Able to send but unable to receive email from external mailserver

Hi All,

I am a novice in networking and recently I have started to do this webmastering stuff out of my interest.

I have configured my users and email in the Virtualmin/Webmin interface. I have got no problem in sending email to external mailserverz (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo) but couldn’t receive emails.

I have also done the zone configuration in Bind DNS section by looking at one of the documentation online.

Please find my zone records below,

example.com Master

Mail server:

example.com. Default 10 mail.example.com.

A record:

example.com. Default xx.xxx.xxx.xx

mail.example.com. Default xx.xxx.xxx.xx

ftp.example.com. Default xx.xxx.xxx.xx

ns1.example.com. Default xx.xxx.xxx.xx

ns2.example.com. Default xx.xxx.xxx.xx

www.example.com. Default xx.xxx.xxx.xx

Name server record:

example.com. Default example.com.

example.com. Default ns1.example.com.

example.com. Default ns2.example.com.

The following command results is,

host -t MX example.com

example.com mail is handled by 10 mail.example.com.

My SMTP test in wormly results in the following output,

Connecting…
SMTP -> FROM SERVER:
220 example.com ESMTP Postfix
SMTP -> FROM SERVER:
250-example.com
250-PIPELINING
250-SIZE 10240000
250-VRFY
250-ETRN
250-AUTH LOGIN PLAIN
250-AUTH=LOGIN PLAIN
250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
250-8BITMIME
250 DSN
MAIL FROM: person1@example.com
SMTP -> FROM SERVER:
250 2.1.0 Ok
RCPT TO: person1@example.com
SMTP -> FROM SERVER:
250 2.1.5 Ok
Sending Mail Message Body…
SMTP -> FROM SERVER:
354 End data with .
SMTP -> FROM SERVER:
250 2.0.0 Ok: queued as AB5571382C5
Message completed successfully.

But http://www.intodns.com/example.com came up with following errors,

  1. Oh well, I did not detect any MX records so you probably don’t have any and if you know you should have then they may be missing at your nameservers!

  2. ERROR: Looks like you have less than 2 nameservers. According to RFC2182 section 5 you must have at least 3 nameservers, and no more than 7. Having 2 nameservers is also ok by me.

  3. ERROR: looks like you have lame nameservers. The following nameservers are lame:

  4. You should already know that your NS records at your nameservers are missing, so here it is again: ns1-cloud.eleven2.com. ns2-cloud.eleven2.com.

  5. No valid SOA record came back!

Kindly advice. Thanks in advance.

Howdy,

Well, the DNS records setup on your server appear correct.

So, if you’re getting errors with those, and intodns is showing that you don’t have an MX record – that may mean the nameservers for your domain is pointing to another server.

Do your domains nameservers point to your Virtualmin server, or another DNS service?

If it’s another DNS service, you’d need to setup the DNS records at that service.

-Eric

Hi Eric,

Thanks a lot for your reply.

I did a whois for the IP in the A records and it resolves to,

OrgName: 180Servers.com
OrgId: ELEVE-10
Address: 4606 FM 1960 RD W
Address: Suite 340
City: Houston
StateProv: TX
PostalCode: 77069
Country: US
RegDate: 2010-03-31
Updated: 2010-08-02
Comment: http://www.180servers.com
Comment: NOC hours are 24x7
Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/org/ELEVE-10