Manually changing MX and CNAME resolving for Gmail
18 Mar 2010I don't usually change MX resolving, but when I do, it always almost is using my registrar or host admin panel.
When I have to manually do it, (because the website is hosted on a dedicated server where I have to manually edit almost everything), I always waste a lot of time understanding where to find the configuration files.
Today I had to change the MX record of an existing website to use those of Google. The server hosting the website was also defined as nameserver, so I had to update the /var/named/domain.tld.hosts file (the file may not be in the same directory in your own server).
I remove the line relative to the MX records and added those instead
domain.tld. IN MX 10 ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
domain.tld. IN MX 20 ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
domain.tld. IN MX 20 ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
domain.tld. IN MX 30 ASPMX2.L.GOOGLE.COM.
domain.tld. IN MX 30 ASPMX3.L.GOOGLE.COM.
domain.tld. IN MX 30 ASPMX4.L.GOOGLE.COM.
domain.tld. IN MX 30 ASPMX5.L.GOOGLE.COM.
It worked well.
I also wanted to use a simple address for the webmail, like mail.domain.tld.
So I added the following line
mail.domain.tld IN CNAME ghs.google.com.
I also updated the serial at the start of the file and rebooted my server. I know there must be a less savage way that rebooting the server but I still haven't find it.
P.S : I used this google / DNS Stuff page to help me test my records all along the way
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