Question

MX lookup doesn't work on FQDN

Posted February 5, 2015 3.6k views

Hi all,

I’m setting up a mail server on an Ubuntu droplet. I had to change the droplet name to the fqdn per some other threads on this forum.

droplet name: mail.mydomain.com

dig MX mydomain.com returns the mx:

dig MX mydomain.com +short @ ns1.digitalocean.com
0 mail.mydomain.com.

dig MX mail.mydomain.com +short @ ns1.digitalocean.com

Does not return anything.

In Ubuntu,

hostname returns mail
hostname -d returns mydomain.com
hostname –fqdn returns mail.mydomain.com

In the DigitalOcean web gui, under mydomain.com I can see the records.

MX 0 mail.mydomain.com.

When I use mxtoolbox.com on mx mail.mydomain.com, I get back “No mx Records exist”
If I query mx mydomain.com I get back:
Pref Hostname IP Address TTL

0 mail.mydomain.com {No A Record} 30 min

So it’s like the mx record doesn’t work with the fqdn, but only the domain.tld

Any ideas on how to fix?

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TheMadHatter
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TheMadHatter
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5 answers
gparent February 5, 2015

There’s nothing to fix. That query shouldn’t return anything.

EDIT: There’s a message which seems to indicate you may be missing a record, but since you censored your domain name there’s nothing we can do to verify if that’s true or not.

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TheMadHatter February 5, 2015

256K

Thanks for the reply back too. It just seemed like I should get a record back when asking for the mx for the fqdn.

edit 2: My zone file (visible in the DO gui) lists an A record in it:
256k.com. 1800 IN A 107.170.38.67

So not sure why mxtoolbox says there is no A record.

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  • gparent February 6, 2015

    Okay, so with the domain at hand we can see that there is no A record for your MX entry, which is mail.256k.com. vps is correct - you should add that record.

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vps February 5, 2015

You need an A record for “mail.256k.com”.
In DO control panel add an A record Should end up looking like your 256k.com A record

mail.256k.com. 1800 IN A 107.170.38.67

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TheMadHatter February 6, 2015

I added the A record and mxtools completes the lookup for the domain.tld

Thank you for the follow ups!

Overall, it was my error on thinking the mx lookup should also work against the fqdn. Thanks again!

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helgifreyr February 9, 2015
[deleted]
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