SMTP for incoming mail ??

[desperate_dan]

SMTP feed for incoming mail ??

hi
a user has requested that i "set up an SMTP feed" for incoming email

normally, people receiving email set up outlook etc with mail.domain.com as the incoming mail server - that's just about all i know about incoming email like this

anyone know what the user is on about and if i have to do anything?

thanks

<edit> he wants to use windows SBS - is this something to do with exchange??? </edit>

 

[panaman]

he prolly just wants the dns record...

So just create a couple cnames...

smtp.domain.com to point to domain.com
and pop.domain.com to point to domain.com

 

[jamesyeeoc]

External SMTP or Exchange Mail Server

To me it sounds as if they are running their own Exchange mail server and want your Plesk server to 'forward' their domain's email to their external Exchange server. Please verify this with the client. SBS is Small Business Server and can be setup as an Exchange server.

If so, then once you have their IP address for the Exchange server, you need to reconfigure your Plesk and Qmail so that the domain's mail is disabled in Plesk, then do the following to the Qmail control files (this is one solution which works for us, but may not be the 'only' way):

/var/qmail/control/virtualdomains
-remove the domain from this file
-this will tell Qmail that the domain's email is not local

/var/qmail/control/smtproutes
-create or edit the file, add the client domain, IP address, port number on a single line, each item separated by colons ":" with no spaces.
-this will tell Qmail where to 'forward' the domain's email to

/var/qmail/control/rcpthosts
-this file gets rewritten by Plesk, so make sure their domain is NOT listed in this file, but make sure it IS put into a file called /var/qmail/control/morercpthosts

/var/qmail/control/morercpthosts
-this file does not exist by default, so you'll need to create it
-put the domain name into this file
-this will tell Qmail to accept email for the domain (from other domains hosted on your server)
-this file does NOT get rewritten by Plesk

Putting the DNS entries (mail.domain.com, or as panaman posted smtp.domain.com, pop.domain.com) should still be done so that the MX records for the domain are still resolvable to the proper IP address. You should make A record(s) which point to the IP (mail.domain.com. A ip.add.re.ss), then make sure the MX records point to that, it should already. We try to avoid using CNAMES whenever possible.

Normally the 'mail.domain.com' is already an A record pointing to the IP on your Plesk server, so you just have to delete that one and create a new one with the new IP. But I don't want to 'assume' anything about your DNS template or how the domain's DNS is currently setup now...

 

[desperate_dan]

thanks guys

i believe the small business server / exchange thing is exactly what they're doing. the guy setting up SBS doesn't know linux systems or plesk and i don't know windows SBS etc .........

all those changes to qmail / plesk etc doesn't seem like a good thing for us to do - although it could work, we would forget we'd done it in 6 months time and probably do something that screws up their email

this particular site is using rackspace DNS - we're not running DNS on the server itself - rackspace DNS has all the usual mail / smtp / pop records set up all pointing to domain.com which has an A record pointing to our IP

is there a simpler way, like setting up a new MX record to point their exchange IP???
if not, we'll get the client to move the website - far too much hassle for a handful of emails every day!!

 

[ShadowMan@]

Originally posted by desperate_dan
thanks guys

i believe the small business server / exchange thing is exactly what they're doing. the guy setting up SBS doesn't know linux systems or plesk and i don't know windows SBS etc .........

all those changes to qmail / plesk etc doesn't seem like a good thing for us to do - although it could work, we would forget we'd done it in 6 months time and probably do something that screws up their email

this particular site is using rackspace DNS - we're not running DNS on the server itself - rackspace DNS has all the usual mail / smtp / pop records set up all pointing to domain.com which has an A record pointing to our IP

is there a simpler way, like setting up a new MX record to point their exchange IP???
if not, we'll get the client to move the website - far too much hassle for a handful of emails every day!!

Neither of you need to really know the other's OS. Forgetting later is a possibility, but the changes are pretty easy and can be redone easily.

Yes, you can setup a new MX to replace the one pointing to your server IP and that will be fine for all mail servers out in the world who need to know where to go, however, without the changes to your Plesk Qmail control files, then any domain on your Plesk server will still think the email for that domain is 'local' to Plesk and will not go to the Exchange server. This applies to even forms or scripts on their Plesk hosted domain which try to email to them.

Of course, it is up to you to decide to keep or lose the client, but to me the changes seem simple enough.

 

[willdashwood@]

Sorry to resurrect this old thread, I've got to do the same with one of my clients who have the domain managed by another company and just want web hosting from me. I've created the account in Plesk and got the site running. I soon realised that site mail was being trapped and I recall this happening before when I set up hosting for them on a cPanel host.

My first thought was to delete the MX DNS entry. Is this incorrect? I also disabled mail and set it to bounce all mail. I'm now following the guide above and I'm up to creating the "smtproutes" file. I'm not sure what I need to use for their IP address. They have a complex set up for mail. The domain is firstcontactuk.com (dnsstuff.com).

At the moment the domain is pointing to the old host but that should affect anything at this point in time should it?

You mention some files are rewritten by Plesk. At what point are they rewritten? i.e. when should I check them to make sure they're intact?

Many thanks, I'm very new to Plesk and it's a steep learning curve but I have faith I'll get there in the end!

 

[chris@virtbiz]

This should be pretty simple.
Just change the MX record!

If they are already running their own email server, then no need to have the Plesk server handle any email for them. That's no big deal - we have customers do this from time to time.

You don't need to modify any files or anything like that. Simply change the DNS from the Plesk control panel, remove the default mail. A record and then create an A record for their mail. IP address. Then make sure the MX record points to the A record that you have created. All done!

 

[willdashwood@]

Thanks, I realised it worked all along but I forgot the site doesn't email jobs directly, it adds them to a database to be run by a cron job. So I was wondering why on earth it wasn't working and it was me not running the script!

Anyway, before I realised this I found the option to deactivate the DNS zone. I thought, well if I did that and just added NS records pointing to:

ns.trinite.co.uk.
ns1.trinite.co.uk.

which is where the DNS records are then I'll always have the latest version. Is that correct? I forgot to mention originally that I'm not hosting the domain, just the site. It seems to work fine and I used the dig command and it reports all MX records correctly.

 

[chris@virtbiz]

Yes, that should work (turning off DNS zone).