MX records

Barry Margolin barmar at genuity.net
Fri Mar 15 20:50:39 UTC 2002


In article <a6tleu$hgb at pub3.rc.vix.com>, Ted Wood  <twood at twu.edu> wrote:
>
>I've got a question about MX records.  My domain, twu.edu, has a mail server
>which has an A record which points to just the domain name like so:
>@	IN	A 	205.165.49.231
>It is also the preferred mail server:
>@	IN	MX	0 venus.twu.edu
>And of course it also has its own A record:
>venus	IN	A	205.165.49.232
>
>There are also some other mail servers with lower preference values:
>@	IN	MX	10 exchange.twu.edu
>@	IN	MX	20 vulcan.twu.edu
>etc.
>
>Now, as I understand MX records, mail sent to somebody at twu.edu should try
>venus first, then exchange, then vulcan.  However, if somebody at twu.edu has
>their account on exchange or vulcan, the mail never gets there.  

It will only fail over to exchange or vulcan if the connection to venus
fails, i.e. when venus is down.  A nonexistent account is not a reason for
failover.

You either need to configure aliases on venus for all the users whose
accounts are on exchange or vulcan, or you need to configure venus so that
it forwards any mail for nonexistent accounts to exchange, and exchange
should be configured to forward nonexistent accounts to vulcan.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at genuity.net
Genuity, Woburn, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.


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