Unified Communications Blog: Cisco Unity Express(CUE)

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Cisco Unity Express SMTP problem FQDN in EHLO

Ever had the problem, because of a sub-optimal DNS implementation, that your CUE doesn't want to use the FQN in EHLO? Your SMTP Server keeps sending "Helo command rejected: need fully-qualified hostname"? Then you should try to set the CUE hostname via CLI. You could set it to something like "hostname CUE.lab.local". This doesn't work via GUI!!

Packet Capture with hostname CUE:
No.     Time        Source                Destination           Protocol Length Info
     14 26.796002   172.20.20.88       172.20.20.2       SMTP     98     S: 220 labstest.lab.local ESMTP Postfix
     16 26.796002   172.20.20.2       172.20.20.88       SMTP     62     C: EHLO CUE
     18 26.800002   172.20.20.88       172.20.20.2       SMTP     227    S: 250-labstest.lab.local | 250-PIPELINING | 250-SIZE 10485760 | 250-VRFY | 250-ETRN | 250-AUTH CRAM-MD5 GSSAPI | 250-STARTTLS | 250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES | 250-8BITMIME | 250 DSN
     19 26.804002   172.20.20.2       172.20.20.88       SMTP     82     C: MAIL FROM:<CUE@lab.local>
     21 26.812002   172.20.20.88       172.20.20.2       SMTP     66     S: 250 2.1.0 Ok
     22 26.812002   172.20.20.2       172.20.20.88       SMTP     90     C: RCPT TO:<andre@provider.de>
     24 26.812002   172.20.20.88       172.20.20.2       SMTP     123    S: 504 5.5.2 <CUE>: Helo command rejected: need fully-qualified hostname
     25 26.812002   172.20.20.2       172.20.20.88       SMTP     58     C: RSET
     27 26.816002   172.20.20.88       172.20.20.2       SMTP     66     S: 250 2.0.0 Ok
     28 26.816002   172.20.20.2       172.20.20.88       SMTP     58     C: QUIT
     31 26.816002   172.20.20.88       172.20.20.2       SMTP     67     S: 221 2.0.0 Bye

Packet Capture with hostname CUE.lab.local:
No.     Time        Source                Destination           Protocol Length Info
    111 840.239998 172.20.20.88       172.20.20.2       SMTP     98     S: 220 labstest.lab.local ESMTP Postfix
    113 840.243998 172.20.20.2       172.20.20.88       SMTP     79     C: EHLO CUE.lab.local
    115 840.243998 172.20.20.88       172.20.20.2       SMTP     227    S: 250-labstest.lab.local | 250-PIPELINING | 250-SIZE 10485760 | 250-VRFY | 250-ETRN | 250-AUTH CRAM-MD5 GSSAPI | 250-STARTTLS | 250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES | 250-8BITMIME | 250 DSN
    116 840.251998 172.20.20.2       172.20.20.88       SMTP     86     C: MAIL FROM:<CUE@lab.local>
    118 840.259998 172.20.20.88       172.20.20.2       SMTP     66     S: 250 2.1.0 Ok
    119 840.259998 172.20.20.2       172.20.20.88       SMTP     90     C: RCPT TO:<andre@provider.de>
    121 840.267998 172.20.20.88       172.20.20.2       SMTP     66     S: 250 2.1.5 Ok
    122 840.267998 172.20.20.2       172.20.20.88       SMTP     58     C: DATA
    124 840.267998 172.20.20.88       172.20.20.2       SMTP     89     S: 354 End data with <CR><LF>.<CR><LF>
    125 840.287997 172.20.20.2       172.20.20.88       SMTP     1500   C: DATA fragment, 1448 bytes
    174 840.303997 172.20.20.2       172.20.20.88       SMTP     1500   C: DATA fragment, 1448 bytes
    177 840.303997 172.20.20.2       172.20.20.88       SMTP     1500   C: DATA fragment, 1448 bytes
    178 840.303997 172.20.20.2       172.20.20.88       SMTP     1500   C: DATA fragment, 1448 bytes
    179 840.303997 172.20.20.2       172.20.20.88       SMTP     1500   C: DATA fragment, 1448 bytes
    180 840.303997 172.20.20.2       172.20.20.88       IMF      440    from: Cisco Unity Express <CUE@lab.local>, subject: Message Notification, (text/plain) (audio/x-wav)
    189 840.307997 172.20.20.88       172.20.20.2       SMTP     89     S: 250 2.0.0 Ok: queued as 93155E8CE43
    190 840.307997 172.20.20.2       172.20.20.88       SMTP     58     C: QUIT
    193 840.311997 172.20.20.88       172.20.20.2       SMTP     67     S: 221 2.0.0 Bye

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Access Cisco Unity Express from the internet with private addressing

Your Cisco Unity Express Voicemail system is connected to your Cisco Callmanager Express via private addressing? And you need to access it via the Internet? No VPN available?
Well, I had this task waiting for me. Not really complicated, but somebody might find it useful ....

interface GigabitEthernet0/0

 description Internet

 ip address 1.2.3.5 255.255.255.248

 ip nat outside

!

interface ISM0/0

 ip unnumbered Loopback0

 ip nat inside

 service-module ip address 172.20.20.2 255.255.255.252

 !Application: CUE Running on ISM

 service-module ip default-gateway 172.20.20.1

!

ip nat inside source list CUE_OUT interface GigabitEthernet0/0 overload

ip nat inside source static tcp 172.20.20.2 80 1.2.3.5 9999 extendable

!

ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 1.2.3.4

ip route 172.20.20.2 255.255.255.255 ISM0/0

!This gives your CUE access to public services (SMTP, DNS, ...)

ip access-list extended CUE_OUT

 deny   ip host 172.20.20.2 host 172.20.20.1

 permit ip host 172.20.20.2 any

Now you only need to enter this URL in your browser:
http://1.2.3.4:9999/admin

If there is a firewall in between , filtering all ports except for SIP traffic & SSH), you could set up an SSH Tunnel to fix that problem. See http://uc-b.blogspot.com/2011/07/putty-scp-file-transfer-to-cisco-ios.html