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MX Backup
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MX Backup

lurch89lurch89 Member
edited February 2013 in General

First post, bear with me if it is a repeat...

Does anyone have a good tutorial or idea for creating a backup MX on a VPS? I have a mail server at home (simply for testing/learning) and I want to use one or both of my VPSs to hold mail in the event my home server is unreachable. I know there are commercial services for this, but I'd like a DIY solution.

My VPSs are running Debian 6.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Comments

  • @dedicados Thanks for the links, although the first one is very vague. I'm looking for a more software-specific or Debian-specific tutorial (exim probably).

  • You'll probably find a lot more help for Postfix rather than Exim for this purpose. Googling "Postfix secondary mx" turns up endless examples....

  • It is very easy with Postfix, just a few lines of configuration.

  • Awesome. I will take a look at using Postfix. Thanks!

  • all you have to do is creat mail server, which will accept mail for your domains (ie be in your rcpthost) and then it will forward it to the main server when primary goes down.

  • and can be the MX server POSTFIX and the END server EXIM ??

  • doesn't matter. which server you use: qmail, sendmail. postfix or exim.

  • dedicados said: and can be the MX server POSTFIX and the END server EXIM ??

    Yes of course. As long as the server speaks SMTP it doesn't matter which software.

    If you use Postfix as your MX, it by default will spool your mail for 5 days and retry delivery for that time to your home server. After 5 days, if your home server is still down, it will bounce the message. You can change the length of time to spool with the maximal_queue_lifetime option in main.cf.

  • great, im going to test =)

    and also has to be configured as MX low record like 10 or 20 right?

  • @dedicados said: also has to be configured as MX low record like 10 or 20 right?

    If you want it to be a backup MX, then priority should be lower ie. higher number, than your primary MX. Not all mail servers respect MX priorities though especially spammers.

  • great, im going to do some test. @t3k9

    thank you.

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