[SOLVED] LDAP, thunderbird and Outlook

10137tommy · Post by **10137tommy** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 12:00 pm

Hello everyone!
I had installed the latest OSE edition for debian on a chroot jail on Gentoo, and later on tried the NE always on the same machine.
I have tried the MAPI connector on a vmware install of win XP, and it works good.
But the problem arises when I try to use a linux mail client (Thunderbird) in order to sync the LDAP directory (GAL): Thunderbird silently refuses the connection, and the ldap account remains empty: search does not work, and browsing neither (I know this could be normal).
I have correctly added the account based on this thread, either on linux-thunderbird or winxp-outlook: the only difference is that outlook spits an error message (in italian, free translation) about beeing "Unable to connect to the LDAP server (81)". Checked zmcontrol status with my zimbra user in the chroot, all services running. Checked telnet myhost 389, it connects regularly. Can someone give a hand?
Thank you in advance, any further info I'll be glad to provide.

marcmac · Post by **marcmac** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 11:54 pm

try configuring tbird with the ip, not the hostname.

10137tommy · Post by **10137tommy** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 9:21 am

Hehe! Ok, I found the reason for all this mess, and the "use your ip instead of hostname" helped me out:
The /etc/hosts file configured inside the chroot is merely used for zimbra to be able to install inside the chroot; but for "external" (out of chroot) requests, the chrooted /etc/hosts file is not considered, but rather the gentoo /etc/hosts file:

This file is different in syntax, containing:

127.0.0.1 hostname.domain.foo hostname localhost.localdomain localhost

192.168.0.1 hostname.domain.foo hostname
So first line (127.0.0.1) contains 4 entries, 2 of which are also contained in the second line (local IP); I guess that reading the first line also leads to automatically resolving it without looking for further instructions (next lines)... so not finding 192.168.0.1, but rather 127.0.0.1.
All I had to do is change my gentoo /etc/hosts to reflect the contents of my chrooted debian jail.
A trivia: I understand not beeing able to connect from outside via public IP - for obvious security reasons - , but why is it that I cannot connect to localhost (127.0.0.1)?

jholder · Post by **jholder** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 9:25 am

Because then you would bind on all interfaces. We are moving towards only binding to one, therefore, we only bind to the fqdn you designate.
Glad you got it working

10137tommy · Post by **10137tommy** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 9:30 am

Oh, ok! Seems a lot clearer to me now....
Great work! Thanks a lot for the feedback.