Relay access denied then no web interface

I’ve been having a problem with my Nethserver that I think started when I experienced an extended power loss that caused a forced shutdown.

Basically I’ll be using thunderbird and I’ll start to get “refused to connect” messages, then I wont be able to access the NethServer management interface. I can still get to server/nextcloud so I know it’s still serving pages. I’ll have to wait awhile before I get to the management page again so I can start restarting mail services but it doesn’t seem to help. I have to reboot the server.

Any suggestions on what to look for? I’m on a VM so should I just spin up a fresh install and use my automatic backups to hopefully restore everything.

You could try to access the system through ssh and open /var/log/messages: you will probably find some errors. Post it here if you need help analyzing it.

I didn’t see any errors in the messages log but I’ve done some additional investigating. It appears my problem is related to DNS. I’m running a rather unconventional setup on my network. I’m using my tplink router to provide IP addresses through DHCP with a lot of reservations so addresses don’t change for some devices. That way if NethServer is down I can still contact devices using their IP address. NethServer is used for DNS so that I can set local names and point them to the right addresses when I’m on my local network.

My main machine runs linux Mint and VMWare work station 14 with windows 7 on a VM. If I run thunderbird on both Mint and the VM it appears to freak out my network interface and I can only get to NethServer using it’s IP address, not DNS.

Hi @happnatious1,

you may try “nslookup YourNethserver.domain.tld” on your VM to see which DNS server is used and if you get a result.

The VMWare network interface should be in bridged mode which means same network as your Mint and your Nethserver.

Thank you Markus, using nslookup helped me find the problem and fix it.

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