Use this server to handle my e-mails (or not)

Kal

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To handle email externally, all you normally have to do is change a bunch of MX and related DNS records. You have to do this in DirectAdmin too of course, but then it also has this additional option:
Use this server to handle my e-mails. If not, change the MX records and uncheck this option.

From a technical perspective, what does this option actually do? What happens if I change the MX records but don't uncheck the box? Or vice-versa? There's nothing about this setting in the Site-Helper page (which is possibly a little out of date) or any of the other docs.
 
If you do not uncheck the box, then still your local mailserver is used. The MX record is only for external mail, so they know where your mail server is residing and some other stuff.
So users can still send mail via smtp from your server (probably also scripts using php mail), which will be refused on a lot of places (or most places) because the originating mailserver does not correspond with your MX record and rDNS which should belong to the MX record and maybe SPF and/or DKIM issues.
Hence you get into trouble. Kind of basic MTA stuff.

Vice versa, so unchecking the box but not changing MX settings, you won't receive mail, because the mail will be send to you, but your server sees that it does not do anything for local mail because that's disabled, so rejects the mail.
Big chance you can't send mail either in this case, not sure though.

In cPanel there is almost the same, except that cP changes this setting automatically if you have set the option to "auto" there.
There are more users struggling with the seperate page, so it would be nice if DA had this all on the same page.
There is a request for that:
feel free to upvote it if you agree. ;)
 
Thanks for that explanation Richard. Yes, I wondered the same thing… that the option was kind of hidden under User > E-mail Manager > MX Records. (I could easily have missed this, since I'd been doing everything under DNS Management.)

However I did notice (after unticking this option for a couple of accounts) that you can see (and set) this option as Admin user under Server Manager > DNS Administration. So it looks like this feature doesn't need my vote! ;) (Edit: My mistake. You can see but not set the option here. The 'enabled' and 'disabled' radio buttons are just for filtering the list.)

In any case, they need to update the help docs to include this. (Maybe it's there somewhere, in a feature release note or something… but I did a full Google search for "Use this server to handle my e-mails" for both site:site-helper.com and site:directadmin.com, and only found a very small handful of mentions in these forums.)
 
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that you can see (and set) this option as Admin user under Server Manager > DNS Administration.
Yes that might be, but then every customer has to ask the admin to change it for them. Normally the user/customer can do these things himself.
The feature request was not for admin, but for users to get everything on 1 page. ;)
So even if you could have set it, it was something different than the request.

Well it's odd that you could not find it. I just clicked in the help section, then choose e-mail and this was on top of the list:
which contains a not about the mx page and selection.

However indeed the help section needs updating, which is already started.
It's being worked on, but there might be some things missing as it's a lot of work and they are very busy at the moment.
You can find it here:
it does not contain a mail section yet as far as I could see.
 
The feature request was not for admin, but for users to get everything on 1 page. ;)
Confused. 😕 The feature request you linked to says:
When logged in as admin and you check DNS settings it would be useful to set and change the MX records about using this server or external service rather than having to login to each user.


Well it's odd that you could not find it. I just clicked in the help section, then choose e-mail and this was on top of the list:
https://help.directadmin.com/item.php?id=8 which contains a not about the mx page and selection.

If I'm logged in as the user and I click Help (from any of the email screens), it takes me to this document:

As for why I didn't find it in Google, it's clearly because I was searching for the wrong string. That old doc says the option is called 'Local Mail Server', when it's now called the rather more verbose 'Use this server to handle my e-mails. If not, change the MX records and uncheck this option'! 😉

However indeed the help section needs updating, which is already started.
It's being worked on, but there might be some things missing as it's a lot of work and they are very busy at the moment.
You can find it here:

I tried and gave up on using those new docs as the search bar never returned anything when I tried to search it previously—no matter what I typed in, it just said 'No Results'. However, I just tried it again, and I can get some results now with a few search queries. Searching for 'email' or 'mx record' still turns up nothing. I'd say the search feature needs some work to be genuinely useful.
 
Confused. 😕 The feature request you linked to says:
Oeps.... I'm sorry, seems somebody else created a similar option and by accident I pointed to the wrong one.

This is mine, which is intended for the users:

If I'm logged in as the user and I click Help (from any of the email screens), it takes me to this document:
Yes that's correct, I though you were talking about the help section here. Site-helper part is indeed ancient and needs urgent update. But I presume they have their priorities.

Indeed it had no results, last time I searched some queries could be found. They are still working on it, but nothing for email or mx yet. I'm sure it will all be imporived once ready, its havy beta at the moment.
 
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