Subdomain email setup / DNS issue

[dweinstock]

Hey all...

I have been trying to set up a mail server for a client/friend of mine. He currently has a mail server running elsewhere and once this one is running we're gonna cut it over to this one using MX records. However, there seems to be a hitch in the process thus far. Let me explain and perhaps someone could fill me in:

I used the ensim webpliance to set up the site. I set it up using just the domain name (shopnwl.com). I also added the domain alias for this installation (mail2.shopnwl.com) to both the IIS and mailenable setups.

On register.com, we added a subdomain (mail2) to the DNS and pointed it at the IP address of my machine. Web access works just fine. Also, I can log into the POP accounts with no problem. I attempted to send mail to the accounts to no avail. I therefore went back to register.com DNS and added 2 MX records just pointing mail2.shopnwl.com > mail2.shopnwl.com at both 0 and 10 priority. Now, perhaps the changes havent propagated yet or perhaps my methodology is wrong... but I cant seem to get mail into the accounts.

Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong???

THANKS!!!

Either PM's or Posts would be fantastic!!

-Daniel

[knightfoo]

You've got some weird MX records:

# host -t mx shopnwl.com
shopnwl.com MX 10 mxmail.shopnwl.com
shopnwl.com MX 0 shopnwl.shopnwl.com
shopnwl.com MX 10 mail.shopnwl.com
!!! shopnwl.com MX host mail.shopnwl.com is not canonical

You need to get rid of those extra records and make sure mail.shopnwl.com actually resolves. You only need one MX record:

shopnwl.com MX 10 mail.shopnwl.com

And you need to make sure that mail.shopnwl.com has an A record:

mail.shopnwl.com A 1.2.3.4

Replace 1.2.3.4 with the IP address of your mail server. You should never point an MX record at a CNAME.

-knightfoo

[dweinstock]

I truly appreciate your quick response...

At issue is the fact that I want to run this as mail2.shopnwl.com concurrently with the existing server just to test it. Mail would get sent to person@mail2.shopnwl.com

As I mentioned, I did add MX records for the subdomain so that as far as my understanding goes, I can keep it separate and then later decide to change the MX records for the domain itself.

Am I all messed up??

-d