Exim4/DNS/Hostname Problems

spindley · 06-14-2006, 03:32 PM

I'm running Debian Sarge, with Exim4 as my mailserver. I am also running Bind9 to host my own DNS for my domain. Basically, the problem is that Exim doesn't like the way I've setup DNS (or at least I think that's what's wrong). My zone file for my domain looks like this:

Code:

$ORIGIN mydomain.ca.
$TTL 1D
@                       IN      SOA     ns1.mydomain.ca. postmaster.mydomain.ca. (
                                2006061426      ; serial, todays date + todays serial 
                                21600           ; refresh, seconds
                                3600            ; retry, seconds
                                1728000         ; expire, seconds
                                21600 )         ; minimum, seconds
;
                        IN      NS      ns1.mydomain.ca.              
                        IN      NS      ns1.secondarynameserver.org.
                        IN      TXT     "v=spf1 a mx -all"
                        IN      MX      5 mail
;
localhost               IN      A       127.0.0.1
ns1                     IN      A       my.v4.ip.address
@                       IN      A       my.v4.ip.address
@                       IN      AAAA    my:v6::address
www                     IN      A       my.v4.ip.address
mail                    IN      A       my.v4.ip.address

Now, where I have "mydomain.ca" is obviously the domain that I've purchased, and host the DNS for. The "my.v4.ip.address" is the IP address assigned to me by my ISP, and v6 is the v6 block for that same IP.
Anyway, everything resolves fine, webpage works, etc.
The problem is, exim wants my /etc/hosts file to look like this

Code:

127.0.0.1    mydomain.ca
192.168.0.1  server.mydomain.ca    server

and not this way (which I think is proper)

Code:

127.0.0.1    localhost.localdomain    localhost
192.168.0.1  server.mydomain.ca    server

It needs to have the domain name as 127.0.0.1, else it returns:

Code:

2006-06-14 09:27:47 lowest numbered MX record points to local host: mydomain.ca (while verifying <myusername@mydomain.ca> from host (host name from which the email is coming in from)
2006-06-14 09:27:47 temporarily rejected RCPT <myusername@mydomain.ca>: lowest numbered MX record points to local host

After some googling, I think I know what this error "means", but I'm not sure what to do to correct it. As you can see in my zone file above, my MX record does not point to localhost or 127.0.0.1, so I'm really not sure what the problem could be. Unless Exim doesn't like the fact that mail.mydomain.ca and mydomain.ca have the same IP address? Exim will send mail outside the local network just fine, it's incoming mail that is not allowed through.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Mike

spindley · 06-16-2006, 09:55 AM

Well, after about a week of frustration I finally gave up on exim and tried postfix. I got it setup and working properly very quickly. It's a lot easier to configure, and works flawlessly with spamassassin.