Message Board

Donating MX Entries

My donation is not active yet

Author: V.Pylon (17 Jan 05 12:11pm)

Hi,

I donated an mx entry about 3 days ago and it is still not active. Did I make an mistake? The domain is www.shadow-lords.com.

Thank you,

Vic

Re: My donation is not active yet

Author: M.Prince (17 Jan 05 9:45pm)

It looks like our system found some errors in your DNS configuration so your donation has not activated yet. Here's the error we encountered:

* www.shadow-lords.com check:
-->NS: park18.secureserver.net
More than one MX encountered
-->NS: park17.secureserver.net
More than one MX encountered
Result: NS0
FAIL: NS0: www.shadow-lords.com

When I do a DIG on your domain it looks like you have two MX records configured:

; <<>> DiG 9.2.2 <<>> www.shadow-lords.com mx
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 54155
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 3, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.shadow-lords.com. IN MX

;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.shadow-lords.com. 3510 IN CNAME shadow-lords.com.
shadow-lords.com. 3600 IN MX 0 mx2.mxmailer.com.
shadow-lords.com. 3600 IN MX 10 mailstore1.secureserver.net.

;; Query time: 90 msec
;; SERVER: 64.81.159.2#53(64.81.159.2)
;; WHEN: Mon Jan 17 20:39:34 2005
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 124

In order for the MX to activate, you need to remove the MX pointing to mailstore1.secureserver.net. We check that non-Project Honey Pot mail servers are not the destination of MX records to help ensure our system cannot be used to abuse someone. In your case, if the Project Honey Pot mail server were down for a period of time, mail would fall-over to the secondary mail server (mailstore1.secureserver.net).

You also may want to consider donating a subdomain other than the root if you ever want to use this domain for other mail service in the future. For example, you could donate:

mail.shadow-lords.com
mx.shadow-lords.com
users.shadow-lords.com
etc....

Re: My donation is not active yet

Author: V.Pylon (19 Jan 05 10:45am)

Thank you, I missed the other MX entry. It has been removed. Also, I don't mind that you have the root for email purposes. This is just an extra domain I wound up never using. Although I had intended to let it expire, I will keep it up for another year just for honey pot usage. I love the idea of being an obstacle to spammers.

Vic

Re: My donation is not active yet

Author: A.Allerton (29 Jan 05 1:13pm)

I have a similar problem. I am using a domain with a dynamic DNS service, and a mail backup, so that if my mail server is unavailable, mail is accepted by the backup service.

I have donated a sub-domain, and the mail backup service applies to sub-domains as well as the domain. I don't think this can be changed.

It appears to be this which is preventing the activation, as the second priority MX record is for the backup service.

AIUI, if for some reason mail for the domain (or sub-domain) can't be delivered, it is stored temporarily by the backup, then sent when the first mail server (for the domain or sub-domain) is available again. In practice this happens automatically.

Can this situation not be accommodated? I am happy to register another domain just for the donation if necessary.