DNS help.

[Cosmo_1847]

Hello, I have got a DNS acount with www.everydns.net and I need some help getting the email to work. At the moment I have got sub-domains working but not the mail.

What I kinda need a s guide to tell me what i need to do.

[shifty.ricky]

how are you using the mail?

MX records (i.e. your own mail server) or are you using the mail as a alias and forwarding it to another mail account (i.e. hotmail or isp)

[Cosmo_1847]

MX reconds. I'm with 1and1 for my domain and at the moment I think all my email isn't working cos 1and1 forwarded it but now it's on a DNS.

[shifty.ricky]

are you running your own mail server? or do you have X number of pop3 accounts at 1and1?

Anyway tell your dns server to use <hostname of 1and1 server> and to handle the mail with a rank of 1

for example: I use brian.firebadger.net with a rank of 1 to handle my mail

[Cosmo_1847]

Thanks, I copied the DNS settings from the domain using 1and1 and pasted them onto the EveryDNS settings.

mx01.1and1.co.uk of rank 10
mx00.1and1.co.uk or rank 10

I'll check tomorrow if they are working.

[Cosmo_1847]

Thank my emails are working again :)

Could you explain a little what the MX, A, CNAME and NS records are and what they do?

[latency]

MX Record: Mail eXchanger- identifies what mail server is handling mail for this domain. Since multiple MX records can be set, the preferance tag declares the order in which they are used. 5 is most important, then 10, then 20. If one exchanger fails, it will try the next. If two records have the same preferance, which ever one responds first will be used.
It's data must be an A record.

A Record: Translates the domain or subdomain directly to an IP address. Can be used for various servers. domain.com may point to the Webserver at 10.0.0.1, while mail.domain.com (which the MX records might point to), may be set to the mail server at 10.0.0.2.
Most small time websites such as yours or mine will only use one server though.
Must be a domain or sub domain, pointint to an IP.

CNAME: A sub domain that points to an A record. Commonly used for re-directs.
Must be somthing.domain.com, pointing to an A record.

NS Records: This identifies the DNS servers that handle requests for the domain. Most domains have a few, and are usually the Domain Agent's servers. Only highly advanced users will be effectly running their own name servers.
Can be an IP or domain, but is usually a subdomain eg, ns1.mydyndns.org

Lastly TXT records are used to supply additional information about a domain set up, but they are not usually used since they're optional.
I don't know enough about them to give much more info than that.

[Cosmo_1847]

Just one litte thing, I'm not borthed if this can't be fix but

http://black-flag.co.uk is the same as http://idleentity.net

http://www.black-flag.co.uk redirects to http://idleentity.net/~blackflag/v3/

Is there a way to get http://black-flag.co.uk to = http://idleentity.net/~blackflag/v3/?

This is my current DNS settings

black-flag.co.uk A 81.179.39.70 3600 [delete]
black-flag.co.uk MX mx00.1and1.co.uk 10 3600 [delete]
black-flag.co.uk MX mx01.1and1.co.uk 10 3600

http://www.black-flag.co.uk is a weblop.

[latency]

Firstly, when refering to DNS settings, don't add the HTTP:// prefix. It's a protocol and has nothing to do with DNS settings.

If you've got a redirect for www.black-flag.co.uk, you should be able to adda redirect for your top level (black-flag.co.uk) aswell.

If you're presented with [Text Box].black-flag.co.uk at your settings, try leaving the text box blank, and it should make the redirect for the top level.
That's how it works with my account anyways...

[Cosmo_1847]

If 2 domains have the same A record they won't conflict with reach other will they?

[latency]

No they won't conflict.

Domains have a many-to-one association with Nodes (the node being a server or website or whatever), where as a node can have many domains pointing to it, but a domain can only point to a single node.

As a reference, here's my DNS setup:

http://idleentity.net/graham/pics/dns.gif

[Cosmo_1847]

OK Thanks, I was just wondering because idleentity.net has stopped working and my black-flag.co.uk points to the same thing so I didn't know if it had stolen it or something.

[latency]

Yea two posts ago when I was testing to see if you really could set black-flag.co.uk to a webhop I forgot to restore my normal settings afterwards :P

Working now though :)

[Cosmo_1847]

If one A record and some other CNAME records that point to the A record all end up at the same server could I set the server up for vertural servers?

[shifty.ricky]

Yes and no.

Virtual servers are about putting more than one web address on the same IP. It has very little to do with addresses.

Just point all the A records at the same IP and configrure the virtual server correctly.

This wont work if you are using SSL certs.

[Cosmo_1847]

yay I got it to work. Thanks Ricky. I changed the vertural server settings and now it works.

http://ftp.black-flag.co.uk

[Danny Boy]

Virtual servers all tend to have their own IP address. I think you mean virtual hosts, similar but different. Virtual hosts are different sites all hosted on one computer under the same operating system with the same IP. Virtual servers are virtual OS on one computer each with their own IP. Each virtual server is seperated from the host OS and each other virtual server so they are all protected from each other.

[Cosmo_1847]

Is there a way to make it so that my server is the primary one with my friends server as a backup that is used when people can't connect to mine?

[Danny Boy]

What you are wanting now is failover dns. This is a managed dns solution where a server will monitor your webserver for you. If it detects that your webserver goes down then it will swap the dns entries for you automatically and redirect people to a backup server. Then once it detects that your primary server is back up and running it reverts the dns to the original settings.

Most people charge for this kind of service, the only company I know of that offers it for free is Zone Edit (http://zoneedit.com). You may need a hand setting it up, if so just give me a yell on msn. :)

[stdRaichu]

Do you have actual access to your DNS server, or is this just a hosted thing? I use dynamic failover DNS at home using BIND (one master server and two slave servers, although one of those is abotu to be retired). There's a fairly simple howto for BIND failover here (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=1625558).

[Cosmo_1847]

I have my DNS settings hosted with everydns.net. I use dynamic DNS on both my domains that is updated with a perl script. I don't think I would be able to use a fallover DNS setting as the server I plan to use (idleentity.net) doesn't have vertual hosts set up for my domains. I think won't do it cos most of the stuff hosted on my server uses MySQL databases.

[Karl]

MX Record: Mail eXchanger- identifies ....
It's data must be an A record.

That could be interpreted wrong by some, a better way of phrasing that would be:

An MX record entry must point to a DNS entry that is itself an A record and not a CNAME or other indirectly resolvable record and it must also not be an IP address itself e.g.

mail.example.org A 192.168.0.1
mail2.example.org CNAME mail.example.org

Invalid: example.org MX 10 192.168.0.1
Invalid: example.org MX 10 mail2.example.org
Valid: example.org MX 10 mail.example.org