backup mx

[tvengel]

Hello,

We use Plesk as control panel and I was wondering how I could create backup-mx records for our clients.
Is there anyone that can help me?

Regards,
Tim Van Engeland

 

[BoXie]

Just go to DNS in the domain and add an MX record. Choose a lower priority (by that i mean .. your primary MX host is 10 and the fallback could be 30 or 40 or so).

 

[tvengel]

Hello BoXie,

If I'm right, I don't think the email will be "backed-up", because there is no configuration on the mail server. So wgen the primary mx goes down, the secondary can be contacted but the mailer daemon will not recognize the domain if i'm right.
Isn't there anything that also has to be done at mail server's level?

Regards,
Tim Van Engeland
ODIT SYSTEMS

 

[BoXie]

Ok,

That's true .. but i have to look that up.
Please check www.lifewithqmail.com.

It should be in there.

Is the fallback MX server also a Plesk machine ? Because then things are a bit more complex ..

Maybe someone else here has a best-practise.

 

[sieb@]

Usually, you will want to put a server infront of your Plesk server, like a scanning server (ART's Gamera server or FSL.com's DefenderMX). Then, if your Plesk server goes down, any mail going to these servers will just hang out in the queue until the Plesk server comes back up, in most cases anyway. You will have to set these servers with a higher priority MX record (i.e. 10) than the Plesk server (i.e. 40). This is how my network is setup. Note that there is a time limit of some three days by default that the server will queue the mail.

This also goes for most servers out there who are attempting to send to your server. If your Plesk server is down, they will usually try for up to three days before discarding an email.

If you want a "failover" mail server, that goes beyond the scope of Plesk into the realm of Plesk Expand.

 

[tvengel]

Hello Sieb,

I think I didn't made up my question properly.

I'll explain.
We have several clients with a dsl-connection and static ip. On some time it is possible that the dsl connection isn't working, and their email can't be delivered.
So we want to have our server as backup mx, but I suppose plesk doesn't support it out-of-the-box.
How can we configure out server to act as backup-mx server?

Regards,
Tim Van Engeland

 

[BoXie]

I think adding the clients domains on your fallback MX server in /var/qmail/control/rcpthosts should do the trick.

You might consider adding them to 'morercpthosts' because Plesk will overwrite 'rcpthosts' everytime you change something in Plesk itself.

Dont forget to run 'qmail-newmrh' after that to create a binary version of 'morercpthosts'.

http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man8/qmail-newmrh.8.html

And : TEST FIRST .

 

[schatje]

If you want add a domain in plesk, and this machine/plesk will be setup as backup MX, just disable mailserver on domain control panel, Your Domian -> Mail -> Disable,
After that.. login to shell, add your domain in /var/qmail/control/morercpthosts as BoXie says running /var/qmail/bin/qmail-newmrh, next.. you add your domain in /var/qmail/control/smtproutes files
yourdomain.com:202.xx.22.xx:25
202.xx.22.xx is the primary mailserver,
thats it... If you dont add the domain through plesk control panel.. just edit these 2 files, and dont forget to add/modify your MX DNS server

Hope this help you

Schatje

 

[BoXie]

Ehm .. I really doubt if the smtproutes needs to be modified.

Doesn't DNS take care of the mailrouting when speaking of fallback MX'es?!

 

[ShadowMan@]

The smtproutes file change is to tell Qmail where to send the stored email for the domain(s)