Dusty,
You are reading my problem correctly. Mail coming into our system from other
sources on the internet are being returned with "Host not found" errors.
Again .. this is a sporatic problem - we believe 99%+ of all mail comes
through fine and it seems to be limited to virtual domains.
We have had ipswitch techs examine our DNS set-up and they verify it is
correct, I will however provide it here again just in case. We are running
microsoft DNS with the following set-up (as described by the i-mail manuals)
as the primary DNS with our ISP (the server is colocalized) providing the
backup DNS
In the TCP-IP setup we have two entries in the DNS service search order - our
systems IP address first, the ISP's DNS is listed second. I have read a tech
note on ipswitch's website stating that having numbers in here can cause
problems with proper delivery. We have tried to go without them, but then no
mail is delivered. Using nslookup with these settings (no IPs specifically
listed in the DNS Service Search Order) we get that the DNS host 127.0.0.1
cannot be found. This doesnt seem normal to us, but all the documentation we
have on Microsoft DNS state that the proper IPs for the primary and secondary
DNS services need to be entered here. Ipswitches suggestion that this feild
be blank seems to be out of step with normal set-up.
As far as specific records are concerned, we have the following specific
records for each virtual domain...
A for domain.com
A for www.domain.com
MX for domain.com with the mail exchange host being the static IP host of the
main system
As an example we have the following records for a site we know is having
problems...
NS Record
Domain: ibi-opl.com
name server DNS name: nciserver.ncimedia.com
A Record
Value: com
Hostname: ibi-opl
Host IP Address: 209.117.223.146
SOA Record
nciserver.ncimedia.com
refresh 8 hours
retry 10 minutes
expire time 7 days
minimum default ttl: 2 days
MX Record
Domain: com
Hostname: ibi-opl
Mail exchange server DNS name: nciserver.ncimedia.com
Preference: 3
A Record
Domain: ibi-opl.com
Host name: www
host IP address: 209.117.223.146
All the virtuals are set up basically the same. Each is given a unique
preferance number in the MX record. The secondary DNS records are slightly
different as they were set up by our ISP on they system. They have an MX
record for domain.com which points to a mail host of mail.domain.com. They
then have another MX record for mail.domain.com which points to our mail
host. I beleive they also have A records for mail.domain.com.
each virtual domain in the system is named mail.domain.com in the Imail
administrator. Each then as an alias for just domain.com - as the set up
instructions dictate.
Do you see anything obviously wrong here?
Thanks again for the help
-Tom
## Dusty Carden wrote:
> If I am understanding correctly you are saying that the host
> not found errors are from mail that was supposedly directed
> to your virtual domains. Meaning the sending MTA could
> not resolve the MX. Is this correct?
>
> Can you give us an example of how you have DNS set up
> for one of these virtuals? One problem I dealt with this morning
> involved something similar where a sendmail box was not
> sending to a virtual domain which had a broken DNS record.
> (MX pointing to IP number).
>
> Dusty
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