MX and domain in separate locations

[Barry Margolin]

In article <c0gekc$22kf$1 at sf1.isc.org>,
 Jonathan Villa <ksadmin at killerspin.com> wrote:

> I was hosting the domain isdesigndev.com with a hosting company who
> managed the DNS information for me.I now changed to a hosting company
> which has me maintaining the zone file myself.
> 
> Via the web, ssh, ping, whois, etc... the domain points to the new
> nameservers, i.e. ns1.isdesigndev.com and ns2.isdesigndev.comhowever the
> mail seems to be at the old location....I think this because I can view
> my maillog on the old server and see everything getting rejected as
> "relaying denied"...
> 
> Anyway, I tried to query the domain at the old location
> 
> dig isdesigndev.com ns1 @ apolloservers.com
> 
> and I get in return
> 
> ;; ANSWER SECTION:isdesigndev.com.        4573    IN      A      
> 69.10.149.186

That's not a valid command.  Did you mean "dig isdesigndev.com any 
@ns1.apolloservers.com"?  I tried that, and got:

;; ANSWER SECTION:
isdesigndev.com.        259200  IN      SOA     ns1.apolloservers.com. 
root.ihmac.infinityhosting.com. 2003041633 7200 3600 604800 3600
isdesigndev.com.        259200  IN      NS      ns2.apolloservers.com.
isdesigndev.com.        259200  IN      NS      ns1.apolloservers.com.

No A record, no MX record, so no way for mail to be delivered at all.

> which is my new server...so, any ideas as to why my mail would still go
> to the old server?
> 
> Do I need to check with the old hosting company to see if they have
> "released" the zone file?  Do I even need to do that?  I changed the dns
> info at the registrar level...

Yes, you should get them to remove the zone from their servers.  Other 
servers may have cached the NS records that point to them, and every 
time they query the old servers the cache gets refreshed.  As long as 
they keep querying before the TTLs run out, they'll never go back to the 
root servers to get the new delegations.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA