Pls Help - Client machines cannot connect to server

[Sendero]

I have the server machine (core) up & running fine. I went to install the client tools on a new machine but I only get an error during the testing of connect to master server. All my machines are joined to a domain. From the client machine (lap1) I can ping core and browse its drive shares but CQC client will not connect. I have XP SP2 on all machines involved.

Are there any firewall settings I need to change to allow the clients to connect to the server?

I had to change the web server port for my install due to already having a web server installed. That seems like it wouldn't be involved here though.

Open to any ideas...

[IVB]

do you mean during the actual install of the CQC IV on that client machine?

[Sendero]

Yup, during the setup on the client machine it asks for the name of the server (I've put in both core and the fully qualified name of core."domain".com, using the right domain name) and when it does the test it just says that an error occurred.

Oddly, I just went back now to try it again and get the exact error message and this time it worked. I had tried it on both my laptop and a 2nd machine and both got the error. Not sure why its working now

[Dean Roddey]

On the client, open up the CQC Command Propmt from the start menu and run:

CQCNetTest > NT.Txt

And post the output of that NT.Txt file here. The most likely scenarios are that the domain suffix is incorrect or you have more than one machine on the same address.

[Wynn]

I had a similar problem, only my network is not on a domain, but it seemed to think I was. I just added all of my machines to the hosts text file in the Windows directory (not the actual windows directory, somewhere in system32...). I added each machine's IP and machine name to each computer and now everything is fine. I was having problems resolving the machine names that the hosts file takes care of.

[Dean Roddey]

There are two issues involved. One is to find the MS, which is done by the use of the address you provide. Once the client knows where the MS is, it then goes to the name server and looks for advertised services it requires. The way this works is that the name server gives back an address in the format "host:port", where host is the local host name that CQC gets from the operating system.

The clients then use those names to connect to the services they need. But, if that host name (as it is seen by the servers running on the machines they are running on) cannot be used to resolve the name (because it has a domain name on it when it shouldn't or doesn't when it should), then the client will not be able to connect to the desired services and things will fail.

So if you go to the server and do:

Ipconfig /all

And take the name plus any domain suffix it indicates, and go back to the client and try to ping the server using that name and suffix and it doesn't work, then that's the problem.

Code:

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:
        Connection-specific DNS Suffix  : mydomain.com

So in this case, if the host was bubba, you should try pinging from the client as bubba.mydomain.com. If that doesn't work, then that's a problem. And it has to go the other way. You should be able to go to the client and do:

ping -a 1.1.1.1

where 1.1.1.1 is the server IP address, and it should resolve that to a host name, and you should be able to take that host name do:

ping hostname

And it should get you back the original IP address you started with.

[zaccari]

There are two issues involved. One is to find the MS, which is done by the use of the address you provide. Once the client knows where the MS is, it then goes to the name server and looks for advertised services it requires. The way this works is that the name server gives back an address in the format "host:port", where host is the local host name that CQC gets from the operating system

So, CQC requires an AD or Microsoft DNS server? I ask this question for two reasons, first, my domain controller is a SAMBA box. Second, my DNS servers are outside my firewall and I'll have to think about putting one inside as I've tried to limit internal DNS stuffs out there.

[ToyMaster458]

You basicly have three choices.

1) Create a HOST file with your CQC Master in it.

2) Create a HOST Record in the DNS Sever that your clients are pointing to with the internal IP address of your CQC Master.

3) Setup an Internal DNS server with all of your Internal information and setup a forwarder to your external DNS Server for everything that it does not resolve.

[Dean Roddey]

Well, if you are in a Workgroup, then the name resolution is actually being done by Windows at a NetBIOS over IP type level I guess. So you don't need a DNS server in a Workgroup. But, you need to be sure that you don't have your TCP/IP settings such that a domain prefix is being applied to the host names. So if you are in a workgroup and you you do IPConfig /All and you see a domain suffix being used, then you are going to have problems, because the host name needs to be bubba, but it's going to come out bubba.somedomain.com and bubba.somedomain.com is not a valid host name on the network.

If you are on a Windows domain, you have to have a local DNS server, usually running on your domain controller, since it's a core aspect of AD, and in that case you do want to have the local Windows domain suffix set as part of the host name. That local DNS server is just set up to forward to your ISP's DNS servers for non-local addresses.

[zaccari]

My concern was not name resolution. My internal machines have internal.zaccari.net and are resolved by my DNS servers. Someone previously said that the DNS servers need to be able to advertise services (was it Mark?). That is the portion that I'd not like sitting outside my firewall. As several others have said when the discussion about real names went 'round, I don't think I want too much stuff sitting out there. The machines aren't reachable from the outside world, at least not normally, but in my mind, any listener is a bad thing.

Russ...