they don't have specifically set
> up connectors for chaining them (i.e. for non-standard type of
> connections).
Probably the tech wasn't experienced enough to know that cable/DSL modems
are usually wired "backwards". :-)
The original concept was that stations get wired one way, and hubs the
other way. By all rights, a modem should be considered a "station", but
somebody decided it would "simplify" things to wire the modem as a "hub"
and use a straight-through cable to connect the PC.
Of course 10BaseT *could have* been done in an way that made all ports and
all cables the same, but then people wouldn't have been able to make as
much money straightening out the mess. :-)
Fred Wright
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