How to add new domain to MIAB - SOLVED

[ANC]

I have www.my-domain.com hosted with a good ISP… for years.

I set the nameservers entry for this domain at the registry ‘point’ to the web host so they are the DNS provider for this domain.

I will buy a new domain like my-mail.com and create a Linode with a hostname of box.my-mail.com.

I will do the glue records at the registry for new domain.

I don’t want to use MIAB DNS for the website above. To have the new server handle the mail for www.my-domain.com wouldn’t I just set the MX record at the web host to box.my-mail.com and IP and priority?

Or is there something else I need to do?

I bet there are lots of people confused over this.

[michaelkroes]

You could do this, but you would have to create more records that just the MX. The box will tell you which ones under the external DNS section. I would probably let MIAB handle the DNS and point the A record to the web hoster.

[ANC]

Thank you, Michael. I’m trying to see if I can move off of an expensive dedicated server $2000 USD / yr) to a Linode server. I have about 10 domains on it and of course I need email for each domain. So far I’ve moved three domains to Linode and point their MX records for email back to the dedicated server.

I want to keep the DNS on the Linode web server if possible and just point email for each domain on the Linode web server to the new box server I will put up.

I’ve yet to find good docs on what records in the DNS to change (like MX for sure) and what to put in them. But maybe the box admin panel will tell me so today I’ll install the new Linode mail server with glue records at the registry like the docs say to do and then figure out how to add all the domains on the Linode web server using what they call “external DNS.”

Maybe you or someone can point me to docs to do this?

Thank you.

[ANC]

Well I’m going to answer my own questions and maybe help someone else out.

I created a Linode server dedicated to MIAB. I got a domain especially for this, did the glue records and it all works just fine. I then decided to add a new user (meaning another domain on which I already had a website.) I didn’t want to have MIAB be the DNS nameserver but it ends up being easier that way so I changed the registry record to the ns1.box.new-domain.com names like the guide says.

What is not in the guide are the other important steps that I found necessary.

In the Custom DNS screen of the Admin site I found it necessary to add these three records:

Domain Name Record Type Value

new-domain.com A xx.xx.xx.xx (IP of web host)
www.new-domain.com A xx.xx.xx.xx (IP of web host)
webmail.new-domain.com A yy.yy.yy.yy (IP of Linode server)

First two URLs will resolve to the website and the last one is:

webmail.new-domain.com/mail

and resolves to the RoundCube login.

I don’t know why the guide does not give these instructions… or maybe I screwed something up and required them. I don’t know, but everything works. (One item… I don’t think the MIAB DNS propagates all that quickly so give it several hours before you expect it to work.)

Here is another item that might bite you. If you sent mail out of the web host’s SMTP to your new domain to test and you have a site running for that domain many ISPs will take a shortcut and ignore DNS and try to pop the email in the local server. When it finds none it sends it back to you with an error 553 “We don’t accept mail for this address.” To fix this either tell the IP to disable this for you or often putting in a custom DNS MX record on the web host (same one you used on the MIAB) will work. Yes, I know that the web host is not being used as a nameserver but often the internal host SMTP will see that there is a MX record on file for the domain and will follow it.

I really don’t want MIAB being the DNS provider. I’d rather have my registry do it so I’m going to try to figure out how to use the registry as the DNS provider for the new domain. My guess (and it is only a guess) is I’ll need the 3 A records above plus a MX record pointing to the box.server-domain.com. I’ll report back here if I ever figure it out.

======= UPDATE ==========

It was quite easy to use an external DNS for the user domain that has a website on it. Most registries offer DNS service and if yours does here is how you do it.

• Set the nameservers to your registry default

• Go into the area where you can create custom DNS records and create the same A records as above.

• Add an MX record pointing to the IP of your Linode server host name: 10 box.xxxxx.yyy .

Wait a bit for propagation and you should be good to go.

HTH.