Where is the setting ? mail.domain or webmail.domain

Question asked by Curtis Kropar www.HawaiianHope.org - 6/27/2015 at 9:20 PM

Unanswered

Aloha !

So we just set up our new server : Windows Server 2008, Plesk 12 Control panel, Smarter Mail 14 (Webhost).

Changed our DNS with the registrar a couple of hours ago...things seem to be coming along, now just tweaking some "oops" changes to make it work properly.

So here is an issue. As an example, for the domain. (its the same on all domains)

www.H5Hawaii.org (yes, it has an error, we will fix it later)

mail.H5Hawaii.org

webmail.H5Hawaii.org

I spent about an hour or more trying to figure out why mail.H5Hawaii.org would not bring up the smarter mail login like it did on our old server, instead it goes to a default plesk page.

Then sort of by accident, i was looking at the server/domain DNS records and realized that "WEBMAIL" was also defined with the same IP address as "MAIL" so i type in : webmail.H5Hawaii.org and bam there was the smartermail login.

So now i have spent another hour trying to figure out why "mail" is NOT working and "webmail" is working. Is there a setting i am missing someplace in the new smartermail 14 that has "webmail" defined as the login page ? I have been messing with the DNS stuff too and nothing i do seems to make a difference,

www.HawaiianHope.org - Providing technology services to non profit organizations, low income families, homeless shelters, clean and sober houses and prisoner reentry programs. Since 2015, We have refurbished over 11,000 Computers !

6 Replies

Reply to Thread

Bruce Barnes Replied

6/28/2015 at 7:13 AM

First, get rid of the CNAMES. While they are prohibited for MX records, and you do not have them, many large DNS servers now IGNORE them as they cause double lookups and that doubles the resource requirements.

All host records should be pointing directly to IP addresses - no more CNAMES, period.

Second: did you setup the IIS HOST HEADER for MAIL.H5HAWAII.ORG in IIS on the new server, AND does it map to the static IP ADDRESS 208.111.58.236?

The error message appears to indicate a lack of mapping in IIS.

Bruce Barnes ChicagoNetTech Inc brucecnt@comcast.net Phonr: (773) 491-9019 Phone: (224) 444-0169 E-Mail and DNS Security Specialist Network Security Specialist Customer Service Portal: https://portal.chicagonettech.com Website: https://www.ChicagoNetTech.com Security Blog: http://networkbastion.blogspot.com/ Web and E-Mail Hosting, E-Mail Security and Consulting

Curtis Kropar www.HawaiianHope.org Replied

6/29/2015 at 2:50 AM

Thanks Bruce for your response.

Ok, Here is what we found :

After another like 2 hours of trying to figure out why the webmail. was being created, and the mail. was not, we ended up looking at the IIS - Bindings for the H5 domain, and only "webmail." was set up. We manually put in "mail." and now that is working for the H5 domain.
So we went back to the DNS editor for plesk and the H5 domain and deleted both "mail" and "webmail" from the DNS - nothing changed in the IIS binding. Isnt that supposed to update ?

As a temporary work around, we manually added mail. back into the bindings for all domains. (they all work now)

What is creating the original "webmail." binding ? is Plesk doing that or is SmarterMail doing that ?

Also, for SmarterTools, i cant see anything that actually allows me to define some of the server side stuff. "Mail./ vs webmail., or what if i wanted "myCrazyWebmail.H5Hawaii.org" ??

Finally, in reading through the documentation :

http://help.smartertools.com/SmarterMail/v14/Default.aspx?p=_SA&v=14.0.5647&lang=en-US&page=systemadmin/frmhostnames

When logged in as the administrator, under "settings" > "Bindings" > "Hostname"

The Help manual says to click "click Hostnames in the navigation pane"
Under Smartmal, "Manage" > NO "Hostnames" Options exists.

Bruce Barnes Replied

6/29/2015 at 6:13 AM

Someone who is more familiar with Plesk, than I will have to jump in on the Plesk question, but you need to make your own DNS entries for everything.

Setting up e-mail requires a solid knowledge of IIS, DNS, and PORTS, with 25, 110, 143, 587, 993. 995, and 5222 all being opened -- as required by TLS 1.1, TLS 1.1, and TLS 1.2 (all versions of SSL: SSL 1.0, SSL 2.0, and SSL 3.0 are depreciated - no longer used)

Don't try to depend on a third party tool to set this up - do it yourself.

Once you setup the DNS, you can setup the HOSTNAME MAPPING in IIS and add the domain in SmarterMail.

Curtis Kropar www.HawaiianHope.org Replied

6/29/2015 at 6:32 AM

Thanks again, but everything else is working. Email, webmail, receiving and sending. Plesk handled most of the configuration linking with Smartermail. We had to custom some DNS. All ports are mapped through a separate firewall server.

Still the question is, Which one is supposed to be responsible for making the binding ?