Mail to [email protected] works, but [email protected] does not

thewitt

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Nov 27, 2008
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I have a situation where I'm trying to send mail to [email protected] (the root domain on my server) and it fails with no such user.

If I send that same mail to [email protected] (node is the name of the actual server), it gets forwarded correctly to the admin account in /etc/aliases

What have I misconfigured? I can send mail to [email protected] and that works fine.

admin is an actual account on the server, postmaster is not, and should not have to be as mail to postmaster should be forwarded.
 
No the alias file is only for hostname. So postmaster@hostname will be forwarded. Otherwise it would not be possible to create a postmaster address for every domain (or any other alias mentioned in there).
If you want to be able to send a mail to [email protected] you have to either create an email address for it or a forwarder.
 
Why are you using the adduser command? [email protected] is an email address, not a user.
You should go to your DA e-mail section of domain.com and use the "create email account" option to create the postmaster email address, or go to the forwarder section and use the "create a new email forwarder".
 
This may be the fundamental problem. In my admin user account, the only domain defined actually includes the node. This might have been because of the migration from one server to another that we did several years ago keeping the same domain. I don't have an actual domain defined in DA for domain.com, only node.domain.com.
 
Oke on a fresh install, indeed only hostname is included in DNS.
This can be easily solved. Login to your admin account, choose user level, then under domain management choose add domain, and there add domain.com. After you done this, you can also use email adresses for domain.com like [email protected] [email protected] and others.
 
That would be odd. If it says it exists, then it exists.
Have a look in the /var/named and in /etc/virtual if there is already domain.com present.
Do you have a personal license or another license?
 
The domain exists in both directories and /etc/virtual/domainowners shows it's owned by admin.

Under admin in User mode, it does not show up as a domain to manage - only the node.domain.com domain is listed.

I'm not sure how to tell what type of license I have. I've had it since 2008. I have half a dozen other user accounts on that server and a dozen or so domains.
 
You probably have a lifetime license or something of the kind, so a "big" license where everything is possible. The personal licenses is something from... euh.. 2019 if I'm not mistaken.


The node.domain.com should not be listed under admin user level. This should only exists in admin dns manager, so this almost certainly is the reason for the notice that it already exists.
The issue now is how to solve this.

If you do not have another admin account under which the domain can reside, solution is fairly easy.

Normally you could delete node.domain.com under userlevel if you have nothing else running under it.
After that there are 2 possibility's to create it again.

Either go backup to admin level, then DNS administration and create it again. After that you should be able do create domain.com under user level.

The other method (I use that often) is to delete node.domain.com at admin's user level, then create domain.com there and add an a record for node.

Be aware that in /etc/virtual the node.domain.com must still exist or else you have to create it there.
And be aware that if you don't run your nameservers locally, you have to adjust the a record in the external dns.
 
The external DNS should be all set. I don't run the nameservers locally, and it already defines node.domain.com as an A record for the same IP as domain.com, so that should not be an issue.

There is nothing else running under node.domain.com so I don't see any reason anything would break if I delete it. I guess we will see :)
 
Well, I deleted node.domain.com and now I cannot create domain.com as I get a message saying it already exists under admin. I suspect this because it's in the domainowners file as well as still exists in the /etc/virtual as well
 
I had to delete both node.domain.com and domain.com from the domains file and rename them in /etc/virtual but it looks like I'm all set now.

Thank you for the very detailed help.
 
There is nothing else running under node.domain.com
Normally the mailserver is making use of the hostname, that's why the hostname must be recreated.

as I get a message saying it already exists under admin.
That is odd. Do you have another admin account present which may contain the domain file?
If not, go to admin level, dns administration, remove domain.com from there.
Then go to user level again and you should be able to add it again. Be aware that things might work via the tasq queue, so it might take up to a minute (or 2) before changes are indeed made on the system.
 
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