DirectAdmin "DNS Management" details

#1

Am I correct to assume that the “DNS Management” screen in the DirectAdmin interface contains a few items that are not relevant to MXroute functionality?

(I’m a new user, so have been hopping around various areas of the documentation and system - getting stuff to work, just noting some questions that have come up in my “new user onboarding experience” experience so far)

So - the DirectAdmin “DNS Management” screen suggests a bunch of A record entries for:

  • the raw domain
  • ftp
  • mail
  • pop
  • smtp
  • webmail
  • www

I’m assuming that these are just an artifact of how DirectAdmin does things, and don’t need to be set in my DNS. (Although they probably don’t do any harm, since the suggested IP address corresponds to the appropriate cname for the “mail” and “webmail” entries mentioned in https://mxroutehelp.com/index.php/2019/08/25/custom-webmail-pop-imap-smtp-domain/)

So ultimately, the only necessary information contained in the DirectAdmin “DNS Management” screen is the very last item, the DKIM (x._domainkey) TXT entry …?

One other question about the DirectAdmin DNS info: the second-to-last entry is the SPF TXT record. For me, it is displayed as “v=spf1 a mx ip4:209.141.37.87 ~all” which corresponds to longhorn.mxrouting.net …

EDIT - (see clarification below) - do be sure to use the “mxlogin.com” SPF record provided in the email, and ignore the one displayed in the DirectAdmin DNS page

I’m assuming that it’s safe to instead just use the SPF record specified in the welcome email instructions: “v=spf1 include:mxlogin.com -all” (which might instead point to 78.46.158.5 rather than 209.141.37.87)

Let me know if I’m misunderstanding anything …?

And if I might suggest also please do consider (eventually) incorporating the gist of these questions and answers somewhere in your formal onboarding documentation, in case it would be helpful to streamline some path towards enlightenment for your greenest users stumbling around the system for the first time.

Thanks!

1 Like
#2

Yes, you absolutely are correct in making that assumption.

IF you wish to access your domain using your domain name rather than lisa.mxrouting.net or longhorn.mxrouting.net (which ever is applicable for your account) you can also set CNAME records as you noted.

Yes, that record consolidates the SPF records across all of MXroute for convenience - so that there is no need to tell each user on each server a different SPF record to enter (which would be a customer service nightmare!). Additionally, as MXroute uses a filtering relay system to send mail, the provided SPF record takes this into account - the SPF record shown in the DA admin panel will actually cause emails to fail if SPF is properly configured by other providers.

#5

hello again - I also got a response from @Jarland via email / via Discourse - though for some reason I’m not seeing it appear on this page (…?)

So just to be sure, here’s an important clarification from @Jarland with regard to the SPF record:

To note the SPF record generated by DirectAdmin would actually cause email to fail SPF, as it assumes the DA server is the one sending email. It actually sends out to relays that consist of several hundred IPs, so using the one in the email is vital.

Hopefully most people do just follow the instructions in the email without getting sidetracked by the extra (incompatible) information in that DirectAdmin DNS screen. But to my way of thinking at least it seems like this crucial detail might be worth mentioning either in the welcome email and/or (if possible) directly in the DirectAdmin “DNS Management” page.

#3

Alrighty then, sounds good. Thanks for the explanation!

1 Like
#6

Aye this is true. @Alento made an edit so I deleted my comment. I may just edit the DNS template soon as well.

1 Like