user@server.example.com vs. user@example.com

What is the name of your primary zone?

Does your DNS contain an A record for 'example.com', both forward and reverse lookup?

Can you confirm that the A record for 'example.com' points to the correct IP address of your server?

In Terminal, run this command: dig yourdomain.com

What does it say when you do that?

Is it possible for you to post a screen shot of your setup from server admin? This is complicated to debug w/o knowing exactly what you've done so far.

Are you trying to allow people outside of your organization to email you at the address example.com? If so, you need to have a split DNS setup, where you've registered that domain name and set up DNS to point to your Lion server so that mail will be routed properly.

If you setup internal DNS only, nobody on the public internet will be able to send you email.

Look I'll explain it this way (since you haven't posted back yet). If your primary zone is called server.example.com, then you will never be able to resolve traffic to example.com. You need to make sure your primary zone is example.com, not hostname.example.com.

I hope that helps.

In Server Admin, look for Primary Zones. You probably only have one Primary Zone and no Secondary Zones.

What is the name of your Primary Zone? (I'm not asking about the hostname of the server, just the name of Primary Zone.)

Thanks for the reply, and I think we've found your problem!

Your Primary should not be server.example.com. It should just be example.com.

The correct setup is this:

Primary Zone: example.com.

A Record (Machine Record): server.example.com POINTS TO ----> 10.0.1.7

You could try to repair your setup by running changeip from the command line, but I think it'd be easier to do a clean install and start over, making sure your primary zone is set up correctly.

I will never say I'm 100% sure it will fix your problem, as issues related to DNS are complex and numerous.

However... I am 100% sure that the current setup that you have will not work.

Think about it like this, if your primary zone is server.example.com, then that fully qualified domain name is the ONLY domain for which your server is authoritative.

What this means is you can only make DNS entries like this:

• host1.server.example.com
• host2.server.example.com
• host3.server.example.com

Which is not what you want to do. You want a Primary Zone of example.com so you can make DNS entries like:

• server.example.com
• host1.example.com
• host2.example

The problem you've run into is Apple has tried to make very complex networking tasks as easy as setting up and iTunes account, and sometimes the best (or only) way to set things up is to do it manually, especially DNS.

With DNS particularly, the process is unforgiving. If you screw up your DNS, you're better off to erase the disk and do a clean install from the beginning to make sure you get it right. So, reinstall Lion Server, open up Server Admin and create a new Primary Zone for your server, making sure that it's in the form of example.com. (note the "." at the end of example.com. is important, it's what makes the address "fully qualified".

Then make an A Record pointed to your server --> server.example.com.

I hope this works for you, please keep us posted on your progress and let us know how it goes!

Jonathan

It kind of makes sense to me that it "works", but it's coming from user@server.example.com.

You are pointing your external DNS at your server, so if I send and email to user@example.com, that email get's passed to your mail server. But as far as the server is concerned, the only DNS zone it cares about is server.example.com, so that's why it shows up that way... Just my guess, but it makes sense.

As far as SSL, I've never dealt with SSL certificates, sorry! What are you doing w/ your server that you need SSL?