Mail handling on remote server

[domenetorget]

I've read some posts about this in these forums, but I'm just a bit confused . I wish someone would make a real howto about this.

My idea is like this:
1) I want my cPanel servers to be webservers only - and not handle mail.
2a) All mail accounts should be handled by another servers, that are "clean" Linux servers (RHEL/Mandriva/Fedora/Debian with no control-panel (or perhaps Webmin))
2b) All mail accounts should be handled by another servers, that are Plesk-servers (none of my customers wants Plesk as controlpanel anyway , so I want to use my Plesk-server as a clean mailserver)
2c) All mail accounts should be handled by another server, that are also cPanel servers

- What should be specified for the MX record in the DNS Zone-file? (IP or...?)
- What should be specified for mail.domain.com? (A-record or CNAME - IP or "domain.com."?)
- What should be added or removed in the /etc/localdomains and /etc/remotedomains? On which server?
- What is an exim smart router? And how do you use/configure this?
- When to use /etc/secondarymx?

I really hope someone could make a howto in clear words.

[domenetorget]

Well, I think I found the easy way all by myself :

The webserver:
- Login to the server WHM as the root user and go to DNS Functions and Edit DNS Zone.
- Select the domain you want to edit, or type it in, and click on Edit.
- Replace the domain.com. in the MX setting with mail.domain.com. (be sure there is an dot (.) after mail.domain.com.).
- Change "mail" from CNAME to A record - and remove domain.com. and replace it with the IP address.
- Save the changes

- Login to your server by shell as the root user. Edit the /etc/localdomains file

# pico /etc/localdomains

Find the domain you modified (ctrl+w) and delete the entry for the domain.
Save the changes to the file (ctrl+x then Y).

- Edit the /etc/remotedomains file (that tells Exim to not handle mail for this domain).

pico /etc/remotedomains

Add the domain name to this file, save the changes (ctrl+x then Y).

On the remote server:
Simply install the domain as usual (as a email hosting package) - but be sure the server is not in a DNS cluster with the other (web-)server.

[ramjet666]

Is there a way for a reseller to do this via WHM?

Alot of my domains host their own email servers.

[chirpy]

No, it can only be done from the root account.