How send to external accounts

[AMG76]

Hi,

I have some users outside of the Zimbra domain I'm using so, when I try to send to externaluser@example.com the server try to resolve the address internally causing a delivery failure notification (the users are not existent inside Zimbra, but they have their own account outside in the server example.com in the internet from where I synchronize the inbox)

How can I force Zimbra to send through the SMTP smarthost? I don't use an MX record but i synchronize the incoming emails from their own external accounts.

[phoenix]

Update your forum profile with the output of the following command (do not post the output in this thread):

zmcontrol -v

Originally Posted by AMG76

How can I force Zimbra to send through the SMTP smarthost? I don't use an MX record but i synchronize the incoming emails from their own external accounts.

That would be the cause of the problem. How do you expect Zimbra to send mail when you a) don't have an MX record and b) (I guess) don't have any DNS server set-up to resolve external addresses? Why are you doing it this way?

[AMG76]

Profile updated

I don't need an MX record because I don't use Zimbra as a real mail server, it's just a collaboration software that we use to backup mails and share documents and informations. That said: 1) The DNS is configured and working fine, in fact users can send and receive messages internally 2) No problem to send outside of the domain as well, although I configured Zimbra to use a smarthost and not the DNS.

The problem is that Zimbra thinks that example.com should be resolved internally when a messages to user@example.com is sent... while some users of example.com are not inside the Zimbra domain

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by AMG76

The problem is that Zimbra thinks that example.com should be resolved internally when a messages to user@example.com is sent... while some users of example.com are not inside the Zimbra domain

Well, my question would be: if you host a domain named example.com on your server, why would you expect Zimbra to send some of the email to an external server if the user doesn't exist on your server?

If the domain name is hosted on your server then Zimbra can't know that some email is supposed to be sent elsewhere, it will do a DNS lookup for that domain and see it points to a local IP address.

[AMG76]

The domain is not hosted in Zimbra but in another server, so i suppose that I need a trick in the DNS, like a CNAME, to make example.com point to the external server that really hosts the domain.

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by AMG76

The domain is not hosted in Zimbra but in another server, so i suppose that I need a trick in the DNS, like a CNAME, to make example.com point to the external server that really hosts the domain.

You should never use a CNAME for mail delivery, it could end up with mail being lost. Why isn't your DNS server forwarding requests to an external DNS server? If that's the problem (you can confirm it by doing a 'dig example.com' from the zimbra server) you will never have mail delivered until you forward DNS requests to a server that can resolve the external domain via DNS. ARe you actually letting DNS requests on port 53 out from your LAN?

[AMG76]

I tried with the suggested command and I got a full answer from the example.com domain with all the A and NS records. But sorry, I didn't understand how should I do with port 53... Actually I can send mail (I configured a forward MRA to deliver "outside") but I'm not interested in receiving messages as a real mail server (that's why I don't have an MX record). I just synchronize the Zimbra users with the external example.com accounts on the internet.

My request is quite simple: how should I configure Zimbra to look for a user@example.com that is hosted on the internet and not inside my Zimbra organization? The problem is that the domain name is the same and Zimbra doesn't even try to deliver thought the forward MRA but always tries internally... I don't know if I explained myself well