Sanity check: Setting email exchange to remote prevented gmail from delivering to server.

[Alrissa]

I'm posting this more for my sanity and less as a call for assistance.

As it says on the tin:

A bit more detail:
Nameservers for a domain are not on the cpanel server, are resolving to the server everywhere I tested from.

Gmail, and anywhere else was bouncing, without actually showing a bounce in the exim log on the server, when trying to send a test email to the server, from anywhere not on the server.

( With "Your message wasn't delivered to email because the address couldn't be found, or is unable to receive mail."

Fairly typical for either DNS resolving to the wrong server or perhaps the email not actually existing.

The weird part:

Changing, on said cpanel server, the email exchanger setting from remote to local, suddenly all emails sent to the server stop bouncing.

My question is thus:
Shouldn't have that done nothing as email exchanger isn't actually supposed to affect incoming email?
It's literally the only change done on the server end in the past 24 hours.

IE does anyone have a clue on why has that actually made it suddenly work?

If anyone can confirm I'm not crazy, I would appreciate it.

 

[Alrissa]

Can't edit original post so, sorry for doubleposting.

I can confirm it's not a weird bug. Was not able to reproduce on test servers.

I'm chalking this one to gremlins an amazingly timed coincidence.

 

[SamuelM]

Hello @Alrissa,

The email exchanger option does indeed affect incoming mail. Generally, changing this option in cPanel will only have an effect if the domain's MX record resolves to the same server. Therefore, even if the name servers do not point to the server, but the MX record does, then choosing "local" or "remote" for the email exchanger will change the final destination of mail.

You can find more information about these options in our documentation:

Email Routing - Version 84 Documentation - cPanel Documentation

documentation.cpanel.net

Feel free to let us know if you have any questions!