Forum Moderators: bakedjake
Can you add hosts to it, I mean...
If you do have control over your hosts, and you have your dedicated email server up and running, simply add a few lines to your zone file:
MX 10 mail.yourdomain.com.
mail A 123.456.789.012
Now you have an MX record pointing to your email server. -- Note that the number (MX 10) defines the "weight" of the email server. The lower the number, the higher the priority, so if you add another server, and you want it to be the "primary", as it were, then change those numbers around -- Primary 10, Secondary 20 or something similar.
If you're not in control of the DNS servers (Or even if you are!), try the following:
What a friend of mine did was sign up for zoneedit.com (Free), and they have an option for mail forwarding, which any emails coming to any address at your domain will get forwarded to your yahoo account.
Saves people from setting up the DNS servers, records, and running your own mail server.
That'd be the easiest way to do it, IMO.
HTH,
MM
Do you see what I mean? Basically, I'm saying you can't split one for you "domain" only, and the other for "email" only. They are one and the same you must have an MX record to receive email. (Technically not true, but in your case, the email will go to your hosts' server, or your primary "A" record)
I've never used CPanel or any other type of control interface other than webmin, so I'm not sure what it is that you're looking at. Would it be possible for you to take a screenshot and put it up somewhere? That way I'll be able to know what you're looking at.
If you want, you can PM me the location where you put it up.
Or, if someone else knows what CPanel looks like, or has access to it, I'm sure they'd be glad to help out. :)
Plus I get to learn the joy that is Bind :-)
What you say shocks me. I've never done it but I've been told over the years that you can hand over the MX record to a different domain to handle. There's a huge email provider everyone.net or everything.net, something like that, which offers your users username@domain.com and they use this MX record thing to do so...
I'll try to dig up some screen shots.
But ... the webserver and mailservers you point your dns records to need to be expecting this. The webserver needs to know to show your website when it gets a request for www.example.com , and the mailserver needs to know to forward mail to yahoo for you, when it gets mail for someone@example.com .
Usually the registrar ties up all these ends for you if they are providing the domain, webspace and email. But if you start running your own dns, or a 3rd party provides your dns, then you need to make sure whoever is providing you with webspace, and email has it set up for your example.com domain.
I hope that makes sense, though when I re-read it in the morning I'm sure it won't ;-)
Wow, this DNS stuff is so complicated.
What you say shocks me. I've never done it but I've been told over the years that you can hand over the MX record to a different domain to handle. There's a huge email provider everyone.net or everything.net, something like that, which offers your users username@domain.com and they use this MX record thing to do so...I'll try to dig up some screen shots.
Say you don't host any email at the moment, only web services, and your DNS is being hosted by your webhost. You'll have a DNS setup like this:
domain.com ---> 123.4.5.6 (A record)
www.domain.com ---> 123.4.5.6 (A record)
nameserver1 ---> 7.8.9.0 (NS record - Where your DNS is being stored/hosted)
nameserver2 ---> 7.8.9.1 (NS record - Where your DNS is being stored/hosted)
*NO MX RECORDS*, since you aren't hosting email.
*DNS is "stored" and name queries still point to your webhosts' DNS servers*
Now say that you want everything.net or whatever to host your email for you:
domain.com ---> 123.4.5.6 (A record)
www.domain.com ---> 123.4.5.6 (A record)
nameserver1 ---> 7.8.9.0 (NS record - Where your DNS is being stored/hosted)
nameserver2 ---> 7.8.9.1 (NS record - Where your DNS is being stored/hosted)
mail1 ---> 5.5.4.4 (MX record)
mail2 ---> 5.5.5.6 (MX record)
*DNS is "stored" and name queries still point to your webhosts' DNS servers*
Everything else (Website, etc) is still pointing to the original places, but the MX records (mail1, mail2) point to everything.net's mail servers. That's what they mean by "handing over" your MX records. You're still in charge of the whole DNS zone, and everything.net accepts mail for your domain.
You can't hand over authority for only portions of the zone (domain) to someone else. There has to be a singular, authoritative "master" for each zone.
Well on my ded. server I'm running a DNS server. But my webhost is running the DNS through their servers. Since they aren't letting me forward just one email address, I'm sure asking them to configure the MX record to point to my server is out of the question. I suppose for the domain to go through them I can't use my own DNS server and just point to the correct IP address, can I?Wow, this DNS stuff is so complicated.
If part of your agreement with your webhost is that they manage your DNS for you, then yes, they should allow you to set up additional MX records that you want to point wherever you like. The problem is that you're going to be sending email to your DNS server -- do you have an email system (Sendmail/Postfix/QMail) set up on this server as well? Since the MX records will point to this server, you need a method of accepting incoming email for this domain.
You can point your DNS servers to wherever you like. You have to change this setting with your registrar, and point everything to your dedicated DNS Server. You webhost shouldn't (hopefully) notice anything, adn you can keep on trucking with your own DNS servers. If you're wanting to run your own DNS servers, I'd recommend you grab some books, or find some tutorials for setting up and maintaining BIND and DNS Zones. It can be pretty heady, but once you've got the basics, everything will click into place.
If you still want to run your own DNS servers (it has many advantages), but you don't want to actually manage and maintain the infrastructure behind the servers (servers, internet connections, backups, zone transfers, etc), I'd strongly recommend that you check out zoneedit.com, or various other free DNS hosting systems. They're free (and also you can pay for additional services at reasonable rates), and incredibly resilient. I've never had a problem with any of their servers, and it's much better to deal with than the nightmare that is registrars and changing your authoritative DNS servers when your DSL's IP address changes.
(notice that I'm using plural for "DNS servers" -- you're required to have two DNS servers on separate subnets -- but technically, you can put the same IP address in twice at your registrar's setup, at your own peril).
Whew. I hope that helps. :)
-MattyMoose
