Mail Delivery problem when domain is set up before transfer

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coolemail
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Mail Delivery problem when domain is set up before transfer

Unread post by coolemail »

Can anyone help with this, please? I have set up a domain on my Plesk 8.6 server in preparation for the name servers being changed to point at our servers. This will allow them to upload their website, setup email addresses etc.

But now when I send an email to an address on that domain, Plesk treats it as local and returns an error:
Sorry. Although I'm listed as a best-preference MX or A for that host, it isn't in my control/locals file, so I don't treat it as local. (#5.4.6)

I had disabled mail in the Plesk CP thinking that that would allow it, but to no avail :-(

Is it possible to get the domain to send the emails to the remote (current) host short of deleting all DNS records and having to then change them all again once the name servers resolve to our servers. We wanted to make the transition smooth, and it appears that this email problem is the only sticking point we have.

Many thanks in advance for any advice.

EDIT 1. I forced it by creating an MX record with higher priority (& associated A record) pointing to the current provider. But I assume that when the name server change takes effect, this will then cause emails to get lost until we remove those entries, would it not??
biggles
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Re: Mail Delivery problem when domain is set up before transfer

Unread post by biggles »

A bit OT, sorry, but I would really like to see a wiki-page with best practice for switching from one Plesk server to another, with special attention to the DNS-setup.
coolemail
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Re: Mail Delivery problem when domain is set up before transfer

Unread post by coolemail »

biggles wrote:A bit OT, sorry, but I would really like to see a wiki-page with best practice for switching from one Plesk server to another, with special attention to the DNS-setup.
I agree. About a year ago we had to do that, and it was definitely NOT a simple Plesk Migration Manager to do it!! The troubleshooting goes on forever.

ASL did help us enormously and is really good protection, and that resolved a lot.
faris
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Re: Mail Delivery problem when domain is set up before transfer

Unread post by faris »

Your best bet would be to not only switch off mail, but switch off DNS for the domain too. That way your plesk server won't try to deliver email to itself*, then find there's no mail set up, and drop the message.

When it comes to be time to switch over, re-enable email, re-enable DNS, then do the switch.

No email will be lost** because anything coming from your Plesk server will end up in the local mailbox, ready to be collected once the DNS has "propagated" (apparently using this term is frowned upon in some circles but I'm happy with it).

* Thinking about this.....I would have thought that if you configure /etc/resolv.conf NOT to use 127.0.0.1 and make sure it does its DNS lookups on an external server, you won't need to switch DNS off. I'm not 100% convinced this will work, but it should.

** Obviously, during the DNS propagation period, some email will go to the old server, and some to the new. Switching off mail on the old server will help in this respect as long as the TTL is set very low for the DNS records. We use 3 minutes and basically it all works out with minimal, or zero, losses.

Faris.
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coolemail
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Re: Mail Delivery problem when domain is set up before transfer

Unread post by coolemail »

Thank you faris.
The MX record at a higher priority worked, with an A record for that MX record.
I did think about turning off DNS, but it then showed the name servers only (ours, clearly). But the name servers are still different ones for the old host, so I guessed that that would not work unless I changed all the name servers as well.

On the resolv.conf, there was something a few years ago where we were having an issue over the use of some Black Lists, and Scott suggested that we use 127.0.0.1 which would allow us to use their RBL.

Sadly we have no control over the old server as that is a different company hosting which was hosting the domain. All we can do is to get them to change the name servers, and allow us to transfer the domain to our own control.

I'm grateful, as ever, for the input from all.
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