SimonH's picture
Hi all, I'm fairly new to Drupal and especially new to TKL, but I'm having the best time so far, its just awesome!! A little history. - Created Drupal6 instance on TKL tied to my Amazon EC2 account. No problems there. - Created Amazon Route53 hostedzone, which gave me my DNS settings for my domain name. No problems there. - Repointed DNS via my domain name manager, few hours later, my domain name was pointing at my TKL Drupal instance. No problems there. Its dawned on my that any email to my email@mydomain.com is probably going nowhere at all. Which I''m ok with for the moment, as its not really used at all. My question is and this maybe more of a DNS question than a TKL question (apologies if that's the case, but everyone here on the forums seem to know everything about everything). Is there anyway that I can do some domain name magic (MX records or something) so that I can access email from somewhere in my account? Even if its a forward Im a little perplexed and dont really know enough of where to start looking. Appreciate any help that can be offered. Cheers SimonH
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Liraz Siri's picture

Mail forwarding doesn't happen at the DNS level, it happens at the mail server level. You use the MX record to point to a mail server, which is then configured to accept mail and do useful stuff with it (e.g., forward it somewhere, deliver it to an IMAP mailbox, etc.). You can run your own e-mail server by setting up Postfix on the appliance and then configuring it (there's a nice Webmin module BTW) for example to forward your mail somewhere. Or you can sign up for a third party mail service (e.g., Google Apps) and point your MX record to their servers. Hope this helps!

SimonH's picture

Got it, thanks Liraz!

Id thought about Google Apps, but would prefer to get Postfix forwarding somewhere, like just to my ordinary gmail account if thats possible.

I had a look at the webmin module for it, and once Id looked up the meaning for half the words on the interface, Ive decided to do some postfix tutorials as Im clearly out of my depth :)

Thankyou for the advice, and I totally understand now what I have to do.

Many thanks

SimonH

Jeremy Davis's picture

Cause I think it's great to learn about Linux stuff and am usually keen to encourage it. But OTOH I have personally found that sometimes being too out of my depth can reduce my interest in stuff and/or increase my frustration leading to me throwing my arms in the air and walking away (although I often come back later with a vengeance). So have a read, have a play and try to get it to work just how you want. But if it starts to cause too much pain, perhaps consider opening a free Google Apps account and set that up to forward to your Gmail. I can vouch for the fact that it's very easy to do.

SimonH's picture

Although the free Google Apps seems like it might be the best solution for me. I looked at the Postfix admin panel....then I looked for some tutorials on Postfix....then I look for Postfix for Dummies...then I looked for The Internet for Dummies. Still no chance of me working that out :)

So Im guessing for this that I would create my google apps account, then work out how to point that at my Google apps account. I started to setup the free one, when it asked for my domain name....not wishing to point everything away from my TKL instance I left it until I know more :)

 

Thanks for the awesome guidance chaps

 

Cheers

Jeremy Davis's picture

But AFAIK they don't take your whole domain over (unless you want them to), just the email bit. IIRC there were pretty good docs and they walk you through the initial set up process. You still need to manually point your MX DNS records to Google and so I don't think they could take over your whole domain without you setting it up that way, even if they wanted to.

I have it setup at work (for work email) and our website is hosted elsewhere and it all works fine. Although I set it up some time ago so no doubt things have changed a bit.

SimonH's picture

Thanks!!!

Gives me a new sense of I might be able to do this :).

Thanks JedMeister....I knew everyone here knew everything.

Im slowly working everything out, so thanks all for your patience.

Kindest regards

Simon

Jeremy Davis's picture

Glad to help :)

SimonH's picture

Sorry Jedmeister, 

I think I might need some help...knowing which bit to do in TLK domain management, and which bit I need to do in google apps.

I registed a new google apps account, and uploaded an html verification file to my ykl drupal root, which I can get through www.domain.com, but not through domain.com (which was what I registered in google apps). Is that a problem on my google app registering or my TKL domain managment?

Do I also need to do something on mx records in my TKL or am I just waaaaaay overcomplicating this and there is a page in a manual that you are going to tell me to RTFM :)

If you could spare a minute or two to point be in the right direction would be most appreciated.

Best regards

SimonH

P.s Just noticed youre in Aus! Im in Sydney. Cheers

Alon Swartz's picture

You corrected registered the domain with google apps (www.domain.com is an FQDN, with www being the hostname). Once you have verified that you own the domain and google are happy, you can move onto the next step.

I understand that you've already setup your registrar to point your DNS records to what was specified, so the next step is to add the MX records that google apps displays to the Hub DNS management interface.

Hope the above is clear...

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