From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Mar 25 08:18:28 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 090DC106564A for ; Thu, 25 Mar 2010 08:18:28 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kline@thought.org) Received: from ethic.thought.org (plato.thought.org [209.180.213.209]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B09A78FC14 for ; Thu, 25 Mar 2010 08:18:27 +0000 (UTC) Received: from thought.org (tao.thought.org [10.47.0.250]) (authenticated bits=0) by ethic.thought.org (8.14.3/8.14.3) with ESMTP id o2P8IEpi086234; Thu, 25 Mar 2010 01:18:15 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from kline@thought.org) Received: by thought.org (nbSMTP-1.00) for uid 1002 kline@thought.org; Thu, 25 Mar 2010 01:18:15 -0700 (PDT) Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2010 01:18:14 -0700 From: Gary Kline To: Olivier Nicole Message-ID: <20100325081813.GA21086@thought.org> References: <20100325025159.GA97702@thought.org> <201003250300.o2P305Kb081641@banyan.cs.ait.ac.th> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <201003250300.o2P305Kb081641@banyan.cs.ait.ac.th> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.3i X-Organization: Thought Unlimited. Public service Unix since 1986. X-Of_Interest: With 23 years of service to the Unix community. Cc: kline@magnesium.net, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: hoope THIS works... X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2010 08:18:28 -0000 On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 10:00:05AM +0700, Olivier Nicole wrote: > > for reasons that are beyond me, a few hours ago i stopped being able to > > connect with my mail server. mutt tells me "(connection refused)"; > > the other GUI mailer say zip; they simply do not connect. > > > > i rebooted my HUB among other things; before that, i could not get outside my > > network; nor could i even get to ethic [my Server]. since the only thing i > > did was powercycle my linksys hub, i figure that did it. > > > > right now i am continuing the portupgrade on my mail/web/dns server in > > the hopes that when that is done, mail will work again. if not, what else > > could it be? directories/files/links i need to check/? > > It seems the reboot of your Linksys switch helped some how. yes; and it seems likely that the reason ii could not get to my email was that {for unknown reasons} my dovecot has failed to initialize. note that i did not configure my new setup like this. now i have one mail server and dovecot is used to distribute mail to my other unix servers. i barely understand sendmail; i do NOT understand dovecot... . > > Before portupgrading randomly this or that application, you should try > to understand what is going wrong. > > Upgrade of DNS should go easily, but when you start upgrading web or > mail, you are talking about tens or hunderds of applications, you are > very likely something goes wrong and you break a system that was > working before. it seems that mail my daughter sent me from hotmail did not pass muster because it lacked a subject. i was advised to portupgrade {or at least upgrade my spamblocker}. i did this. during the upgrade of either dovecot or spamassassin i was asked to kill one or both. i figured a reboot would reinstantiate everything. it may have; but things were not restarted correctly. bind9 is current; i am extremely careful with that; i just didn't realize that i've got to approach everything with the same caution. > > When you say you could not "get" to ethic, what do you mean? > > - Cannot ping? > > - Cannot ssh? > > - Cannot telnet port 22, 25, 80? > > - Cannot traceroute (if your station and the server are on different > LAN)? > > - Cannot ping another machine on your LAN? > > - Are you sure it was not your desktop that was faulty? my firewall was the give-away. i run pfSense and it told me that the host was down. the real gotcha is that my KVM wires are not plugged in correctly. so i could not even get to the serve until i messed with that. when i was able to type at the console of my server, i did a therapeutic reboot. ---altho, the was power-cycling my switch that really did the trick. i was about to call it a century when i tried mail. mutt failed again; that turned out to be that dovecot had failed to restart. Now everything is working. but it's only temporary. back in the mid-90s a systems admin friend said that computers/networks/<> are always breaking down. it's the sysadmin's job to do his best to keep things going. i get an F- for that today/tonight..... FWIW, i don't even pretend to be a syste,s admin! > > - Etc. > > You should make a diagnostic before trying to apply any solution. > > As the reboot of thw switch did it, to me it looks like a network > issue: bad switch, bad cable, some highly infected machine on your LAN > that is stressing the swtich, rather than a server/service issue. the power line was bent to the switch; but not that badly. [[i'm keeping a Printed list of things-to-do-before-i-hit-PANIC.]] appreciate your mail! gary > > Good luck, > > Olivier > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" -- Gary Kline kline@thought.org http://www.thought.org Public Service Unix http://jottings.thought.org http://transfinite.thought.org The 7.79a release of Jottings: http://jottings.thought.org/index.php