Another round of troubleshooting AC3Pro email

[stugray]

Ok here's the story:

About a year ago I got the AC3Pro and had a heck of a time finding a NON-SSL email server that I could use to handle the AC3Pro outgoing email warnings.

A gracious Reefcentral member let me use his email server for a while but it is shut down now.
I did not discover this until one morning I had WOF syndrome & the AC3Pro was complaining about low water level in the sump, but I never received a warning on my cell phone because this email server was no longer in service.

SO... I set up an email server INSIDE my LAN using Mercury/32.

I have a router to the outside world that is ( from the AC3 point of view ) both the DNS server and the gateway.

My router also knows the name/IP of my AC3Pro and when I telnet into the AC3 and do the: cons, 1 maild, mail, I get the following:

Aquacontroller> mail
Aquacontroller> SMTP: server = 3200a8c0
SMTP: tcp connect error - -1


SO it appears that the DNS ( my router ) has correctly resolved my local IP ( within my LAN ) as the correct address => ac3p = 3200a8c0


However when I use the windows command prompt & type:

nslookup ac3p

I get "*** home cant find ac3p: non-existent domain"



So I guess I am a bit confused how to make the AC3p be happy resolving the SMTP server if it is inside my LAN.

I tried at first just using the IP of the machine with the email server running, but that didnt work.

Any help would be appreciated.

Stu

 

[RussM]

Stu, tcp connect error -1 means that it cannot find the mail server, IIRC.

Follow the procedure here to determine if your Mercury installation is actually accepting SMTP connections. Substitute your mail server's IP address for your mail server domain in Step 3.

 

[stugray]

Ok,

Re-opening an old post.

I finally got the above issues working when I changed the email server to Mdaemon-FREE.

That worked fine for a while until Qwest upgraded me to a new router ( actually TWICE ).

Now I have a slightly different problem: No matter what I put into the setup in the Ac3Pro - "SMTP Sever" field, I always get - "SMTP: **** unkn host" from the telnet window.

SO.... for a while I was able to resolve the name of my Ac3Pro using my router as a DNS, but not any longer.


SO.. just use the SMTP server IP adress??? No that does not work, and I do not understand WHY?

The IP of my Ac3Pro is 192.168.0.50 and my SMTP server is 192.168.0.9.

When I ping from another XP machine, I can ping either the SMTP server name or the IP address and it works.

When I try to ping the ac3pro, I can only do it by IP address and not the name that is saved in my router.


So why is the ac3pro having trouble resolving a SMTP server inside my LAN.

AND

WHY cant the ac3pro use an IP address inside my LAN regardless of the DNS?

Any help would be great!

I also just upgraded to 3.4 (hoping that would solve my issues) and see a new error in the telnet session:
It reads:

"httpPush: aqua.aquacontroller.com unkn host"

Now that repeats every few seconds in the telnet window

Stu

 

[RussM]

Re: "httpPush: aqua.aquacontroller.com unkn host" - v3.4 has support for a future capability. Until that is available, you want to disable a feature called AquaServ in the Ac3 menu (is under Network Setup).

IIRC, the AC3 does not support the use of an IP address for SMTP server... it requires a fully-qualified domain name. This is actually a common practice. The DNS MX (mail exchange) records for a given domain may actually have multiple entries for multiple mail servers. Larger mail providers may also use a distributed cluster of SMTP/POP3/IMAP servers; in that case, they usually use round-robin DNS so that one hostname can be used to get to any of several or even dozens of actual servers.

What is the DNS server setting in the AC3? What is the DNS server setting on a XP PC? If it's the address of your router, does your router have a local DNS database feature?

 

[RussM]

Have you considered just using a free GMX.com email account? It works great with all network-capable AquaControllers.

 

[stugray]

RussM,

"Have you considered just using a free GMX.com email account?"

THANKS!!

When I first set this up, I could not find a email account that was non-SSL.

To save me the agonizing trial & error of all the settings, could you tell me the server names & settings I need to get it working?

I'll setup the GMX.com account as soon as I get home.

Stu

 

[RussM]

Download the Apex User Guide from http://reeftech.webs.com/. Page 23 has everything you need to know about using GMX and an AquaController. Although the guide is written for Apex & Apex Lite, the email setup is the same for AC3/AC3Pro.