lessons in system configuration

I started setting up the box last week with custom-compiled versions of Postfix, Dovecot IMAP server and several other packages. Now I’m starting to configure things to closely match the existing mail server, including Samba. This makes some administrative tasks a bit easier, like updating some web pages (this basically only hosts SquirrelMail and PostfixAdmin). There’s not much web service to do, but Samba makes it easier to move logfiles to the Windows box and copy new files over without having to run FTP or wget all the time. The problems started after I copied the smb.conf file (Samba config) from the existing server to the new box. I tweaked it, fixed some server-specific settings, and set it off. First, it wouldn’t even see itself as an SMB server. found and fixed that. Then, it appeared to be fighting with my WINS server (another Linux box) to be the master browser. Fixed that setting too. Finally was able to resolve itself by name and local IP. Now to get it to see the rest of the network (and the rest of the network to see it, as well). OK…started through the diagnostics document from Samba. Step 1…good. Step 2…good. Step 3…er…step 3….errors. Troubleshooting was going nowhere. 45 minutes later, had a thought…firewall? Iptables was running, since this box faces both the internet and my local lan on different NICs. turned off iptables and gee…it works! Start tweaking around with firewall rules. Seems the syntax has changed slightly between the Fedora Core 1 and Fedora Core 4 versions, so the rules from the old box don’t quite work on the new one. Found the system-config-firewall-tui utility, and set up custom rules for the right ports, and restarted both iptables then samba. Gee wiz, it works now! I can see it from the other computers, and it finds the rest of the network too! Well, that was a good waste of several hours that I’ll never get back. I guess the next step is to set up Postfix, policyd, amavisd and the new MailZu web interface for amavis. Oh, and pray that Dovecot 1.0 final will make it out in the next two weeks before I’m ready to bring the new monster live….
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