Help configuring secondary email server

[K.C. Chan]

All,
I've correctly configure DNS for MX record: e.g
IN MX 10 mail1.mydomain.com
IN MX 20 mail2.mydomain.com

But, when I've sent mail from mail2.mydomain.com, it's sent locally to itself. How can I can it to deliver mail to mail1? how can I set up mail2 to take over if mail1 is unavailable? Thanks.

[Stuart Browne]

What exactally are you trying to do?

Are you trying to make a secondary MX target, that will queue messages until the primary machine gets back on line? If so, you just need to say that 'mail2' will accept mail for 'mydoamin.com', but not delivery it locally (check your Cw & Fw entries). It will then deliver it to the proper host when it becomes available again.

If you are trying to make it so you have a 'backup mail server' (that will perform the same functions as the primary in the event of a system failure), then you're looking at the wrong thing. For that you'll need to look into Clustering solutions and Failover. There was a thread a few weeks ago which gave the product names of a number of different available solutions to that.

If it's some other end you're trying to achieve, please spell it out clearly.

thanks.

[K.C. Chan]

Now that I've got mx02 as the back up mail server, I need to swap identity with it. I could just do this via changes in DNS so that mx02 is the primary. But I think it would be easier to just swap ip instead. My only concered is getting the user off of mx01 (an Proliant) to mx02 (Dell poweredge). Here's the file which I think should be copy over to mx02, /etc/passwd, /etc/group, /home/, and /etc/shadow. Will this work? Please let me know if I am missing anything. Thanks.

[K.C. Chan]

All, I've just switch over my mail server, it works....:-)