What happened to my hostname?

[sarm]

Hello,
Yesterday I re-started my mail server and everything seemed to be O.K. Today when I came home from work I check my mail on a remote pc using outlook. Error comes up mail.xxxx.xxx server not found.
So my hostname on the mail server cannot resolve. I check all related files and everthing seems to be in check. I did not change anything. I can ping ip address but not hostname any longer. System has been running fine for several weeks. So I reload system and data files and same problem. What could be going on?

Thanks

 

[ifincham]

Hi,

Can you ping mail.xxxx.xxx ? That will tell you if it resolves to an IP address even if it doesn't connect. If it can't resolve (on M$) you'll get the reponse 'bad IP address'.

If you get the latter then you need to check the name resolution - if its a real address or an intranet address it would be via dns, otherwise you would just have the mapping in your HOSTS file C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\etc\HOSTS (on NT - somewhere under c:\windows on win9x) . If its DNS, check you have the correct server IP addresses in your TCP config .

If the ping resolves to an IP address but doesn't connect then its a routing issue. Just run 'tracert 10.0.0.1' or whatever to see how far it gets and take it from there.

Hope this helps

 

[sarm]

Hi,
Don't know what happened but about an hour after posting this question it resolved again. The only thing I can figure is networksolutions(verisign) was having problems. That's who the hostname is registered with. At any rate it seems to be working again and I didn't change a thing. Thanks for response.

 

[sarm]

Problems back.

O.k ns3.mydomain.com is my mailserver. O/S rh7.1
A few days ago I brought this host online. Configuration seemed sound - able to ping ns3.mydomain.com and ip. I launch sendmail - test mail config from remote pc - Looks good.
Approximatley 18 hours later I check my email from remote pc using outlook and get - error ns3.mydomain.com not found. So I ping my hostname ns3.mydomain.com and sure enough - unknown host - so I ping ip - works fine. I change my smtp and pop3 to my ip and mail works fine. I did not touch the server from the time I started it up until this issue arose.
Not being able to resolve the issue I back-up data files and reload system. I get everything going again and yes you have guessed - same problem.
What is happening to my hostname??
Thanks

 

[sarm]

Hi,
Well without doing anything to the server about 12 hrs later hostname is pingable again. What the heck is the problem???
Thanks