There are many options for running your own email server, and with applications like Citadel, hosting your own email stack can be quite straightforward. Nevertheless, managing independent email servers can be daunting, given email's importance and potential for complexity. This is particularly true when you have multiple users and/or complex filtering schemes. Many people prefer to delegate their email to a third-party email service like Google so they can better concentrate on the administration of other, more mission critical services.
The process for forwarding your email to Google's servers is a matter of redirecting the MX DNS records which govern email routing to Google's email servers. Note that there are a number of third-party email service providers, and Linode does not specifically endorse any of them.
For more information about the Standard Edition of Google Apps
, visit their site.
The Standard Edition is available at no cost. This document assumes
that you are using the
Linode DNS Manager
to manage the DNS records for your domain name, and that you've already
signed up for a Google Apps account.
These instructions work with the Linode platform. If you don't have a Linode yet, sign up for a Linux VPS and get started today.
To direct your email to Google Apps, you need to set up five MX records for your domain. When you click on "Add/Edit a MX Record," you will find a form that looks like this:
Create the following MX records:
Please note that although the Google Apps documentation states that there must be a trailing dot after each hostname, this is not required in the Linode DNS Manager. The trailing dot will be added to our DNS records automatically, and should not be specified in the hostname.
During the sign up process, Google will need you to verify that you have authority over the domain that you're setting up with their servers. They provide two ways to accomplish this.
The first option involves creating an HTML file with specific content at a particular location on your domain. During the sign up process, select "Upload an HTML" file. You will then be provided with a code to include in the contents of a googlehostedservice.html file. Simply issue the following command in the "DocumentRoot" for that domain at the terminal:
echo "[code]" > googlehostedservice.html
If you don't have a web server set up, you can create a temporary CNAME record in the Linode DNS Manager by clicking on the "Add a new CNAME Record" link in the relevant domain record. Fill out the form with the information provided by the Google sign up process. The Linode DNS manager refreshes its records every quarter hour, so it may take some time for the CNAME record to be accessible to Google.
At this point the configuration is complete. You may have to wait several hours; Google says that it could take 24 to 48 hours for DNS to redirect correctly. After that window, however, all of your email should be successfully directed at Google's servers.
This guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Please feel free to redistribute unmodified copies of it as long as attribution is provided, preferably via a link to this page.
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Submitted by Bruno on Monday, January 18 2010 at 14:09:04 GMT
To create a subdomain mail.yourdomain.com. Just add the CNAME record:
Hostname: mail Aliases to: ghs.google.com |
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Submitted by laura on Tuesday, January 26 2010 at 22:23:34 GMT
What's not clear is what you're supposed to do with the mail.yourdomain.com MX entry that was created in the initial DNS setup.
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Submitted by Patrick McLaren on Sunday, February 14 2010 at 06:06:12 GMT
If you follow the Google Apps documentation, it tells you to remove any existing MX Records.
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Submitted by geppa on Wednesday, February 17 2010 at 15:09:21 GMT
@laura: I think you are supposed to either not create it in the first place, if you plan on google's offering, or delete it when you add the google related entries, or make it's "priority" > 10 so that it has lower priority the google's servers if you plan to install a backup server anyway.
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Submitted by Anonymous Visitor on Saturday, February 27 2010 at 18:54:33 GMT
@lara - google says to simply delete the defaults and only leave their servers.
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Submitted by Phil Paradis on Saturday, February 27 2010 at 20:32:00 GMT
@Laura - You may safely delete any MX records that were initially created, unless of course you're using them as backup MX entries.
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Submitted by Bertilo Wennergren on Sunday, February 28 2010 at 21:00:31 GMT
"What's not clear is what you're supposed to do with the mail.yourdomain.com MX entry that was created in the initial DNS setup."
I had the same question, but then somewhere in the Google Apps pages, I found that you should definitely delete the original mail.yourdomain.com MX entry. That's what I had done anyway, and it seems to work. |
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Submitted by David on Wednesday, March 17 2010 at 18:07:53 GMT
Yes, please update this on how to correctly specify SPF record. I've spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get the SPF record set properly. Some recipients receive mail fine without the SPF record specified. Other mail servers are rejecting any mail.
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Submitted by Andy on Thursday, March 25 2010 at 22:29:23 GMT
Yeah, this was a bit difficult to decipher, IMO. Here's what I did, so that others may get some benefit... I added the following as a new TXT record.
Name: <leave this blank!!!> TTL: Default <you can change if you want, but no need, really> Value: v=spf1 ip4:<ip address of your server> a:<a record for your server> include:aspmx.googlemail.com ~all Make sure you plug in your IP address (either from your dashboard, or ifconfig) and your a record from your DNS. HTH! |
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Submitted by spencer on Wednesday, April 7 2010 at 15:41:13 GMT
I'm getting this error when trying to create a CNAME record to my Gmail [mail.mydomain.com]
"Record conflict - CNAMES must be unique" If it's related, I do have a "mail" host name under "A/AAAA Records". Would it be okay to delete that one? |
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Submitted by Gerald on Monday, April 12 2010 at 05:11:29 GMT
I googled around for the proper SPF settings, and came up with this:
"v=spf1 a mx include:aspmx.googlemail.com ~all". I tried to test it via http://www.kitterman.com/spf/validate.html and http://www.vamsoft.com/spfcheck.asp, passed both of them. I think I will give it a couple of days to see if there is any bounced mails. |
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Submitted by Cory on Sunday, April 25 2010 at 03:53:58 GMT
Does this take the place of needing something like Postfix? I can't seem to get it work via the contact form on my website.
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Submitted by Stan Schwertly on Thursday, May 20 2010 at 09:47:00 GMT
Cory: Yes, but you'll need to update whatever code is used in your contact form. This can range from manually editing it for custom applications, to configuring something as simple as a WordPress plugin (for example, the "Configure SMTP" plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/configure-smtp/installation/)
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Submitted by Ryan on Wednesday, June 9 2010 at 08:40:33 GMT
any tips on how to have the URLs changed?
so mail.example.com goes to the gmail login and calendar.example.com goes to the gcal login? Currently, its telling me that I don't have a unique CNAME. |
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Submitted by Ryan on Wednesday, June 9 2010 at 08:40:34 GMT
any tips on how to have the URLs changed?
so mail.example.com goes to the gmail login and calendar.example.com goes to the gcal login? Currently, its telling me that I don't have a unique CNAME. |
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Submitted by Stan Schwertly on Wednesday, June 9 2010 at 15:31:24 GMT
Hi Ryan,
Feel free to use the following guide from Google on creating custom URLs for Google Apps: http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=53340 |
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Submitted by Trung on Friday, July 23 2010 at 08:05:20 GMT
Great article! I have some questions.
Let's say I'd like to create two email users for my domain: feedback@encognitive.com and support@encognitive.com . How do I create the email users "feedback" and "support"? Do I need to install any email programs such as postfix before I can create those users? Thank-you! |
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Submitted by Stan Schwertly on Thursday, July 29 2010 at 09:28:44 GMT
Trung: Nope, you'll only need to create those accounts through the Google Apps UI!
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