Question

I have a problem with setting the DNS in order to use Google Apps on specific domains. I can easily set the DNS for domains that are controlled via some control panel (eg. GoDaddy) but I have problems for domains that are controlled via zone files on the server.

If I configure the zone file like following:

MYDOMAIN.COM.    3600    IN    SOA    some.domaincontrol.com.    name.mail.com (
            2012041904
            28800
            7200
            604800
            3600
            )
; A Records
@    3600    IN    A    000.000.000.000

; CNAME Records
mail    3600    IN    CNAME    ghs.google.com
calendar    3600    IN    CNAME    ghs.google.com
docs    3600    IN    CNAME    ghs.google.com
www    3600    IN    CNAME    @
test    3600    IN    CNAME    @

; MX Records
@    3600    IN    MX    1    ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
@    3600    IN    MX    5    ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
@    3600    IN    MX    5    ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
@    3600    IN    MX    10    ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM
@    3600    IN    MX    10    ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM

; TXT Records
@    3600    IN    TXT    "google-site-verification=blah-blah-12345"

; NS Records
@    3600    IN    NS    some.domaincontrol.com
@    3600    IN    NS    another.domaincontrol.com

Then the MX records reported by Google Apps, and some DNS query sites (like Network Tools), are having as suffix the domain itself:

MX    1    ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.MYDOMAIN.COM
MX    5    ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.MYDOMAIN.COM
MX    5    ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.MYDOMAIN.COM
MX    10    ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.MYDOMAIN.COM
MX    10    ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.MYDOMAIN.COM

Also, the “mail”, “docs” and “calendar” subdomains are not being redirected to Google Apps.

I have also tried with the following configuration for the MX records, in hope that this will properly point to external (Google) mail exchange:

; MX Records
3600    MX    1    ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
3600    MX    5    ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
3600    MX    5    ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
3600    MX    10    ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
3600    MX    10    ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.

But this resulted with no MX record being retrieved by Google Apps and DNS queries. Some sort of misconfiguration in the DNS zone file is occurring

How can I properly configure domain via zone file to properly point to external MX and CNAME lcoations? Particularly to Google Apps?

Answer 1

Sandman answered on Serverfault, where I have repeated the question.

The cause of original problem: missing trailing dot on the records. (check the link for more details).