DNS / Sendmail Questions for Linux

Setting up a network....with mail.... (for a website and so the website can send and recieve mail)
I'm setting up a network with a sendmail server on it, is it important for me to setup a DNS server, before I setup the mail server?

(I don't really understand setting up the DNS...)

Do you need a non-dynamic dns server to send / recieve email?

(and I don't understand setting up domains and such either)

Thanks,


__________________
- Maskkkk

--Check the below link.

www.sendmail.org/

Well if you want to recieve email, you'll have to have an MX record created in DNS pointing to your email server. That way whenever another mail server wants to send you mail, it will look up the MX record for your domain, and find your mail server.

You can use a dynamic DNS system such as no-ip.com.. but if this is a proper setup you'll want to have a box with a static IP.


Cheers,

also, you should avoid sendmail and prefer qmail or postfix

I concur

Hi,

I've used sendmail, qmail, postfix and exim. If you don't need insanely complex handling/processing of your mail, I'd say go with something other than sendmail, because sendmail is rather complex to administer, though it's a fine mail server. I use it along with the milter modules to extend as needed. milter-sender is pretty awesome, for example, and I'm not aware of its functionality being available in the other servers.

Regardless of which mail server you choose, you need to have a way for people to find it, which is the domain (pun intended) of DNS. With regard to your question about "static" DNS, I think you mean to ask if your dns server needs to have a static IP address. The answer, technically, is no. You can hop over to a service like dyndns and they'll keep an eye on your dynamically assigned IP address for you, and update the dns registry and all that stuff. Of course, it's a little less hassle if you can get a static IP address for your primary DNS, and then get a friend be a secondary for you.

Setting up DNS isn't particularly hard. Setting it up *properly*, and *not* screwing things up as records are added and deleted is more challenging. Definitely do some reading on this, because it's not something that is learned well from a man page or "quickstart" type guide.