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At 4:59 PM +1000 10/9/99, Peter Bancroft wrote:
Re: Mail Servers & DNS
From: Men & Mice Support
Date: Saturday, October 9, 1999
Time: 9:53:00 am
>Hi
>
>I've been playing around with primary and secondary mail servers.
>
>My setup is as follows:
>
>1. Mac 7100 Webstar + IPNetRouter + FMP
>2. Mac IIci Primary DNS + Mail 1 (MX = 10) ; QDNS + EIMS 1.3
>3. Mac IIci Secondary DNS + Mail 2 (MX = 20) ; QDNS + EIMS 1.3
>
>I have set up a test mail account: peter@webserver.com.au
>
>When I send email to this account everything works OK. I can shut down
>machine 2 ie primary DNS and Mail1, and machine 3 picks it all up and looks
>after DNS and _forwarding_ of email. Also If I shut down machine 3,
>secondary, the Primary picks up every thing for _forwarding_ of email.
>
>My problem is that I need to configure an email client to pick up email
>that is being _stored_ at my site. For example, Eudora needs to be pointed
>to either mail1 or mail2 but not both. If mail1 is shut down, then eudora
>cannot connect to mail2.
>
>Is there a DNS way of fixing this? I tried quite a few experiments along
>the lines of aliasing (CNAME) both mail1 and mail2 to a generic
>mail.webserver.com.au
It sounds like your DNS is set up properly. You should have something like this:
webserver.com.au. MX 10 mail1.webserver.com.au.
webserver.com.au. MX 20 mail2.webserver.com.au.
mail1.webserver.com.au. A 192.168.0.2
mail2.webserver.com.au. A 192.168.0.3
Of course, the details will be different, but you get the idea. The other thing that needs to be configured is your mail server software.
On the primary mail server (machine 2), you should configure it to accept mail for your domain(s). Without this, it will attempt to forward the mail to a more authoritative mail server - of course, there isn't any such in your DNS, so it will bounce the mail instead.
On the backup mail server, you should obviously have anti-relaying measures in place, to prevent having this server hijacked by outsiders. However, presumably you'll want to specifically enable relaying for your domain(s), so that it forwards legitimate incoming mail to your primary mail server.
The mail client software should be configured to use the primary mail server as its POP3 server (or APOP, or IMAP, or whatever protocol you're using).
With the above configuration (as I described), if mail1 goes down, mail2 will get incoming mail and hold it until it either can relay it to mail1 or times out, in which case the mail will bounce. Mail1 will otherwise get incoming mail directly, and will hold it until the end-user logs in and retrieves it.
I hope this helps.
____________________________________________________________________
Chris Buxton cbuxton@menandmice.com
Men & Mice http://www.menandmice.com
Makers of: QuickDNS Pro
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