Subdomains, Aliases and + addressing - Page 3

zhak · 21 Jul 2007, 11:10 AM

Ok, keep us posted.

MikeL · 23 Jul 2007, 05:17 PM

Hope I can help. My own set up does exactly what you want to do. My address is &&&&@mailbolt.com (where &&&& stands for my actual username), and I have my own domain (which we'll call mydomain.com). My Virtual Aliases section looks like this:

Code:

Name                Domain                  Target
*                   mydomain.com            &&&&+*@mailbolt.com

...and my Virtual Domains section looks like this:

Code:

Domain              Active                  Subdomain? a@b.com as:
mydomain.com        Email & Web             Yes, swap:  b+a.com

This has been working just fine for me; mail to mike@mydomain.com gets redirected to mike+&&&&@mailbolt.com, which lands in my mike folder on FastMail.

-Mike

hypezone · 23 Jul 2007, 11:05 PM

Sorry, for not updating you, but my DSL was out for most of the weekend. But the Flow, the newest ISP in Jamaica recently started offering service in my area. I'll be getting 5X the speed of DSL for less money. So there, Cable & Wireless

Ok, enough ranting

I got a reply from Fastmail, saying that to support subdomains, I needed to have MX records for both mydomain.com and *.mydomain.com. So I added the *.mydomain.com record at Namecheap. After a few hours, I was able to send mail fine from my AOL account, and a test message from a friends work email address was delivered. But nothing gets through from Yahoo. If I do a MX lookup on dnsstuff.com, the subdomain get resolved correctly to fastmail's mailservers. (in1 & in2). I'm thinking its a Yahoo problem, or DNS propogation simply hasn't fininshed yet. Zhak, can I PM you the domain?

Thanks, all

hypezone · 23 Jul 2007, 11:18 PM

Hmm Mike, let me see if I got it: Instead of adding a specific alias in the Virtual Aliases section, you just add a wildcard alias, which takes care of everything? So anything@anything.yourdoman.com works?

**Sherry** · 24 Jul 2007, 02:31 AM

I think Mike may be thinking of just Aliases but not "SubDomains". The wildcard setting is to get email addresses sent to any Alias like "anything"@yourdomain. I think of an Alias as the part to the left of the @ like the Alias "blah" would be 'blah@yourdomain.com'. I think of subdomains as the part after the @ where the whole email address becomes the domain part after the @ like '"anything"@blah.yourdomain.com'. Mike should be able to receive email to '"anything"@mike.mydomain.com' if it's setup right at his registrar and at FM. (if not he could have the same problem as you?)

Gosh, I hope that makes sense if my thinking is right about all that?

Sherry

zhak · 24 Jul 2007, 05:46 AM

hypezone, my recommended settings were based on screen captures from a working domain, when DNS was initially hosted (last month) at Namecheap before I switched to Fastmail hosting the DNS.

However, it wasn't working for me today -- I registered another domain today after seeing your post (it was on my list anyway), waited about 15 minutes for Fastmail to sense the DNS, and configured it as suggested and everything worked, except, cough, cough, messages to subdomains from non-Fastmail SMTP servers. In other words, the test message to test@alias.mydomain.tld arrived fine at my Enhanced account when sent from my Guest Fastmail account, but bounced when sent from any other account.

So, I went back and looked at the earlier test messages (still had them, buried in my 'test' folder). The messages that had worked from other accounts was to a domain that was one letter different (my mistake), which was already hosted at Fastmail and working. Good grief...

So I was about 3% right (from Fastmail to Fastmail) and 97% wrong (from anyone else to Fastmail). Sorry for your wasted time.

I reconfigured Namecheap, adding the *.mydomain.tld A and MX records and all works now, except Yahoo. Perhaps as large as Yahoo is, they must have their own DNS servers and perhaps not update as frequently as others.

So, if you've got it working except for Yahoo, you probably want to leave it alone.

Yahoo will update eventually.

And now that I have the correct settings written down, I'll be transferring DNS on this new domain to Fastmail. You might consider the same.

That's twice that my advice from last week was incorrect. Maybe I should take a break. Also sorry that I couldn't reply earlier, today was a busy day...

-Jim

P.S. FYI, my working setup for my other domain, with DNS hosted at Fastmail:

Code:

Namecheap/Domain Name Server Setup:

1. ns1.messagingengine.com
2. ns2.messagingengine.com

Fastmail/Virtual Domains Screen:
Virtual Aliases:
---------------
Name		  Domain		Target				Active
*		@ mydomain.tld		myusername@fmdomain.tld		[ ]
alias1		@ mydomain.tld		myusername@fmdomain.tld		[X]
alias2		@ mydomain.tld		myusername@fmdomain.tld		[X]

Virtual Domains:
---------------
Domain		  Active		Subdomain? a@b.com as:
mydomain.tld	  Email & Web		Yes, swap: b+a@dom

With Standard/Default DNS.

Mail from anywhere to anything@alias1.mydomain.tld or anything@alias2.mydomain.tld arrives just fine.

hypezone · 24 Jul 2007, 06:00 AM

Yeah, that makes sense, Sherry.

I just used the email tester at dnsstuff.com and tested test@info.mydomain.com. Note that info is an alias created in the Virtual Domains screen.

Results:
1. Getting MX record for info.mydomain.com (from local DNS server, may be cached)... Got it!
Then it displayed a table with Fastmail's mailservers, in order of preference, alongside their respective IPs.

Then it tried to connect to them in order, but failed on each attempt: The response from Fastmail's server's was:
Unknown RCPT TO address: Recipient address rejected

But, email from another fastmail address works....

zhak · 24 Jul 2007, 06:13 AM

I get the same error for all my working domains (the one at Namecheap created today, and the older ones with DNS hosted at Fastmail), that have subdomains wildcarded, so it is not a helpful tool in this circumstance.

-Jim

hypezone · 24 Jul 2007, 09:20 AM

OK. Thanks for the heads up.

hypezone · 24 Jul 2007, 10:19 AM

On further testing, it appears to be a Yahoo problem. I successfully sent mail from mail.com (they use outblaze, don't know if that is significant). And on-the-fly addresses work as expected, too. I'm gonna test from Hotmail and let you know..

Thanks

Yup, works from hotmail too...

zhak · 24 Jul 2007, 10:22 AM

Yahoo's nameservers have a 2-day TTL.

hypezone · 25 Jul 2007, 12:44 AM

Based on my research, that's a bit long, isn't it?

Well, mail to alias@mydomain.com works, it's just anything@alias.mydomain.com gets rejected.

I know the basics of folders and subfolders, but let's say I have a folder named Shopping, which would store email from online stores, if I have subfolders for each store, eg. a subfolder each for Amazon, Newegg, etc. would mail from the aliases (storename@shopping.mydomain.com) be put there, even though they are 2 levels deep?

I'm thinking it would have to be done with rules, one for each store alias. But I'm wondering if there is a more direct way. I know that if I gave them shopping@mydomain.com and had a folder named Shopping, they would go there, but I'd like a folder for each store.

robmueller · 25 Jul 2007, 11:07 AM

Create an alias

Name: shopping@mydomain.com
Target: myname+*@fastmail.fm

Then if you send to:

amazon@shopping.mydomain.com
-> shopping+amazon@mydomain.com
-> myname+shopping+amazon@fastmail.fm
-> myname+shopping.amazon@fastmail.fm

Which I think is what you want.

Rob

Rob

ewal · 25 Jul 2007, 09:09 PM

FWIW I have a domain registered at Godaddy, routed via Zoneedit and able to receive subdomained addressed (anything@something.mydomain.tld) emails at Fastmail. Emails can originate at either Fastmail addresses or external addresses.

Here is my set up in case this helps anyone.

At Godaddy I pass over the complete zonefile for mydomain over to zoneedit. Basically the control panel at Godaddy does not allow sub-domain addressing (use of wildcards). The zoneedit nameserver details are given when you register an account at zoneedit, so you will need to do that first. Here are the settings for mydomian at Godaddy.

Code:

Name Servers:                          
NS7.ZONEEDIT.COM
NS14ZONEEDIT.COM

These are my settings at Zoneedit.

Code:

IP Addresses:    
Domain Name       IP Address
mydomain.tld       xx.xx.xxx.xxx
www.mydomain.tld   xx.xx.xxx.xxx
 
Mail Servers:
Domain                 Server                              Rank
mydomain.tld        in1.smtp.messagingengine.com        0
*.mydomian.tld      in1.smtp.messagingengine.com        0
mydomain.tld         in2.smtp.messagingengine.com        5
*.mydomain.tld      in2.smtp.messagingengine.com        5
  
Nameservers:
ns7.zoneedit.com       216.122.7.155
ns14.zoneedit.com       209.126.137.108

Basically what you are seeing above is that I have pointed HTML look ups for mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com to my hosting provider (the xxxxx IP string) and my Mailserver (MX) records to Fastmail's servers. I have duplicated these records by adding a wildcard (*) to catch the sub-domain addresses).

Here is the All (any) output from dnsstuff.com relating to mydomain.

Code:

Searching for mydomain.tld ALL record at ns14.zoneedit.com. [209.126.137.108]: 
Reports mydomaintld [took 36 ms] Response:

Domain    Type    Class    TTL    Answer
mydomain.tld    A    IN    7200    xx.xx.xxx.xxx
mydomain.tld    NS    IN    7200    ns7.zoneedit.com.
mydomain.tld    NS    IN    7200    ns14.zoneedit.com.
mydomain.tld    SOA    IN    7200    Primary DNS server: ns7.zoneedit.com.

Responsible Name: soacontact@zoneedit.com.
Serial: 1234567890
Refresh: 14400 (4h)
Retry: 7200 (2h)
Expire: 950400 (1w 4d)
Minimum/NegTTL: 7200 (2h)

mydomain.tld    MX    IN    7200    in1.smtp.messagingengine.com. [Preference = 0]
mydomain.tld    MX    IN    7200    in2.smtp.messagingengine.com. [Preference = 5]
mydomain.tld    NS    IN    7200    ns7.zoneedit.com.
mydomain.tld    NS    IN    7200    ns14.zoneedit.com.

Ed

added later: From a yahoo email account I sent an email to a sub-domained email address at my domain and it arrived instantly.

robmueller · 26 Jul 2007, 09:44 AM

FYI, you don't need to use zoneedit to do this any more. The Custom DNS screen can basically do everything zoneedit can. You just have to set it up to whatever you want, then point your name servers to:

Code:

ns1.messagingengine.com
ns2.messagingengine.com

Rob

23 Jul 2007, 05:17 PM	#32
MikeL Essential Contributor Join Date: Apr 2002 Posts: 326	Hope I can help. My own set up does exactly what you want to do. My address is &&&&@mailbolt.com (where &&&& stands for my actual username), and I have my own domain (which we'll call mydomain.com). My Virtual Aliases section looks like this: Code: Name Domain Target * mydomain.com &&&&+*@mailbolt.com ...and my Virtual Domains section looks like this: Code: Domain Active Subdomain? a@b.com as: mydomain.com Email & Web Yes, swap: b+a.com This has been working just fine for me; mail to mike@mydomain.com gets redirected to mike+&&&&@mailbolt.com, which lands in my mike folder on FastMail. -Mike

24 Jul 2007, 05:46 AM	#36
zhak Master of the @ Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Indiana, USA Posts: 1,861	hypezone, my recommended settings were based on screen captures from a working domain, when DNS was initially hosted (last month) at Namecheap before I switched to Fastmail hosting the DNS. However, it wasn't working for me today -- I registered another domain today after seeing your post (it was on my list anyway), waited about 15 minutes for Fastmail to sense the DNS, and configured it as suggested and everything worked, except, cough, cough, messages to subdomains from non-Fastmail SMTP servers. In other words, the test message to test@alias.mydomain.tld arrived fine at my Enhanced account when sent from my Guest Fastmail account, but bounced when sent from any other account. So, I went back and looked at the earlier test messages (still had them, buried in my 'test' folder). The messages that had worked from other accounts was to a domain that was one letter different (my mistake), which was already hosted at Fastmail and working. Good grief... So I was about 3% right (from Fastmail to Fastmail) and 97% wrong (from anyone else to Fastmail). Sorry for your wasted time. I reconfigured Namecheap, adding the .mydomain.tld A and MX records and all works now, except Yahoo. Perhaps as large as Yahoo is, they must have their own DNS servers and perhaps not update as frequently as others. So, if you've got it working except for Yahoo, you probably want to leave it alone. Yahoo will update eventually. And now that I have the correct settings written down, I'll be transferring DNS on this new domain to Fastmail. You might consider the same. That's twice that my advice from last week was incorrect. Maybe I should take a break. Also sorry that I couldn't reply earlier, today was a busy day... -Jim P.S. FYI, my working setup for my other domain, with DNS hosted at Fastmail: Code: Namecheap/Domain Name Server Setup: 1. ns1.messagingengine.com 2. ns2.messagingengine.com Fastmail/Virtual Domains Screen: Virtual Aliases: --------------- Name Domain Target Active @ mydomain.tld myusername@fmdomain.tld [ ] alias1 @ mydomain.tld myusername@fmdomain.tld [X] alias2 @ mydomain.tld myusername@fmdomain.tld [X] Virtual Domains: --------------- Domain Active Subdomain? a@b.com as: mydomain.tld Email & Web Yes, swap: b+a@dom With Standard/Default DNS. Mail from anywhere to anything@alias1.mydomain.tld or anything@alias2.mydomain.tld arrives just fine.

24 Jul 2007, 10:19 AM	#40
hypezone Junior Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 24	On further testing, it appears to be a Yahoo problem. I successfully sent mail from mail.com (they use outblaze, don't know if that is significant). And on-the-fly addresses work as expected, too. I'm gonna test from Hotmail and let you know.. Thanks Yup, works from hotmail too... Last edited by hypezone : 24 Jul 2007 at 10:35 AM. Reason: hotmail test

25 Jul 2007, 12:44 AM	#42
hypezone Junior Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 24	Based on my research, that's a bit long, isn't it? Well, mail to alias@mydomain.com works, it's just anything@alias.mydomain.com gets rejected. I know the basics of folders and subfolders, but let's say I have a folder named Shopping, which would store email from online stores, if I have subfolders for each store, eg. a subfolder each for Amazon, Newegg, etc. would mail from the aliases (storename@shopping.mydomain.com) be put there, even though they are 2 levels deep? I'm thinking it would have to be done with rules, one for each store alias. But I'm wondering if there is a more direct way. I know that if I gave them shopping@mydomain.com and had a folder named Shopping, they would go there, but I'd like a folder for each store. Last edited by hypezone : 25 Jul 2007 at 12:52 AM. Reason: rules question

25 Jul 2007, 09:09 PM	#44
ewal Master of the @ Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: West Sussex, UK Posts: 1,334	FWIW I have a domain registered at Godaddy, routed via Zoneedit and able to receive subdomained addressed (anything@something.mydomain.tld) emails at Fastmail. Emails can originate at either Fastmail addresses or external addresses. Here is my set up in case this helps anyone. At Godaddy I pass over the complete zonefile for mydomain over to zoneedit. Basically the control panel at Godaddy does not allow sub-domain addressing (use of wildcards). The zoneedit nameserver details are given when you register an account at zoneedit, so you will need to do that first. Here are the settings for mydomian at Godaddy. Code: Name Servers: NS7.ZONEEDIT.COM NS14ZONEEDIT.COM These are my settings at Zoneedit. Code: IP Addresses: Domain Name IP Address mydomain.tld xx.xx.xxx.xxx www.mydomain.tld xx.xx.xxx.xxx Mail Servers: Domain Server Rank mydomain.tld in1.smtp.messagingengine.com 0 .mydomian.tld in1.smtp.messagingengine.com 0 mydomain.tld in2.smtp.messagingengine.com 5 .mydomain.tld in2.smtp.messagingengine.com 5 Nameservers: ns7.zoneedit.com 216.122.7.155 ns14.zoneedit.com 209.126.137.108 Basically what you are seeing above is that I have pointed HTML look ups for mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com to my hosting provider (the xxxxx IP string) and my Mailserver (MX) records to Fastmail's servers. I have duplicated these records by adding a wildcard () to catch the sub-domain addresses). Here is the All (any) output from dnsstuff.com relating to mydomain. Code: Searching for mydomain.tld ALL record at ns14.zoneedit.com. [209.126.137.108]: Reports mydomaintld [took 36 ms] Response: Domain Type Class TTL Answer mydomain.tld A IN 7200 xx.xx.xxx.xxx mydomain.tld NS IN 7200 ns7.zoneedit.com. mydomain.tld NS IN 7200 ns14.zoneedit.com. mydomain.tld SOA IN 7200 Primary DNS server: ns7.zoneedit.com. Responsible Name: soacontact@zoneedit.com. Serial: 1234567890 Refresh: 14400 (4h) Retry: 7200 (2h) Expire: 950400 (1w 4d) Minimum/NegTTL: 7200 (2h) mydomain.tld MX IN 7200 in1.smtp.messagingengine.com. [Preference = 0] mydomain.tld MX IN 7200 in2.smtp.messagingengine.com. [Preference = 5] mydomain.tld NS IN 7200 ns7.zoneedit.com. mydomain.tld NS IN 7200 ns14.zoneedit.com. Ed added later: From a yahoo email account I sent an email to a sub-domained email address at my domain and it arrived instantly. Last edited by ewal : 25 Jul 2007 at 09:56 PM. Reason: Yahoo test*

21 Jul 2007, 11:10 AM	#31
zhak Master of the @ Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Indiana, USA Posts: 1,861	Ok, keep us posted.

23 Jul 2007, 11:05 PM	#33
hypezone Junior Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 24	Sorry, for not updating you, but my DSL was out for most of the weekend. But the Flow, the newest ISP in Jamaica recently started offering service in my area. I'll be getting 5X the speed of DSL for less money. So there, Cable & Wireless Ok, enough ranting I got a reply from Fastmail, saying that to support subdomains, I needed to have MX records for both mydomain.com and .mydomain.com. So I added the .mydomain.com record at Namecheap. After a few hours, I was able to send mail fine from my AOL account, and a test message from a friends work email address was delivered. But nothing gets through from Yahoo. If I do a MX lookup on dnsstuff.com, the subdomain get resolved correctly to fastmail's mailservers. (in1 & in2). I'm thinking its a Yahoo problem, or DNS propogation simply hasn't fininshed yet. Zhak, can I PM you the domain? Thanks, all

23 Jul 2007, 11:18 PM	#34
hypezone Junior Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 24	Hmm Mike, let me see if I got it: Instead of adding a specific alias in the Virtual Aliases section, you just add a wildcard alias, which takes care of everything? So anything@anything.yourdoman.com works?

24 Jul 2007, 02:31 AM	#35
Sherry Moderator Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: USA Posts: 8,687	I think Mike may be thinking of just Aliases but not "SubDomains". The wildcard setting is to get email addresses sent to any Alias like "anything"@yourdomain. I think of an Alias as the part to the left of the @ like the Alias "blah" would be 'blah@yourdomain.com'. I think of subdomains as the part after the @ where the whole email address becomes the domain part after the @ like '"anything"@blah.yourdomain.com'. Mike should be able to receive email to '"anything"@mike.mydomain.com' if it's setup right at his registrar and at FM. (if not he could have the same problem as you?) Gosh, I hope that makes sense if my thinking is right about all that? Sherry

24 Jul 2007, 06:00 AM	#37
hypezone Junior Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 24	Yeah, that makes sense, Sherry. I just used the email tester at dnsstuff.com and tested test@info.mydomain.com. Note that info is an alias created in the Virtual Domains screen. Results: 1. Getting MX record for info.mydomain.com (from local DNS server, may be cached)... Got it! Then it displayed a table with Fastmail's mailservers, in order of preference, alongside their respective IPs. Then it tried to connect to them in order, but failed on each attempt: The response from Fastmail's server's was: Unknown RCPT TO address: Recipient address rejected But, email from another fastmail address works....

24 Jul 2007, 06:13 AM	#38
zhak Master of the @ Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Indiana, USA Posts: 1,861	I get the same error for all my working domains (the one at Namecheap created today, and the older ones with DNS hosted at Fastmail), that have subdomains wildcarded, so it is not a helpful tool in this circumstance. -Jim

24 Jul 2007, 09:20 AM	#39
hypezone Junior Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 24	OK. Thanks for the heads up.

24 Jul 2007, 10:22 AM	#41
zhak Master of the @ Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Indiana, USA Posts: 1,861	Yahoo's nameservers have a 2-day TTL.

25 Jul 2007, 11:07 AM	#43
robmueller Intergalactic Postmaster Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 6,102 Representative of: Fastmail.FM	Create an alias Name: shopping@mydomain.com Target: myname+*@fastmail.fm Then if you send to: amazon@shopping.mydomain.com -> shopping+amazon@mydomain.com -> myname+shopping+amazon@fastmail.fm -> myname+shopping.amazon@fastmail.fm Which I think is what you want. Rob Rob

26 Jul 2007, 09:44 AM	#45
robmueller Intergalactic Postmaster Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 6,102 Representative of: Fastmail.FM	FYI, you don't need to use zoneedit to do this any more. The Custom DNS screen can basically do everything zoneedit can. You just have to set it up to whatever you want, then point your name servers to: Code: ns1.messagingengine.com ns2.messagingengine.com Rob