FW: Problem with mail delivery

[Thomas J. Rude]

Barry, 
Thanks for the information.  However, as I mentioned, I really have no
idea how this all works!  But, to respond to some of your notes:

** We used to own the man-gill.com domain when we were man gill chemical
(before my time at the firm).  When the last network admin left, he
informed internic that we no longer were that and did not want the
domain name.  Hence, why the name is currently available........which
leads me to a question:  how can our DNS server still work with this
setup is we do not own that domain name?  I mean, with the querying that
occurs, I don't understand why it works or why it doesn't give other
servers incorrect information.  Perhaps because the domain name is
currently available?      IAGNET.NET was our old ISP who has merged and
merged,etc.  In our old setup, IAGNET servers as  a secondary DNS
server.  Again, I don't understand why this works.  OR, would this
explain the message in Event Viewer...."syslog:  Secondary zone
(iagnet.net) expired"  that appears every so often (usually in
>multiples)?
>Huh?  There doesn't seem to be a MAN-GILL.COM domain registered.  There's a
>MANGILL.COM domain, but the DNS server that it's delegated to
>(SECONDARY.DNS.IAGNET.NET) doesn't have any information about the domain.
>
>>; Records that were not automatically handled by MetaInfo DNS
>>Configuration
>>;
>>mx1.predict-dli.com      IN     A   207.206.8.55
>>valiant.predict-dli.com   IN     A   172.16.3.201
>What are these records doing in the man-gill.com.db file?  This file should
>only have records for names in the man-gill.com domain.

**Again, I really don't know!  This is how it was (is) set up when I
came aboard.  Are you saying that these two records should appear in the
predict-dli.com.db file?  


>>man-gill.com                IN     A   207.206.8.34
>>NEW Config mail doesn't work:
>>predict-dli.com.db
>
>The new configuration doesn't have any MX records for predict-dli.com.
>There's an MX record for mx1.predict-dli.com that points back to itself,
>but it doesn't have an A record.  The NS record for the domain points to
>ns1.predict-dli.com, which is a CNAME record; NS records should point to A
>records.  You need to create an A record that points to 207.206.8.34, so
>that your NS record can point to this name.

**So, I need to add a MX record for predict-dli.com such as:
	mx1                IN MX     10       predict-dli.com
instead of having the (mx1      IN     MX   10   mx1.predict-dli.com.)
record?   OR, could I keep this () record and add the A record such as:
	mx1                IN A      207.206.8.55

I have a question about the NS record (@      IN     NS
ns1.predict-dli.com.):  what does the '@' sign stand for? When I compare
the new to the old I notice the old (man-gill.com.db) has (man-gill.com.
   IN   NS ns1.man-gill.com.) for the NS record.

When you say I need to create an A record that points to 207.206.8.34
(legal, visible IP of DNS/firewall) so that the NS record can point to
the same, why doesn't the following work?
	ns1          IN     A    172.16.2.111          <where this IP is the
internal address>
Do I need this and the following both?
	ns1          IN     A    207.206.8.34

And lastly (I know you hope so!), could I just remove the CNAME record:
	ns1     IN   CNAME  mgntfw
in order to clean this mess up?  

>Since the old configuration works, why don't you just set up the new domain
>the same way?
**Two reasons!  One, I wanted to use the domain name we own
(predict-dli.com) instead of the one we used to own.  Two, because the
old version of MetaIP you can just edit the records in notepad and the
changes will be updated when you reboot the server.  For whatever
reason, in the new version any changes you make not in the gui do not
appear to be updated when you reboot the machine!!!  Which has been a
major source of frustration for me!  
>
>>from what I understand, any e-mail addressed to one of our employees is
>>sent first to VERIO NW at which point their servers forward it to
>>207.206.8.55 (our valiant machine) and Valiant moves it to the
>>respective employee.
>
>No, this is not how mail is delivered.  If the MX record points to valiant,
>mail from the Internet will be sent directly there, it won't go through any
>of Verio's servers.
**See, this is part of my confusion!  Because the techs at VERIO told me
that they needed the legal IP of our e-mail server because they need to
forward e-mail from their servers to it.  This is not the case?  OR, did
they need the IP so that they could set their DNS servers to reflect
that fact that any mail for predict-dli.com should be sent to
207.206.8.5 if someone queries their DNS servers?

again, thanks for the info and I'm trying to make heads/tails of it!

>Thomas
>-- 
>Barry Margolin, barmar at bbnplanet.com
>GTE Internetworking, Powered by BBN, Burlington, MA
>*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
>Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the
>group.
>
>