CNAME point subdomain to another domain

Question

I know this has been asked before in various forms, but I've tried all the suggestions and had no luck (or maybe skills).

I am trying to point a subdomain (mail.abcd.com) to Rackspace's hosted Webmail service for a client.

My understanding is I should be able to set up cname for the subdomain and point it to rackspace's hostname: apps.rackspace.com

I have set up the following cnames:

www.mail            IN  CNAME   apps.rackspace.com
autodiscover        IN  CNAME   autodiscover.emailsrvr.com
mail                IN  CNAME   apps.rackspace.com

I have tried doing dig mail.abcd.com and nslookup but both report that mail.abcd.com is a nonexistent domain.

I have restarted the name server numerous times.

I'm sure I must be missing something silly.

Thanks for any help!

Cheers

Solution 1

A few observations:

The name servers are reported as ns1.onkea.com and ns2.onkea.com. This is where you need to make the changes. You should need to restart the name server, only reload the zone.

Your CNAME entries should end in a period (apps.rackspace.com.). Otherwise, they should be interpreted as ending in (.abcd.com.) giving the address apps.rackspace.com.abcd.com instead of what you intend.

Redirecting mail when you have existing MX records pointing elsewhere doesn't seem to be very useful. If you are sending email to the Internet using these names, it will appear spamish. Mail will be delivered to the servers specified by the MX records.

Solution 2

Problem is that you probably forgot dot at the end of every domain

www.mail            IN  CNAME   apps.rackspace.com.
autodiscover        IN  CNAME   autodiscover.emailsrvr.com.
mail                IN  CNAME   apps.rackspace.com.

Your CNAME entry mail.abcd.com exists, but apps.rackspace.com.abcd.com not :-)

You can check it with:

dig +trace  mail.abcd.com

Comments

[salonMonsters]

Thanks bill. So I don't actually want to make the changes in abcd.com's zone file, instead I should make the change to onkea.com's zone file? I'm trying to allow user's to log in to mail at the old address they used: mail.abcd.com (which was rackspace whitelabel mail. Unfortunately they are committed to using Rackspace mail otherwise I'd set up mail on the domain itself. I followed Rackspace's instructions on setting up the mx records and then added the mail. cname to try and keep the same log in domain for them. Is there a better way I should be going about this? Thanks!

[salonMonsters]

thanks for the good explanation about the period at the end of the domain too.