Problem creating alias email addresses for alias virtual server?

Hi,

I searched the site, but all I found was a description:

http://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/tutorial/how-to-create-virtual-server-alias

I have set up a virtual server with 4 other alias domains just fine. Apache seems to be set up as intended but I cannot find a way to manage the alias domains email adresses. I would like to just add additional alias email addresses with “Edit Mail and FTP Users” of the first virtual server. I can add them, I can save them, but then, when I open the user again, the new additions are gone.

There is no option to manage email for the alias domain itself.

How does virtualmin handle the alias email addresses?? Does it automatically accept emails for example@fistdomain.net and example@aliaseddomain.net?

And if this is in question: yes, the feature “Accept mail for domain” for the alias virtual server is active. :slight_smile:

And finally why is slave DNS option for the alias server not available. Reading the help for creating a alias server it says: “Only DNS, website and email aliasing are available.” But I see no option to activate DNS options.

Does anyone have an idea about that?

Thanks in advance
Best regards
Christian

I unfortunately can’t test this stuff at the moment since I can’t use my experimental Pro VM right now, but as far as I recall, it’s this way:

You cannot individually configure email addresses for alias domains. An alias domain is just that: an exact duplicate of another domain. It will “inherit” web contents and email addresses from the main domain. So yes, all accounts you set up in the main domain should exist in the alias too.

The two methods to achieve that, “Copy aliases from target” or “Catchall forwarding”, are configured in the Server Template, on the Mail for domain page, “Mail alias mode for alias domains”.

It is a bug - which was already reported and should be fixed in the next version - that the “Edit mail and FTP users” page accepts (and silently discards) alias addresses with an alias domain name - it should reject them with an error.

As for the “slave DNS” thing, can you be more specific what you mean here?

Ok, thanks for your answer. I thought that might be working that way. I’ve tested in the meantime and the alias email addresses seem to work fine :wink:

What I meant regarding slave DNS:
While creating a new server you can activate the feature “Setup slave DNS zone”. This feature works fine. But there is no feature like that in the creation dialog while creating an virtual server alias.

Creating an alias for a virtual server means to add new domain names, therefore I would expect, that the domains can be added as slave domains as well. While reading the help text I thought that this should be possible. This is the complete text:

Create Alias Server This form allows you to create a new alias server, which is essentially an alternative name for an existing server. Aliases do not have their own website content, and share all quotas and limits with the target server. Bandwidth used by the alias server is counted towards the target's total. When creating the server, you must enter at least the domain name and a description. If multiple server templates are defined on the system, you can select one from the menu. To select which features in the alias server are forwarded to the target domain, use the checkboxes in the second part of the Advanced options section. Only DNS, website and email aliasing are available.

If you read the last sentence, DNS feature should be available. Or do I missunderstand this?

I’ve created the slave dns zone already manually. But I am curious to hear, how this is intended to work. :slight_smile:

Best regards
Christian

I’m not sure what you mean with “Slave DNS zone”.

I get the option to setup a master DNS zone when creating an alias server… just like with parent servers. Are you maybe referring to a feature offered by Virtualmin’s “Slave DNS” plugin?

It is possible that you’re misunderstanding how this master/slave DNS concept works or is intended to be used. :slight_smile: Can you outline what exactly you are trying to achieve with that “slave DNS”?

Are you maybe referring to having Virtualmin automatically create a “copy” of the zone on a remote slave DNS when the master zone is created on the server you’re configuring? You’d do that with the “Cluster Slave Server” feature of the BIND module, and you don’t need to turn on a “Slave DNS” feature in Vmin then (only setup the cluster slave correctly once).

Every time when I create a new virtual server there is a feature “Setup slave DNS zone?”. If I select it a slave DNS zone for the domain is added to the local bind with master IP addresses configured in the template. This is also described in the help text:

When this feature is selected, a slave DNS zone for the domain will be created on the local BIND DNS server. The master IP addresses will be set by default to those defined in the selected server template, but can be changed later.

This works fine… but there is no such feature while creating an alias to a virtual server. An alias is basically just another domain name for the same server. So, why should it not be maintained in a local bind?

I do not have the master DNS zones locally, I just want to have a slave or copy of that DNS entries localy available.

I tried to add screenshos, but just get strange error messages,… :frowning:

The whole thing is provided via a plugin that can be activated for virtualmin… it’s name is “Slave DNS domain” :stuck_out_tongue:

Maybe I use it not as intented, but it works like I want it to work :wink: I have my domains provided by a DNS provider who has the master zones. I just want a copy of that, a slave DNS zone locally. And this is done for my new virtual server just with a click on that feature…

If this is not what the plugin is for… doesn’t matter. I will use it like I did in the past and will create the slave DNS zone entries manually :wink:

Okies, I get it now. :slight_smile: And yeah it sounds like you are quite doing it the right way, now that I know that you’re not serving the master zones yourself and are indeed using the “Slave DNS” plugin. :slight_smile:

In that case, the missing option to set up a slave zone for an alias server is probably a bug. You might want to report it in the issue tracker so the developers are going to find it.