Message Board

Donating MX Entries

Tried with no success

Author: J.Turner (14 Jan 05 7:45pm)

I would like to donate a subdomain MX from getmail.jtscode.com I have even gone as far as to add an entry for it to my current mail server but I keep getting this error:

The domain you have attempted to donate does not appear to be registered (or at least we were unable to query its DNS Records -- if this is the case you may want to double check that its records are valid). You can only donate domains that have been registered and for which you are currently the rightful owner.

I do own the domain and I am using a public free DNS server right now.

JT

Re: Tried with no success

Author: M.Prince (14 Jan 05 8:03pm)

There was a bug in our MX donation system created by some recently uploaded code (to fix another semi-annoying problem). Just caught it. Things should be back working now. Sorry for the problem, and thanks for your interest in the Project!

Re: Tried with no success

Author: N.Friedland (8 Aug 06 5:39pm)

Hi! :)

I've donated several MX entries from multiple domains without problems and will probably donate more later on.

In the interest of spreading the load around I ran into this same error:

The domain (php.ilmarinen.us) you have attempted to donate does not appear to be registered (or at least we were unable to query its DNS Records...........

So I figured the reason this was happening is because all the other domains have a wildcard DNS entry and the ilmarinen.us domain does not.

Just for fun, lol, I went ahead and added the 'php' subdomain with an A record. Still no luck.

Since I don't have wildcards setup on this domain do I just need to wait until the php subdomain DNS entry propagates? Or is there some other problem? :)

Re: Tried with no success

Author: M.Prince (8 Aug 06 6:02pm)

You shouldn't need an "A" record, just an MX. We've heard from a few people who have had similar problems. Here's what we think is going on.....

We just moved from one datacenter to a new (fancy) datacenter. In our old datacenter we ran our own DNS server against which all queries were run. In our new datacenter, we've got a big (fancy) DNS server that we bang against.

The old DNS server was setup not to cache anything; the new DNS server does caching. See where this is going.....

I think what happened is that when you tried the first time and the "MX" record didn't exist the DNS cached that value. Then, when you tried again, it didn't look it up based on the authoritative version but instead looked at the cache.

So I think the solution, which we're working on, is to go back to running our own DNS that always pulls off the authoritative version. Hopefully we'll have that running by the end of the day. And, regardless, the cache will expire on the DNS in a few hours and then your donation should go through. (Although if the TTL on the DNS is longer than the period between our checks, it could keep getting recached. Ugh.)

Anyway, I apologize for the problem. Thanks for letting us know!!! Should be back to working as normal soon.

Re: Tried with no success

Author: N.Friedland (8 Aug 06 6:50pm)

Well, if you're donating a subdomain, an MX record wouldn't exist yet for the subdomain. Hence the whole point of donating a subdomain MX.

So I tried another subdomain, php4, with the same result. The php4 subdomain, of course, doesn't exist - yet.... So if the donation submission went through and gave me the proper MX entry to add then it would have an MX record.

LOL, what am I missing here? :)

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I think what happened is that when you tried the first time and the "MX" record didn't exist the DNS cached that value. Then, when you tried again, it didn't look it up based on the authoritative version but instead looked at the cache.

Re: Tried with no success

Author: M.Prince (8 Aug 06 8:45pm)

Updated the DNS (reverted to the way we used to do it). Should be fixed.

Re: Tried with no success

Author: N.Friedland (9 Aug 06 12:47am)

Yup , thanks :) How long does it take for donations to become active, etc?

Re: Tried with no success

Author: M.Prince (9 Aug 06 2:07pm)

After you donate the domain the system checks to make sure the MXs are setup correctly. This check happens either once or twice a day, I can't remember. After that, the donated domains go into a queue where we watch to make sure they're "virgin" (i.e., not already receiving mail). That queue lasts around 3 days. After that, assuming nothing goes wrong along the process, the domain goes into the active queue and starts being used to generate spam trap addresses.

Let me know if you run into any more problems or have other questions.

Matthew.