CPanel forgets MX entries after transfer.

[mr_coffee]

Just thought I'd point this out. If a client has custom MX entries, they are not kept after a restore on a new server. They LOOK as though they are kept... but aren't... not really.

This issue arose after my host ditched one server for a new one. Backups and sychs... and it took the whole weekend. Every single setting was saved from the old server... accept for my personal e-mail account which happened to be on the reseller "master" account... no idea what that was about. One of my clients had been using an outside company for e-mail. I double-checked the dns zone entries, the MX entries... everything was accurate, yet my e-mail to users I knew existed suddenly began to bounce back.

I switched to the cPanel login instead of the WHM... in the MX section I searched down till I found their URL which was set to the IP of the company that handled their e-mail... I changed the setting from "no" to "yes" just to see... and resent my message, which - of course - bounced back stating there was no such user. I changed it back to "no", and the message went through.

This appears to be the solution... as cPanel desires to handle the e-mail even when the settings say not to do so. When they're set to not do so, they aren't really set to not do so until they're set to do so, then changed back to not do so.

I believe this is an actual bug, but have no clue how to report it. Entire server restores like this are likely very rare. But after one: the settings you see aren't necessarily obeyed. One should consider this on the next release of cPanel... and at the least: users of cPanel should be wary of this issue.

[PlatinumServerM]

The best thing to do is to copy the zones over and the localdomains/remotedomains file manually. Then update the ip in the zones too. This way they are all exactly the same as the old server.

[mr_coffee]

That may be true... just pointing out the bug.

In any case, I didn't have that option... my host did all the copying of the settings. I'd requested IP access to the old server they were copying from when messages bounced back from one of my clients... they sent me the list of MX entries as displayed through WHM... which matched the settings of the new server, and were accurate.

These settings didn't "take" until I changed them using the cPanel login for the client, changing the MX setting through the MX Entries in cPanel... and then setting them back the way they were.

So I may have mis-spoke when I said cPanel "forgets"... it remembers the settings fine, it just doesn't use them unless you mess with them after the fact.