Installing zimbra

[seisa]

Hi all,

I'm new to zimbra.
I am installing zimbra, but I have some confusing points within the DNS configuration.
We have internal domain "mydomain.local" and another one external "mydomain.com".

- So should the FQDN of the zimbra in the /etc/hosts be "zimbra.mydomain.com" or "zimbra.mydomain.local"?

- Ip address is the internal or the external IP?

- Zimbra DNS entry (A and MX records) will be in both domains?

During the Installation, the Ldap configuration menu is telling that there is a domain that will created "zimbra.mydomain.com"and user "admin@zimbra.mydomain.com",

Is this a child domain that will be created under the parent one or what?

this point is very confusing as the mailboxes should be "user@mydomain.com"

Thanks in advance

Seisa

[nikkiclau]

Hi.

- So should the FQDN of the zimbra in the /etc/hosts be "zimbra.mydomain.com" or "zimbra.mydomain.local"?

The FQDN should be the one representing how you want the world to see your domain, so you need to set your FQDN as "zimbra.domain.com".

- Ip address is the internal or the external IP?

The IP address should be the one that represents this server (usually a local subnet IP), this is done so the many services that zimbra is will know where to send the mails when it is routing the mail internally.

- Zimbra DNS entry (A and MX records) will be in both domains?

The Zimbra DNS entry (A and MX records) are for the internal processing of mail in Zimbra. If you have a small setup, you can do as I do, set up a DNS server on the Zimbra server itself where it will claim the A and MX records for the domain.

When I set up Zimbra, I usually set the server FQDN as 'mail.domain.com' or 'zmail.domain.com', but during the actual Zimbra setup I create the domain 'domain.com' instead of 'mail.domain.com'.

To get a deeper understanding about the DNS issues, go to the wiki and look up the article 'Split DNS'.

If you did everything correctly, users should be created as 'user@domain.com'. You can of course experiment by creating a user and see if mail is delivered to the user or not.

[mickier]

great reply nikkiclau,
the only thing I would add is that some people confuse domain with domain name (of the server) your domain is the part after the @ in your e-mail address, and the domain name of the server is typically something like mail.(followed by the part after @ in your e-mail address).
example:
e-mail address - mikey@abc.com - (I own domain abc.com and set it in zimbra as my domain)
mail.abc.com - the mail server's fqdn, and this is what gets set in DNS - both a and mx records.
This can confuse newbs since many how-tos use something like mikey@mail.abc.com AND use mail.abc.com as their server hostname, making them both appear as synonymous but they're NOT.
Peace