Looking for a decent guide to walk me through configuring the mail server, testing the configuration, etc. plus the obvious DNS and other configuration necessary to make it work and access it from the outside world.
Any suggestions?
OS X Server, 10.8 Mail Server
What do you mean? Sending mail on the internal network or from the internet? Please tell me what part you do not understand? Im happy to explain 🙂
To have the ability to send emails without relying on my ISP, i.e. send mails to the internet from my local server.
Really appreciate your help with all my questions. Thanks.
It may very well be that your ISP blocked port 25 to prevent spam from being sent from misconfigured mail servers as users running Windows normally have a hard time setting up mail (they do not have the simple On-Off switch and a way more likely to be infected with spam sending malware).
If this applies to your ISP you could use an SMTP service that lets you send and receive on another port than port 25 (TCP) and use an airport extreme to translate the 'wrongly' set outside port to port 25 on your internal network.
Or you could just switch to a business package with your ISP, although the first option seems easier and cheaper 🙂
Is there an easy test to find out if the mail server is up and running where we expect it as I am still unable to connect from my mail client?
I seem to recall it might be possible to telnet to the mail server but whatever I try it can't find it.
On the server:
sudo serveradmin fullstatus mail
So now on my client mail program the configuration to collect emails is:
pop server: mail.xyz.com
smtp server: mail.xyz.com
email address: mike@xyz.com
When I add a new configuration to mail it seems to go through the first page but then sayd it can't find the server mail.xyz.com
Hi Mike,
There are two things to verify. The first, is that the mailserver is up and running. Run the following command in Terminal.app of the server...
sudo serveradmin fullstatus mail
If that says mail is not running, let us know and we'll go from there. If it says the mailserver is running, try this from the Terminal.app of a client machine you wish to send mail from...
telnet your.server.tld 25
This command tests whether a connection can be made from the client to the server.
The mailserver is up and running but when I try to telnet to it I get the following error 'nodename nor servname provided, or not known' regardless of whether I try mail.xyz.com or xyz.com.
Are these machines on the same IP network? What happens if you try the following in the command line...
host mail.xyz.com ip.of.dns.server
What the "host" command is doing is querying the specificed DNS server (last argument) for the mail domain (first argument)
Did you end up configuring your DNS by hand, or did you use the Server.app GUI? If you used the GUI, did you select the pulldown for answering all client queries?
Both machines are on the same local network although running the command line on the server or one of the other machines gives the same results, i.e.
host mail.xyz.com www.xyz.com
Using domain server:
Name: www.xyz.com
Address: 192.168.1.12#53
Aliases:
Host mail.xyz.com not found: 2(SERVFAIL)
The DNS was set up using the Server.app GUI and the option is set for answering all client queries.
OK, that's not good. Something is akew with your DNS configuration. Did you create an A record for mail.xyz.com? In Server.app, that would be done by either checking the "Create MX record for this hostname" checkbox on the mail.xyz.com entry, or manually configuring an A record and adding an MX record to any host that wants to use it as a mailserver.
You should only setup the DNS at your registrar to have mail delivered at your server, together with Reverse DNS with your hosting provider (some mail servers reject mail with a non working Reverse DNS),.
To set up your mail server for internal use you need to have a DNS server running on your network, but it doesn't have to be your OS X Server.
In OS X Server the record Jaime is referring to is called a Machine Record, but if you haven't selected the option to Show All Records in the menu (gear) of the Server app's DNS section you will not see any options listed when you click the plus ➕ symbol, but instead will be presented the New Host Name window. An Machine Record actually is an A record.
Try checking just:
host mail.xyz.com
And it will tell you the ip set at your registrar...
"I have to disagree 100% with this post." 🙂
Mark23 made a mistake. The appropriate command to check what DNS server IPs are set at your registrar is..
whois mail.xyz.com
There will always be at least two DNS server IPs paired with a registered domain.
Dear Jaime...
First, the whois command only returns the registration information of a domain, including name servers.
It does not show the ip information of any server...
Second, "whois mail.xyz.com" will result in "No match"...
Sorry...
Dear Mark23,
You didn't read what I wrote. He needs to find what nameservers are connected to the actual domain, not what IP is connected to the host - hence "whois". We need to do this because it's unclear if the actual domain itself is even mapped to the DNS servers he hopes to use. If you read back on this, he clearly doesn't grock the details of local vs. actual registered DNS. You've overloaded him with a bunch of stuff that detracts from the actual understanding of DNS overall. You said "You should only setup the DNS at your registrar" - which will mean nothing to him with without context.
My cut and paste error was clearly meant to be "xyz.com".
Sorry...
Step by step guide to configure 10.8 mail server
