I have a client that wants me to host e-mail forwarding only.
His site is on wix.com and I have attempted to have wix point the mx records to my virtualmin server.
I have gone through the process of setting up a new virtual server for his site, with e-mail only items selected, and have set up accounts that are set up to forward like normal. But something is not working right. I believe it has to do with how I have wix set up to point the mx records to my server.
Could you help me with how I need to set up the DNS on the 3 party server (in this case wix.com) and how I need to set up my virtualmin server?
The more detailed /specific the better. I am generally new to this server admin stuff, and this is the first time I have ever set up my own DNS server. I have looked at other threads that referenced this but they did so in such a general manner that I didn't help.
Thanks in advance for the help.
Howdy,
Can you describe what isn't working properly?
Whenever you perform the setup you described, what problems do you run into when it doesn't work? Do you see any errors in the email logs?
-Eric
Essentially the only thing I know right now about it not working is that when I send a test e-mail it doesn't work.
I am not necessarily trying to trouble shoot quite yet, as much as I am just making sure I set it up correctly. I am hoping someone could give me the steps in how they would set up a e-mail server for a domain that is hosted with another dns.
How would they set up the 3rd party DNS? How would they set up the server to accept e-mails?
Thanks Micah
Howdy,
Well, there's a variety of ways to do that, but from what you described in your first post, what you did sounds correct.
Setting up email accounts designed to forward on your server, and having the MX records point to your server, is certainly a way to do all that.
So it sounds like you were close -- once you're ready to troubleshoot, just let us know what you're seeing in the email error logs, and we can work from there.
-Eric
The mail logs are filled with tons of entries.
What am I looking for?
I don't see anything with that particular domain in it.
I re-read your initial post, and in there, you described that you think the issue might be with the MX records. For that, you'd want to verify that all your nameservers for that domain are correct (pointing to your third party DNS provider), and then verify that there is an 'MX' record, and that it's pointing to your Virtualmin server.
Also, if you let us know the domain name, we can test the DNS to make sure it looks correct. You can also review the DNS settings yourself by going to intodns.com, and having it generate a DNS report for you.
However, the email logs can really help you get to the bottom of what isn't working.
The key there is that you'd want to send yourself a test email, and then look at what new entries show up at the end of the email logs, immediately after you send this test email.
If you see an email come in -- that's a good start, then we can track where it's going from there.
If it doesn't come in at all, that could mean that there is a firewall or DNS issue.
-Eric
I ran the intodns.com report. This is what came up in the MX record area.
Your MX records that were reported by your nameservers are:
10 mail.domain.org No A Record (no glue either)
[These are all the MX records that I found. If there are some non common MX records at your nameservers you should see them below. ]
Almost Everything else has a check next to it. that has an blue circle with an i, as well as
Number of MX records OK. Looks like you only have one MX record at your nameservers. You should be careful about what you are doing since you have a single point of failure that can lead to mail being lost if the server is down for a long time.
Okay, for that MX record, you'd want to add an 'A' record for "mail.domain.org" at your DNS provider.
The intodns.com report should be able to identify an IP address associated with your MX record -- and once you add that 'A' record, it should then be able to do that.
-Eric
So here is the progress so far.
I got an test e-mail rejected finally.
It had this in it.
Technical details of temporary failure: DNS Error: Domain name not found
So I went to wix.com where the dns is hosted and created an a record as you mentioned.
Going to do another test run here and see if that got it any further.
Thanks!
It worked. The A record set and all works perfect.