DNS How To Pages/MailDNS

How to configure DNS to enable receiving mail on your mail server.

SME server will send email out-of-the-box, but to retreive email for your domain name, you need to add a mail record to your dns info.

Assuming you mail server's ip address is 10.23.64.127, your domain name is contribs.org, and you want your mail server to be mail.contribs.org, there's just two steps.

If you use bind and can configure manually:

# STEP 1    define ip for mail domain name:
# (mail) domain name            type            ip address
  mail.contribs.org             A               10.23.64.127



# STEP 2    for the domain name, define mail.domainname.com
# as an MX (mail x-fer) record
# the number 10 is irrelevant if you only have one mail server:

# domain                        type            domain name             priority
  contribs.org                  MX              mail.contribs.org       10

If you use a dns service like the one at GoDaddy, you just need to define an "A" record to map the mail domain name to an ip address, then you define the mail domain name as an MX host.