MX Records: separate web and email servers

dimavan at gmail.com dimavan at gmail.com
Thu Jun 26 16:34:24 UTC 2008


Hello,

Due to the nature of this question, I was not quite sure where to post
it. Apologies if this is the wrong group.

The setup in question involves web and mail hosting for a given domain
name ("example.com"). Website and email are hosted on two separate
servers. DNS records for the domain name specify the web server's IP
address for the "example.com" A record, the mail server's IP address
for the "mail.example.com" A record. The latter ("mail.example.com")
is also specified as the domain's only MX record. Simple and standard
setup thus far.

The web server is provided by a third party hosting company, and is by
default configured to handle email for the said domain name. As the
web server isn't actually used for email, no mailboxes or aliases have
been created. My problem is this: when an email is sent from a script
on the web server to any address @example.com, it is automatically
handled by the web server itself, and does enter the outside world.
The web server immediately generates an NDR, and the email doesn't go
anywhere. It's obvious that in this case, the MX record isn't used by
the web server to look up the domain's true mail destination.

What are my options? What, if any, is standard practice in this
particular case?

Thanks in advance for any help, or recommendations of other groups
where I may receive some.

Dima


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