4.6 Adding Mail Servers to dnsmasq - BrainDump

In this second part of a five-part series on building a Linux wireless access point, you'll learn how to set up name services, set static IP addresses, and more. This article is excerpted from chapter four of the Linux Networking Cookbook, written by Carla Schroder (O'Reilly; ISBN: 0596102488). Copyright © 2008 O'Reilly Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission from the publisher. Available from booksellers or direct from O'Reilly Media.

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February 03, 2010

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Problem

You have some local mail servers that you want your LAN hosts to know about. How do you do this with dnsmasq?

Solution

dnsmasq has a special record type for mailservers. You need these three lines:

mx-host=alrac.net,mail.alrac.net,5
mx-target=mail.alrac.net
localmx

Themx-hostline needs the domain name, server name, and MX priority. Themx-targetline is the server name.localmxmeans all local machines should use this server.

Discussion

A priority number of 5 means the server is higher priority than servers with larger numbers, typically 10 and then multiples of 10. If you have only one mail server, you should still give it a priority to keep clients happy.

See Also

man 5 dhclient
dnsmasq.conf is also a great help resource
dnsmasq home page (http://www.thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/doc.html) is where you’ll find mailing list archives and excellent help documents
Chapter 24, “Managing Name Resolution,” in Linux Cookbook, by Carla Schroder (O’Reilly)

Please check back for the next part of the series.