Help re: MX record

[Michael Voight]

sabbah22 at my-deja.com wrote:
> 
> In article <375483A9.E51760BD at cisco.com>,
>   Michael Voight <mvoight at cisco.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > sabbah22 at my-deja.com wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > We have set up DNS using BIND (sort of a franken-config but thats
> > > another story) and we're having a problem getting the rest of the
> > > internet to able to send mail to our domain. (in a way..)
> > >
> > > >From the outside, I can send mail to "me at mail.domain.com", where
> > > mail.domain.com is specified in our DNS files and exists as a host,
> > > however I would rather be able to send mail to "me at domain.com"
> instead.
> > >
> > > Is this what the MX record does?  We have one of those so that must
> not
> > > be the problem.
> > >
> > > Is this possible?  It seems it *would* be with pretty much every
> other
> > > domain doing this, obviously.  I just can't figure out where to put
> it.
> >
> > Do you have an mx record for domain.com?
> > What does it point to?
> > Does that machine know it is supposed to accept mail for domain.com?
> > (It must be configured on some machines)
> >
> > What happens when this machine is sent mail?
> >
> > Michael
> >
> >
> 
> Well, for ourdomain.net, which is one of 5 files for 3 subdomains our
> DNS handles, the file contains one MX record as follows:
> 
> *      IN   MX   10    Mail
> 
> And then of course all the A records, like so...
> 
> doodah       IN    A     xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
> 
> and so on...
> 
> So to be honest, I'm not sure where it points unless to the obvious, the
> machine named mail.ourdomain.net.
> 
> When mail is sent to the domain (user at ourdomain.net), the sending server
> barfs with "Host unknown".
> 
> Thanks again for any assistance.  We have someone else reading
> O'Reilly's DNS & BIND whose authors I see frequently posting here.   Is
> the answer in the book perhaps?

Well, you want it to have:

In the ourdomain.net zone file:

ourdomain.net.  IN MX 10 mail.ourdomain.net
mail.ourdomain.net IN A 1.1.1.1

And this server needs to be pointed to by the root servers.

Without real info, it is difficult to see your problem.

Execute the following on the sending server:

1. nslookup -type=mx ourdomain.net (This is solaris syntax)


This should return both the MX records and the A records

similar results could be obtained by creating an A record for
ourdomain.net  MX records are generally NOT needed for mail if there is
an A record.

Michael