Hosting mail in a different place from web pages
Is it possibe to have mail hosted in a 'different place' from where web pages are hosted? That's a bit of a vague question, I'll expand:- I own several domains, the two relevant ones are isbd.co.uk and isbd.net. Currently everything to do with these two domains is hosted with BsNet (essentially the same as x-1.net), they are fine for the web hosting side of things and anyway that's not so important at present but we do have occasional hiccoughs with E-Mail. Is it possible to move all E-mail to somewhere else? I.e. to keep the web hosting unchanged where it is but to remove all E-Mail from BsNet? I suspect it's something to do with MX records and things like that, I do have access to and the ability to modify the zone file, is that what needs to be changed? In fact I may as well show the current zone file for isbd.net:- $TTL 86400 @ IN SOA ns0.futile.net. root.futile.net. ( 2003011901 ; serial 28800 ; refresh 3600 ; retry 604800 ; expiry 86400 ) ; minimum ; IN NS ns0.futile.net. IN NS ns1.futile.net. IN MX 10 mx1.mail.bsnet.co.uk. IN MX 100 foundation.bsnet.co.uk. IN MX 200 relay.bsnet.co.uk. ; IN A ip.address.of.host ; localhost IN A 127.0.0.1 ; this is a commented out line So it's easy enough to change thos MX records but presumably the places they point at will need some configuration to so that they accept mail for xxx@isbd.net and do something useful with it. Any good tutorial/howto pages for this anywhere? -- Chris Green (chrisisbd@leary.csoft.net)
On 7/6/06, chrisisbd@leary.csoft.net <chrisisbd@leary.csoft.net> wrote:
Is it possibe to have mail hosted in a 'different place' from where web pages are hosted? That's a bit of a vague question, I'll expand:-
Yes. Point the MX records somewhere else. Do you have an email provider (or yourself) in mind who will happily receive your mail? Hope this helps, Tim.
On Thu, Jul 06, 2006 at 10:13:12AM +0100, Tim Green wrote:
On 7/6/06, chrisisbd@leary.csoft.net <chrisisbd@leary.csoft.net> wrote:
Is it possibe to have mail hosted in a 'different place' from where web pages are hosted? That's a bit of a vague question, I'll expand:-
Yes. Point the MX records somewhere else.
Do you have an email provider (or yourself) in mind who will happily receive your mail?
Yes, I have two possibilities, my account at csoft.net (which is where I am writing this) and/or my home linux box which has postfix running on it already. What does the receiving mail server need to do/know in order to accept mail for a 'foreign' host? E.g. my home Linux machine is isbd.ltd.uk, how do I make it accept mail for isbd.net and isbd.co.uk as well? -- Chris Green (chrisisbd@leary.csoft.net)
On Thu, Jul 06, 2006 at 04:42:04AM -0500, chrisisbd@leary.csoft.net wrote:
On Thu, Jul 06, 2006 at 10:13:12AM +0100, Tim Green wrote:
On 7/6/06, chrisisbd@leary.csoft.net <chrisisbd@leary.csoft.net> wrote:
Is it possibe to have mail hosted in a 'different place' from where web pages are hosted? That's a bit of a vague question, I'll expand:-
Yes. Point the MX records somewhere else.
Further question, now that I've found how to configure my postfix to receive the mail.
There are multiple MX records currently on the system where my domains are hosted, if I set the one with the lowest number (='best') to my Linux box with postfix I will get the mail sent there by default. If I set the lower priority ones to the existing mail host will that then receive the mail if my home system dies? How long does a sender wait before using the 'next best' MX record? -- Chris Green (chrisisbd@leary.csoft.net)
On 6 Jul 2006, at 15:44, chrisisbd@leary.csoft.net wrote:
There are multiple MX records currently on the system where my domains are hosted, if I set the one with the lowest number (='best') to my Linux box with postfix I will get the mail sent there by default. If I set the lower priority ones to the existing mail host will that then receive the mail if my home system dies? How long does a sender wait before using the 'next best' MX record?
I wouldn't bother with multiple MX records these days. Firstly, the sending MTA will re-try every so often before giving up - usually about after a week. Secondly, if you have multiple MX records, I can guarantee to you that spammers will use the lowest priority MX to send their crap because usually that's the least protected of mail servers (i.e. the server just stores and delivers/passes-on mail rather than processing it through RBLs, etc.) If you do have multiple MX records, make sure they're configured to re-deliver mail that's sent to it and as for when it re-delivers and how, is entirely up to how that mail server is configured. Regards, Martyn -- Martyn Drake Production Systems Administrator The Moving Picture Company Phone: +44 207 494 7857 Mobile: +44 7866 450 752
On 6 Jul 2006, at 10:07, chrisisbd@leary.csoft.net wrote:
Is it possibe to have mail hosted in a 'different place' from where web pages are hosted? That's a bit of a vague question, I'll expand:-
Yes. I've done it many times.
Is it possible to move all E-mail to somewhere else? I.e. to keep the web hosting unchanged where it is but to remove all E-Mail from BsNet?
I suspect it's something to do with MX records and things like that, I do have access to and the ability to modify the zone file, is that what needs to be changed?
That's correct. Simply find your new email hosting provider, and then amend MX record(s) accordingly. One thing to be aware of is to get the web hosting company to remove any references to the domain whose MX record(s) you change, from their mail servers, as this could lead to any messages that may get generated by your web site could still end up going to the old mail server (as the mail server will probably look at it's list of acceptable domains, say 'Aha! It's local, I'll deliver it to this local mailbox and not bother checking the MX records for this domain'). Regards, Martyn -- Martyn Drake Production Systems Administrator The Moving Picture Company Phone: +44 207 494 7857 Mobile: +44 7866 450 752
Martyn Drake wrote: [SNIP]
One thing to be aware of is to get the web hosting company to remove any references to the domain whose MX record(s) you change, from their mail servers, as this could lead to any messages that may get generated by your web site could still end up going to the old mail server (as the mail server will probably look at it's list of acceptable domains, say 'Aha! It's local, I'll deliver it to this local mailbox and not bother checking the MX records for this domain').
Another thing to bear in mind is that many servers, especially Windo$e servers, don't respect cache times at all. I have one client who is still receiving email at his old POP account with another ISP, some 9 weeks after we took over the DNS and changed the MX record. You may want to keep the old one for a while and use fetchmail to pull it over. Cheers, Laurie. -- -------------------------------------------------------------------- Laurie Brown laurie@brownowl.com --------------------------------------------------------------------
On Thu, Jul 06, 2006 at 10:57:41AM +0100, Laurie Brown wrote:
Martyn Drake wrote:
[SNIP]
One thing to be aware of is to get the web hosting company to remove any references to the domain whose MX record(s) you change, from their mail servers, as this could lead to any messages that may get generated by your web site could still end up going to the old mail server (as the mail server will probably look at it's list of acceptable domains, say 'Aha! It's local, I'll deliver it to this local mailbox and not bother checking the MX records for this domain').
Another thing to bear in mind is that many servers, especially Windo$e servers, don't respect cache times at all. I have one client who is still receiving email at his old POP account with another ISP, some 9 weeks after we took over the DNS and changed the MX record.
You may want to keep the old one for a while and use fetchmail to pull it over.
Yes, that sounds a good idea and wouldn't be a problem at all, I already use fetchmail quite extensively to collect mail from old and little used mail addresses. I have found out how to tell the new mail server to accept mail for 'other' hosts, at least in postfix, you just add the mail domain name to the 'mydestination' line in the postfix configuration file, dead simple. I'm not quite sure how that works on a system like csoft.net where I only have a shell account and a single E-Mail address though. What I want there would presumably be 'virtual mail hosting'. The support people there are very quick and helpful and clued up so I'll ask there. -- Chris Green (chrisisbd@leary.csoft.net)
participants (4)
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chrisisbd＠leary.csoft.net -
Laurie Brown -
Martyn Drake -
Tim Green