Hi all,

I've just signed up for my Linode and am a relative newbie to some of this stuff so please bear with me

I want to use Google Apps for my clients email and have followed the guide in the library and seem to have it working OK using the Gmail web client.

I want my clients to still use server names like mail.example.com for the POP and SMTP servers in Outlook etc. thus minimising the amount of settings they'll need to change when I migrate them over from my old shared hosting reseller set up.

I also want them to be able to access the web mail (gmail) client via the url mail.domain.com (or webmail.)

So far for the first test domain I've set up on Linode, I've made the following changes to the default setup in Linode's DNS manager:

* Deleted the default MX records
* Added the 5 google apps MX records
* Deleted the A record for mail
* Added a CNAME record for mail which aliases to ghs.google.com

I've set up the Google Apps account and have verified the domain, activated mail and changed the web address on the email settings page to http://mail.domain.com.

At the moment, I can't access mail.domain.com as a POP or SMTP server via an email client and pointing my browser at mail.domain.com gives me a page saying:

"It works!

This is the default web page for this server.

The web server software is running but no content has been added, yet."

No idea where that's coming from...

I changed the name servers for my domain name at the registrar but theres still a lot of DNS records set there. Do they get completely ignored when you change the NS servers to point to Linode's servers?

Hope that makes sense to someone!

Cheers,
Terry[/list]

DNS changes can take up to 24-48 hours to take effect, if you provide the domain name I can tell you if you set it up right.

Hi Obs,

Thanks for the reply. I may be jumping the gun a little as the DNS records where set up yesterday although when I switched the nameservers over at the registrar, the domain name resolved to Linode within an hour.

The domain in question is shodanmusic.com.

Out of interest, how will you be able to see the DNS records for it?

Cheers,
Terry

Is mail.shodanmusic working now? If not, you may need to do a little more configuration in google apps.



dns is basically public, telling other people how to find your sites. tools like dig, nslookup, host, ping, etc will do an easy resolve telling one where a name goes.

dig +trace is usually your friend:

$ dig +trace mail.shodanmusic.com

; <<>> DiG 9.7.0-P1 <<>> +trace mail.shodanmusic.com
;; global options: +cmd
.         516115   IN   NS   f.root-servers.net.
.         516115   IN   NS   j.root-servers.net.
(blahblah)
.         516115   IN   NS   h.root-servers.net.
;; Received 228 bytes from 208.67.222.222#53(208.67.222.222) in 30 ms

com.         172800   IN   NS   h.gtld-servers.net.
com.         172800   IN   NS   m.gtld-servers.net.
(blahblah)
com.         172800   IN   NS   g.gtld-servers.net.
;; Received 498 bytes from 2001:dc3::35#53(m.root-servers.net) in 221 ms

shodanmusic.com.   172800   IN   NS   ns1.linode.com.
shodanmusic.com.   172800   IN   NS   ns2.linode.com.
shodanmusic.com.   172800   IN   NS   ns3.linode.com.
shodanmusic.com.   172800   IN   NS   ns4.linode.com.
;; Received 181 bytes from 192.26.92.30#53(c.gtld-servers.net) in 33 ms

mail.shodanmusic.com.   86400   IN   CNAME   ghs.google.com.
;; Received 63 bytes from 69.93.127.10#53(ns1.linode.com) in 78 ms

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Ah, thanks for that. Does it all look OK to you?

I thought it was a no no to use CNAME and MX.

RFC 2821 is worded funky, and seems to allow it, but some SMTP servers sending mail to a CNAME goofs up.

EDIT:
Nevermind - looks like it's Google Apps doing stuff the "Google Way". They're using CNAME to allow you to customize the URL your mail appears at.

Ya it looks fine, I also threw mail.shodanmusic.com into my browser and it brings up the google apps screen.

You just have to wait for dns to propagate. At least you've learnt something new about how to check DNS settings

Thanks for the replies, guys. I now have shodanmusic.com resolving the Gmail login which is great.

I'm still not sure if I can use mail.shodanmusic.com as POP and SMTP server names though. Can anyone clarify that for me?

Cheers,
Terry

I don't think so. Check the google apps documentation.

Really? I can't find anything in the google documentation either. very disappointing

So to have the server names I want, do I need to run my own mail server? If so, are security implications or are they a lot of work?

Thanks again, guys.

Terry

You can yet can't.

Basically the domains will point to the right place BUT google demands SSL (which is fair enough) and since the SSL certificates are signed for google not your domain then it will bring up an invalid SSL certificate warning in the client (which will be handled differently depending on the client).

Ah OK, I see. Thanks for your help everyone.