control/smtproutes

Hi all,
Can I put an MX record in the control/smtproutes file or I need to put
an A record only?
I have a few qmail servers that should only forward to two off-site
MTA's. The two MTA's are in MX record for redundancy. I have an IP
address in the file.
Thanks,
Vahid.

"Vahid Moghaddasi" <moghaddasi@gmail.com> writes:

> Can I put an MX record in the control/smtproutes file or I need to put
> an A record only?

A or CNAME, I think. No MX.

> I have a few qmail servers that should only forward to two off-site
> MTA's. The two MTA's are in MX record for redundancy. I have an IP
> address in the file.

So don't worry about it. qmail will retry if the host to which you're
pointing is down.

--
Dave Sill Oak Ridge National Lab, Workstation Support
Author, The qmail Handbook <http://web.infoave.net/~dsill>
<http://lifewithqmail.org/>: Almost everything you always wanted to know.

Dave Sill wrote:

>
> So don't worry about it. qmail will retry if the host to which you're
> pointing is down.
>
Will qmail try to send a failure attempt notification to sender that
the remote server is down and will try again, the same way sendmail
does? We do not want that in these systems at all as users have no idea
about these archiving systems.
I have the queuelifetime to 14 days.
Thanks,

"Vahid Moghaddasi" <moghaddasi@gmail.com> writes:

> Will qmail try to send a failure attempt notification to sender that
> the remote server is down and will try again, the same way sendmail
> does?

No. It only sends one notification when the message fails
permanently.

--
Dave Sill Oak Ridge National Lab, Workstation Support
Author, The qmail Handbook <http://web.infoave.net/~dsill>
<http://lifewithqmail.org/>: Almost everything you always wanted to know.

Vahid Moghaddasi wrote:
> Hi all,
> Can I put an MX record in the control/smtproutes file or I need to put
> an A record only?
> I have a few qmail servers that should only forward to two off-site
> MTA's. The two MTA's are in MX record for redundancy. I have an IP
> address in the file.
> Thanks,
> Vahid.
>

Vahid,

not to contradict what Dave said in his reply, you can put an hostname
from the MX record, an A record, a Cname record or an IP.

Not really sure what you are asking here. If you have two qmail hosts
that you setup for the sole purpose of delivering outbound emails, then
create an A record or a cname record that would point to either the two
IPs or to the hosts respectively (a record to IP, CNAME record to
hostnames) Set a TTL for 60 upto 300 seconds for these records.

AK

AK <aktrader2@excite.com> writes:

> not to contradict what Dave said in his reply, you can put an hostname
> from the MX record, an A record, a Cname record or an IP.

qmail-remote won't do an MX lookup on the name specified in an
smtproutes entry. For example, an entry like:

ornl.gov:ornl.gov

Will route messages to www.ornl.gov (160.91.4.30), not one of ORNL's
mail exchangers (emroute[1-4]):

$ dnsmx ornl.gov
10 emroute2.cind.ornl.gov
10 emroute3.ornl.gov
10 emroute4.ornl.gov
10 emroute1.cind.ornl.gov
$ dnsip ornl.gov
160.91.4.30
$

--
Dave Sill Oak Ridge National Lab, Workstation Support
Author, The qmail Handbook <http://web.infoave.net/~dsill>
<http://lifewithqmail.org/>: Almost everything you always wanted to know.

AK wrote:
>
> Vahid,
>
> not to contradict what Dave said in his reply, you can put an hostname
> from the MX record, an A record, a Cname record or an IP.
>
I tried MX record but saw errors in the log, I guess qmail does not
like smtp router to be an MX record A record is ok except the mail may
not go to the same place as MX’s.

>
> Not really sure what you are asking here. If you have two qmail hosts
> that you setup for the sole purpose of delivering outbound emails, then
> create an A record or a cname record that would point to either the two
> IPs or to the hosts respectively (a record to IP, CNAME record to
> hostnames) Set a TTL for 60 upto 300 seconds for these records.
Hope I can explain without braking S C C regulation . These qmail
servers receive *every* e-mail in the company and forward then to about
5 e-mail address (accounts) in the archiving company. The qmail servers
are not delivering to the actual recipients but only a copy of the
e-mail to the archiving company (Z antaz).
Z antaz assigned many servers to our account and asked us to lookup MX
record so if one server is down we send to another. We have no control
over zantaz’s dns, they do. Each of their 4 servers is in a different
parts of the country, if one site is down, my qmail servers should
lookup the MX record and send to the other one.
I can just remove control/smtproutes and have the mail go the final
destination e.g.
Account1 to account1 @ account1.digitalsafe.net account2 to account2 @
… etc.
But I am not sure that is such a good idea.

Dave Sill wrote:

> AK <aktrader2@excite.com> writes:
>
>
>>not to contradict what Dave said in his reply, you can put an hostname
>>from the MX record, an A record, a Cname record or an IP.
>
>
> qmail-remote won't do an MX lookup on the name specified in an
> smtproutes entry. For example, an entry like:
>
> ornl.gov:ornl.gov
>
> Will route messages to www.ornl.gov (160.91.4.30), not one of ORNL's
> mail exchangers (emroute[1-4]):
>
> $ dnsmx ornl.gov
> 10 emroute2.cind.ornl.gov
> 10 emroute3.ornl.gov
> 10 emroute4.ornl.gov
> 10 emroute1.cind.ornl.gov
> $ dnsip ornl.gov
> 160.91.4.30
> $
>

Hi Dave,

I did not mean to suggest that it would.
I was referencing the hostname that is referenced as responsible for
email in an MX record.
ornl.gov. in MX 10 emroute2.cind.ornl.gov.

qmail-remote will perform MX lookups such that there is no need for an
entry for the domain in the smtproutes table. The sole purpose of an
smtproutes table is to statically direct the email traffic for the host
entry.

AK