backup mailserver

[10101]

Hi,

I know this has prob been asked but I can't find anything helpfull on the forum.

I have two servers and I want to have it so that in the event of server 1 being down, email is collected on server 2 and then delivered once server 1 recovers.

Is this possible with cpanel? NDC host offer this service however I would rather have it all running on my own hardware: http://www.cplicensing.net/smxplans.php

Any help would be appreicated, I'm sure there are a lot of other people out there who would like this setup.

thanks,

[nickb]

If both are cpanel servers then you need to do following changes :

Server1: (on which domain is hosted)

Create a backup MX record for the domain which points to the backup mail server like this :


backup.yourdomain.com. 14400 A IP-of-backup-mail-server
yourdomain.com. 14400 MX 10(must be higher) backup.yourdomain.com.


Server2: (backup mail server0

pico /etc/secondarymx

and add your domain name "yourdomain.com." in this file. Thats it.

[10101]

If both are cpanel servers then you need to do following changes :

Server1: (on which domain is hosted)

Create a backup MX record for the domain which points to the backup mail server like this :


backup.yourdomain.com. 14400 A IP-of-backup-mail-server
yourdomain.com. 14400 MX 10(must be higher) backup.yourdomain.com.


Server2: (backup mail server0

pico /etc/secondarymx

and add your domain name "yourdomain.com." in this file. Thats it.

Hi Nick,

I have already done that and it does work but Im looking (sorry I should have said) to have it so that I don't have to edit the "secondarymx" file as when new accounts are created on the server it means having to remember to do that.

[nickb]

You need to create a postwwwacct script to do so..........hope you will create it and post it here also...

[10101]

I'm surprised that cpanel do not offer better clustering services, DNS is a start but a redundant mailserver is a must.

[chirpy]

Alternatively, you could just regularly rsync your /etc/localdomains file across which would effectively do the same thing.

[10101]

Alternatively, you could just regularly rsync your /etc/localdomains file across which would effectively do the same thing.

I've been looking for a way to do this but I need it to work across multiple servers to, say servers 1 2 and 3 etc all use the backup mailserver.

is it possible to rsync it so that the localdomains file from say 3 servers is appended to the one on the backup mailserver?

[chirpy]

Not something I've tried. I'd probably script it something like:

Script runs every XX minutes on backup mail server and:

1. Rsyncs remote /etc/localdomains files to a local cope in /somedir/server/localdomains
2. Appends all /somedir/*/localdomains together
3. Writes the result out to /etc/secondarymx

[10101]

Not something I've tried. I'd probably script it something like:

Script runs every XX minutes on backup mail server and:

1. Rsyncs remote /etc/localdomains files to a local cope in /somedir/server/localdomains
2. Appends all /somedir/*/localdomains together
3. Writes the result out to /etc/secondarymx

That's what i was wanting to do but cant code lol.

[gflamerich]

Hi
We would like to activate some multiple mailservers (We are having some troubles with ISP's that doesn't have a retry policy delivering mails, they just bounce at the first attempt failure), we will try the solution written by Chirpy for the domains, but don't know how to handle account verification.
We would like to bounce non valid recipients on every mails server and don't even accept for further delivery.
Is there any way to do this?

[chirpy]

You may well be able to do this in the ACL section of the Exim Configuration Editor by modifying the verify = recipient checks to use the additional callout operators:
http://www.exim.org/exim-html-4.50/d...html#SECT39.31

[gflamerich]

You may well be able to do this in the ACL section of the Exim Configuration Editor by modifying the verify = recipient checks to use the additional callout operators:
http://www.exim.org/exim-html-4.50/d...html#SECT39.31

Thanks Jonathan
But this doesn't resolve what we asked, because if a sencondary mailserver is reached, is because the primary is down, so the ACL verification won't work (I think).
What we want is to have multiple mailservers that rejects non valid recipient addresses on any of them. Otherwise a secondary mailserver will accept for further delivery a non valid address.

[chirpy]

Very true. And I don't know of a solution for that with the setup that cPanel/exim uses. I'm sure that it's perfectly possible, but you'd have to do some custom scripting+exim config to do it.

[NetBlaster]

Can I just have another Linux box with Exim as a secondary MX?

In otherwords, do I have to have Cpanel on both? If not, would Exim be all that I would need?

Thanks,

Ron...

[chirpy]

You can run pretty much any SMTP server that you want that has the ability to relay as a backup MX: exim, sendmail, qmail, etc.