External MX record, EXIM forced failure, how can i get mail delivered?

[pixelhed]

Hi

Here is my situation

domain.com lives on a reseller account i have with host1, the web site works. domain.com's MX record is set to mail.mailhostname.com (priority 10) that is the only entry in the page.

Problem 1) sending mail to name@domain.com EXIM returns forced failure, I realise that the prefix "name" is not being found by the catch all email, and the sender is informed, ok. I go to the page to change this and there are 3 options: Fail, ignore, address

I select address, the mails get delivered to the webmail interface associated with DA.

What i would like to happen is that all mail is delivered to mail.mailhostname.com not that it goes to the webmail.

I have contacted host1 and they have not given me a satisfactory response. I was hoping that someone could help me to find a solution that i can tell the host, and point them to this thread.

help gratefully received

Andre :)

[DirectAdmin Support]

Hello,

I believe Exim checks to see if a domain is on the server before going to the MX records to figure out where to send it. Any mail being sent from the local machine will end up back on the same machine if the domain is on it. Any mail sent from outside the machine (so it will do an MX lookup) will make it to whereever your MX record points to.

So for any mail that ends up in the catchall, you can just forward the email to the other server using its hostname: ie username@server.hostname.com
where usrename is your system account and server.hostname.com is the hostname of the server you want the mail to go to (hostname isn't the same as domain).

This will catch all local email and send it to your system account on the other server.

John

[jlasman]

MTAs have a way to determine whether a domain is local or not. Generally it's a file lookup.

If the domain is listed as local in the file it hands it off to a local handler; if it's not local, it routes it to the net.

In DirectAdmin the list of local domains can be found in /etc/virtual/domains.

What I don't know is if you can change it without it getting written back.

Jeff

[pixelhed]

Hi guys, thanks for the help

John:

I have changed the catch all email address to this:

websitehostusername@server.mailhost.com

the mail is no longer going into the webmail box on websitehost, but it is also NOT going to the pop account

Did i misunderstand what you said?

I have a reseller account, with a host operating DA, is there something that i need to tell them to do to make this work?

thanks
A

[DirectAdmin Support]

Hello,

Most likely, server.mailhost.com doesn't have an MX record... it would have to be added manually do the dns zone for mailhost.com.

John