[cobalt-users] Sendmail Backup MX Server

["Bruce Martin" <Bruce.Martin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello All,

I have been looking at this problem on and off for a couple of weeks now
- looking through the FAQ's both on the Sun and Sendmail sites, and not
having a lot of joy.

I have a Cobalt RaQ4 Server (all updates applied as of today) It looking
after DNS for both my own domain (asp-networks.co.uk) and a large number
of customer domains.

I have my own mail server located at my offices, with a permanent
internet connection.

The dns for asp-networks.co.uk is as follows:

$ORIGIN .
$TTL 86400	; 1 day
asp-networks.co.uk	IN SOA	ns1.asp-networks.co.uk.
hostmaster.asp-networks.co.uk. (
				2002033013 ; serial
				10800      ; refresh (3 hours)
				3600       ; retry (1 hour)
				604800     ; expire (1 week)
				86400      ; minimum (1 day)
				)
			NS	ns1.asp-networks.co.uk.
			NS	ns2.asp-networks.co.uk.

			A	217.199.172.136

			MX	20 smtp.asp-networks.co.uk.
			MX	30 smtp2.asp-networks.co.uk.

$ORIGIN asp-networks.co.uk.
ns1			A	217.199.172.136
ns2			A	217.169.14.126
pop3			A	217.169.14.125
smtp			A	217.169.14.125
smtp2			A	217.199.172.136

I have gone into Control Panel > Email > Parameters > Relay for the
following Hosts/Domains and added www.asp-networks.co.uk,
asp-networks.co.uk, 217.199.172.136 (the ip of the box) and
asraq1.asp-networks.co.uk (main hostname of box)

The smtp.asp-networks.co.uk is my primary mail server based here.  What
I am trying to make happen is if my internet connection, server etc
dies, that mail will queue up on my RaQ (hosted in London) until the
server is working again - and then it will deliver it. (using a Sendmail
-q run every 15 minutes for example)

With the config setup as described above, I mostly get the
"SYSERR(root): www.asp-networks.co.uk. config error: mail loops back to
me (MX problem?)"

Sometimes I get an email bounce bank - and nothing in the
/var/log/maillog file at all.  If I look at the headers on the bounce
back message - it doesn't even attempt to talk to the RaQ.

This must be a very simple thing to achieve should it not?

I realise I must be doing something really stupid - but I can't see the
wood for the trees at the moment!

Any help on getting this resolved would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,

Bruce