This is a new install of SUSE Linux v9.1.

I have set up the Mail program, and can send messages with no problem. An attempt to retrieve messages gets an error announcement: "Can't reach host local host".

I don't know why. Local host, with the customary IP address is included in the Network definitions in YaST. What does it REALLY want to tell me?

my first guess is that either mail server is not listening at the address you tried to connect to, and/or firewall policy is preventing you from accessing.

i would try this. first, flush your firewall rules.

iptabels -P INPUT ACCEPT
iptables -F

(do the inpur accept just in case you have a line that sets defaul policy to drop)

then, test the mail servers active state.

telnet [ip address] 25
and
telnet 127.0.0.1 25

if 127.0.0.1 answers, and the ipaddress does not, then check the mail servers config, and make sure its listening on the servers ip address. if they both work on the first shot, check firewall rules. check to make sure port 25 is open, and that all traffic from -i lo is accepted. look for a rule similar to this to allow from localhost:

iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT

Thanks for your reply; neither of these possibilities is the cause of the problem.

I'm sorry for what must seem an abrupt reply earlier to your response. It was my first act on rolling out of the sack this morning. Here is more detail, and the results of some of your suggestions:

This installation is very new. There is no firewall yet. To be certain that there was nothing at all there, I ran your iptables commands, and got an error message that they were unrecognized.

I next tried to telnet to the ip address of the server. Because I don't know it, I tried first to ping the server with the literal address. This got me an error message saying that the command had not been implemented. How is it even possible that ping is not implemented?

What was left to do was to telnet to local host. This works, and it returned the escape character. Local host, then, is indeed defined.

The alternative you suggested was that the server might not be listening. It is not possible that the server has been offline for two days. Moreover, I experience no difficulty in retrieving mail from it with another OS on the same machine.

I hope for other suggestions from you or others, because I come up dry...