Email DNS Server emails not sending since I setup Zoho mail, DNS questions

So I set up the @domain emails on Zoho with the centminmod guide. But is this possible while also sending out forum emails from the actual server host? Or must it be send through Zoho as SMTP as well?

My Xenforo forum emails are not delivering since I added Zoho, I believe this is because I have duplicate DMARC, DKIM and SPF records. But I don't know how to fix it, since I set them up for the server host first, then added the Zoho ones.

Additionally, In the "getting started guide" it says to setup hostname.website.com pointing to server IP as the A record. But then people who visit your site which is website.com will not be pointed to the server IP right?

So I have 2 A records, one to hostname.website.com pointing to server IP and one website.com pointing to server IP. Is this wrong? Note that I am using Cloudflare and my DNS is only setup on Cloudflare.

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I attached a picture of my DNS records on Cloudflare with the website info blurred out. Can somebody point me in the right direction? I asked @eva2000 about it before but I didn't really get it.

 

Sorry, I still don't understand at all. As I understand it you need to have DKIM, DMARC and SPF records for both the server that you are sending mails from, as well as the Zoho DKIM, DMARC and SPF records. So in any case you have 2 times DKIM, DMARC AND SPF records, right?
Also my DKIM records are not duplicate, they are different, just looks that way from the parts I had to cut out for privacy reasons. What I meant was is it normal that you have 2 times of each record for both the server and Zoho?

So then there are two DNS A records, one to hostname.website.com and one to website.com? So it's normal to have TWO of them? Just to confirm.

Thanks!

 

Thanks, this made it clear to me, I believe I fixed those now. Now a few more questions:

Email - Steps to ensure your site/server email doesn't end up in spam inboxes

Here in step 1. SPF / TXT record setup you write "Ensure both your site's domain name and server's main hostname from Getting Started Guide step 1 have valid SPF TXT records". So I need 3 SPF records, one for domain.com, one for hostname.domain.com and one for zoho? So would it be fine to have the same spf record for domain.com and hostname.domain.com?

2. Reverse PTR record. Should this record resolve to hostname.domain.com or domain.com? Or both?

3. How important is DMARC? It's not really clear to me and for Zoho you don't have to set it up at all. According to the tools the DMARC I set up isn't correct somehow.

Thanks again. You're a lifesaver.

 

Thanks. That answers all my questions. Amazing as always.

 

Sorry, 1 more question: should DMARC be for hostname.domain.com or domain.com? How could I understand these things myself?

 

Hi, thanks for your help. I think I set everything up properly now, exactly according to instructions. The emails are being sent now but still into spam inboxes and SPF, DMARC are failing according to gmail(even though I think I set it up properly). Really strange stuff.



I followed the instructions EXACTLY and have SPF, DMARC and DKIM 2x for both domain.com and hostname.domain.com and contacted my host for the reverse ptr to hostname.domain.com yet it STILL doesn't work. This is extremely frustrating. I will spend some time learning about DNS myself I guess and try to fix it, and I'll post my fix here when I'm done. I have probably struggled to fix the DNS for 50+ hours of my life now, lol.

 

Another weird issue I have is, when I try to test mail with

Code:

# echo "mail-test" | mail -s "mail-tester" test-fm7a4w5es@srv1.mail-tester.com
-bash: mail: command not found

I get the mail command not found output.. How is that possible? Only thing I could think of is I installed the CentMinMod_MailServer script of another user on the forum on my server, but it didn't work so I ran CMM_Email.sh script and ran the following options:
7) Remove Mail Server (Postfix, Dovecot, OpenDKIM)


8) Remove Addons from Mail Server (Amavisd, SpamAssassin and Clamav)

Could this have deleted my mail server somehow? I thought it would only delete whatever it installed.

 

So installing the script then using those menu options does not remove anything that it did not install by itself or?

 

Yeah, it was indeed removed as part of @brijendrasial's script

Code:

ID     | Command line             | Date and time    | Action(s)      | Altered
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    54 | remove mailx mutt -y     | 2020-04-16 16:07 | Erase          |    2   
     7 | -y install virt-what pyt | 2019-12-31 23:37 | Install        |  351   

I reinstalled by running yum install mailx -y.

Also, I had some breakthrough in my logic, I think the issue is CLOUDFLARE and not my DNS records. I found it out by running it through an SPF record analyzer.



As you can see the spf record shows that for the mechanism a included in the record it refers to those IP addresses. However that is a cloudflare IP address, not my server IP. so it makes sense that the SPF is invalid. So, I guess when using cloudflare you have to include the server ip address into the SPF record. Will try that next.

 

And there we go folks.. All fixed. Honestly some rage but screw Cloudflare for making me waste so much of my time on this shit. It's not intuitive at all that the cloudflare A record which points to the actual server address would somehow be recognized as the cloudflare servers IP address just because they act as reverse proxy. It makes no sense.

Maybe you should explain that to users on here in your DNS guide since it's very illogical(to me). Or maybe it's because I am using the host.domain.com A record with proxy option as well? Not sure.

 

In case anyone has the same issue this is the final SPF record I used in Cloudflare DNS:

Code:

v=spf1 mx a ip4:xx.xx.xx.xx  a:host.example.com include:zoho.eu -all

Substitute your server IP and your main server host. I believe there is no way to prevent IP leak from server when sending emails via PHP so having the IP in the DNS is irrelevant anyways.

I kind of start to think that Cloudflare is pretty much useless, might remove it all together. However maybe it's useful if using Amazon SES to prevent IP leaks to obfuscate server IP? I don't know, but I don't really want to pay for Amazon SES yet.

 

So on cloudflare if I have 2 A records, first pointing to example.com and second to mainhost.example.com the proxy should be enabled on the first and disabled on the second?

If that's the case do the server IP and hostname not need to be included in the SPF record?

However, then by accessing mainhost.example.com your IP address is exposed anyways right?