I have a colocated redhat 7.2 server running apache 1.3.20 and sendmail. I have set up some vitual hosts. The main one, say, A.net can send/receive emails no problem. However, I have set up another domain running on this server, say b.com. When I send email to b.com from home it gets there and comes back no problem. But when I send email to user@b.com from yahoo, I get the following message


Message from yahoo.com.
Unable to deliver message to the following address(es).

<username@b.com>:
Sorry, I couldn't find a mail exchanger or IP address. (#5.4.4)

I'm not sure if it's a DNS issue or if it's an MX record in my sendmail configuration.

Any suggestions will be highly appreciated!

This sounds like a DNS issue. If your home computer is pointing to the same DNS server as your Sendmail server, then they would be able to resolve each other. Since it's unlikely that yahoo is also pointing to your DNS system, they may not be getting the resolution.

Since you didn't include the real domains, I can't investigate further, but what are the registered nameservers for B.com? Go to http://www.whois.com and verify that the Internet is looking at the nameservers you think they are.

You mention that you are also running Apache. Can you get to B.com's web pages from a host other than your home computer.

If you would like me to investigate further, please send me the real domain name.

Hope this is helpful.

-Glenn

i think you got an mx records problems?

Glen, thank you for your help. The name of the server is fpei which is colocated in a data center half way across the state with one ip address assigned to it. The main domain is fpei.net These are the name servers: NS1.E-SOLUTIONLLC.COM and NS2.E-SOLUTIONLLC.COM. I have set up another name based virtual host which is my wife's site, hairdeisignsbycyndi.com and it also points to the same Name Servers. It seems my sendmail server does recognize the email account and routes it appropriately because I can send email to my wife's account, cyndi@hairdesignsbycyndi.com from dazzleblue@fpei.net from my computer and it comes back into her mail client on my computer ok. (my isp is Comcast). but again, when I go to any other site like yahoo, the email I send to cyndi@hairdesignsbycyndy.com bounces back with an error message.

Joseph, I think it may be an mx record problem also but I am not sure how to set them up appropriately.

I think I may have an answer now.

First, I was a little misled when you gave me two different domain names "hairdesignsbycyndi.com" and hairdesignsbycyndy.com". Since the latter domain doesn't exist, I am assuming you meant the former.

I did a little digging (pun intended) with the dig(1) utility.

> dig -t MX hairdesignsbycyndi.com

Yielded the output:

; <<>> DiG 9.2.1 <<>> -t mx hairdesignsbycyndi.com
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 4417
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 2

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;hairdesignsbycyndi.com. IN MX

;; ANSWER SECTION:
hairdesignsbycyndi.com. 84827 IN MX 100 mail.fpei.net.hairdesignsbycyndi.com.

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
hairdesignsbycyndi.com. 85212 IN NS ns1.e-solutionllc.com.
hairdesignsbycyndi.com. 85212 IN NS ns2.e-solutionllc.com.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ns1.e-solutionllc.com. 171227 IN A 66.224.3.169
ns2.e-solutionllc.com. 171227 IN A 216.187.157.144

;; Query time: 8 msec
;; SERVER: 129.83.221.54#53(129.83.221.54)
;; WHEN: Tue Sep 30 08:59:17 2003
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 152

Please note the MX Record in the ANSWER SECTION. The DNS administrator did not put a trailing period after mail.fpei.net. This caused DNS to automatically append the default domain for the zone, in this case hairdesignsbycyndi.com.

Notify your DNS admin for the fix. This is a fairly common DNS error.

Hopefully this fixes your problem

-Glenn

Thank you for your answer.
I believe my brother has access to the DNS server and set it up. So what you are saying is that under ANSWER it should have 2 periods between net and hairdesignsbycyndi, ie:
hairdesignsbycyndi.com. 84827 IN MX 100 mail.fpei.net..hairdesignsbycyndi.com
Is this correct? And this would apply to any other virtual hosts we have that are not working, like totallyvirtual.com and gnacrefs.com?

The MX record should look like:

hairdesignsbycyndi.com. 84827 IN MX 100 mail.fpei.net.

It most likely currently looks like:

hairdesignsbycyndi.com. 84827 IN MX 100 mail.fpei.net

(notice the missing trailing period)

Any fully qualified domains that you use in DNS must have a trailing period after the domain. If DNS doesn't find the period, it assumes the host is part of the default (i.e. current) zone.

-Glenn

Thank you. we will get it corrected. Now, these changes to the MX record are made in the DNS box, right? not in a file in sendmail, is that correct?

That is correct. The changes should be made in the hairdesignsbycyndi.com DNS zone file.

-Glenn