my smtp server is very slow to accept connections today

[Paul Howarth]

Don Russell wrote:
> hmmm, here's something interesting... I just tried "dig -x 192.168.1.20" 
> twice: First one timed out, the second one failed (expected, as 
> 192.168.1.20 is also a private address...)
> 
> [don at boris ~]$ dig -x 192.168.1.20
> 
> ; <<>> DiG 9.3.2 <<>> -x 192.168.1.20
> ;; global options:  printcmd
> ;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached
> [don at boris ~]$ dig -x 192.168.1.20
> 
> ; <<>> DiG 9.3.2 <<>> -x 192.168.1.20
> ;; global options:  printcmd
> ;; Got answer:
> ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: SERVFAIL, id: 43804
> ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
> 
> ;; QUESTION SECTION:
> ;20.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa.     IN      PTR
> 
> ;; Query time: 1711 msec
> ;; SERVER: 66.75.164.89#53(66.75.164.89)
> ;; WHEN: Thu Apr  6 15:32:40 2006
> ;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 43

Trying dig with the "+trace" option might be more revealing:

$ dig -x 192.168.1.20 +trace

>> Nothing much obvious here unfortunately. Can you check that your 
>> system's hostname is set correctly, and that /etc/hosts has the right 
>> name and address for your host and also localhost?
> 
> That file is incredibly boring. :-) Maybe too boring? Is it missing 
> something?
> 
> [don at boris ~]$ cat < /etc/hosts
> # Do not remove the following line, or various programs
> # that require network functionality will fail.
> 127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain   boris   localhost
> [don at boris ~]$

Doesn't appear to have anything vital mssing :-)

> I'm beginning to think this is not a Fedora issue... but an ISP issue... 
> so I'm SOL because they *allow*, but don't *support* "home LANs", or 
> it's some sort of NAT/firewall issue in my router... I'll have to check 
> that out too...
> 
> Is there a way I could (temporarily) configure fedora to use diffent DNS 
> servers, so I'm not using the two my ISP is telling me to use?
> 
> That is, if I know the address of a different DNS server, I can put the 
> in my dhcp SERVER on my router, do a "service network restart" on Fedora 
> and pick up the new dns servers that way...
> 
> Do you know the address of a "public" dns I could borrow for a few 
> minutes? :-)

No need. Install the caching-nameserver package and start the "named" 
service. You'll then have your own DNS server at 127.0.0.1.

Paul.