sblantipodi wrote:
what I need to do to configure mail and a subdomain in the linode dns manager?
thanks!
Add A records and an MX record. Here's how I did it (using an example zone, and starting from scratch). Note that we have an entirely blank slate in the DNS manager. Click "add new A/AAAA record". This is where we set up the record that says "snarfexample.com" is 1.2.3.4.
For the first A record, the one for the main domain, do not fill in anything except "IP address". Set the record to the IP address of your Linode. This will make "snarfexample.com" point to 192.168.1.85. Click Save.
Repeat the process of adding A records for all subdomains that you want. Here, I've set up a "mail" subdomain (notice I only used "mail", and not "mail.snarfexample.com"). Also set these to the IP of your Linode, or, if you are using a creative hosting setup, any IP address that you wish. Here I've used 192.168.1.85 again.
In order for outside computers to recognize that, indeed, mail.snarfexample.com handles incoming e-mail for @snarfexample.com e-mail addresses, we also need an MX record. After you've created an A record for mail, click Add an MX record.
Here, we use the full hostname (as the server that handles mail for
joe@snarfexample.com may not necessarily be part of the domain). Fill in the full hostname of your mail subdomain. The lower the "priority" number, the higher the priority of that mailserver -- this only matters when multiple servers are in use, so you can leave it at 10 for now. Leave the rest blank and click Save.
I've created other records here, including an IPv6 version of mail as well as IPv4/IPv6 records for "wap" using the same exact procedure as I did in step 2 above. I also added an SPF record under TXT records -- this allows some mailservers that recognize SPF to make sure your domain isn't spamming. See
the OpenSPF website for the lowdown on that (it's not important at all).
That's it! Now, in about 15 minutes, Linode should pick up the change. Give all of your changes (since you just changed GoDaddy's nameservers) about 24 hours to propagate through the Internet and everything should be working fine.