Messaging Gateway

I have installed the Brightmail 8.0.3 Virtual Appliance on a Vshpere 4.0 server.  The install went fine.  I am now trying to register the product and getting the following error: 

brightmail 8.0.3 Unable to communicate with Symantec to register. Please check your connection settings, and try again. Connect failed; Operation now in progress

One thing that I did notice was that the time is wrong on the virtual appliance and of course I cant not change the time in the CMI or through the GUI since I can not register the product.  We currently have port 443 open for the server.  

Not sure what else I could look into.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks. 

I actually got the time issue figured out.  The time was wrong on the BIOS of the VM box.  I still cannot register though.  

Hi arg175,

Are you able to connect to register.brightmmail.com on port 443 from the appliance using telnet?

When I am able to connect successfully, I get something like this from my appliance:

vm-sflabga> telnet register.brightmail.com 443
Trying 216.250.24.63...
Connected to register.brightmail.com.
Escape character is '^]'.

Regards,

Adnan

I get "Trying 216.250.24.63
          Telnet: connect to address 216.250.25.63 connection timed out
           Trying 143.127.103.14
           Telnet: connect o address 143.127.103.14 connection timed out.

I was able to connect to this address via a windows box on the same network behind the same firewall.

Press F2 during the reboot to access the BIOS.  Change the date in the BIOS under Setup.

Are you sure you opened port 443 for outgiong as well as incoming? We need 2-way communication on port 443.

The telnet session you showed proves that the appliance does not have the ability to connect on port 443, you will need to check your settings.

Another test would be to enable the support user with the 'set-support' command and run 'lynx' when logged in as support. Then try loading a secure website like https://www.facebook.com and see if it can connect.

I can telnet out from Windows on my PC.  It sits on the same network behind the same firewall.  443 is opened for everyone.  We have looked at the firewall and it is not blocking any connections. 

The message "Telnet: connect to address 216.250.25.63 connection timed out" clearly indicates that from the appliance you are not able to connect. 

May be you do not have the default gateway configured properly.

Check the output of netstat -rn command.

OK, I just confirmed in my lab environment that if the default gateway is NOT correctly setup, then you get the exact same two symptoms that you have described above.

a) Following error in Control Center when you try to register the license

 Cannot register the specified license file.
 Unable to communicate with Symantec to register. Please check your connection settings, and try again. Connect failed; Operation now in progress


b) Telnet to register.brightmail.com on port 443 from the appliance attempts to connect to both the IP addresses of register.brightmail.com host and times out:

Trying 216.250.24.63...
telnet: connect to address 216.250.24.63: Connection timed out
Trying 143.127.103.14...
telnet: connect to address 143.127.103.14: Connection timed out

Please note that you would get these symptoms when the DNS server(s) configured on SBG are on the same subnet as the SBG because in this case the appliance is able to resolve the hostname (of register.brightmail.com) using the DNS server(s) located on the same subnet.

Unfortunately, there is no way to change the default gateway at this stage without first registering the appliance (which obviously is a catch22 situation).  So you would have to use "clear all" command to reconfigure network settings ensuring this time that the default gateway is configured correctly.

Hope this helps.

Thanks

Adnan