[bluemike]

Currently, our ISP handles all our email, but I am in the process of setting up our first internal email server. I've never done it before, so bear with me.

Right now, all email goes to services@mydomain.com. Our client software downloads it all from pop.myisp.com and send all mail through smtp.myisp.com.

Our internal domain is, say, privatedomain.com. So the FQDN of all the internal systems is system.privatedomain.mydomain.com

When this new email server is working, will my email address change to services@privatedomain.mydomain.com? If so, how can I avoid that?
I've read a few thing about virtual domains. Do you think that would do the trick?

Would I have to change the name of my internal domain to match our public domain?

I've already added an MX record to our DNS to send all email to the interal IP of the server, but I am just trying to get my head around this. I guess what I really want to avoid is having to change our published email addresses.....

Any advice, even hostile, would be good.

[tsunam]

You really don't need a full domain email server in this case. What it seems like you are trying to do is have different alias's(email adresses) within the larger mydomain.com without the private domain issue.

There's a couple of ways to do that. You could bypass the isp entirely and set up the server etc to be the mydomain.com. With a proper mx record it would direct all the traffic to that box and not through your isp. Some isp's frown on this though, they don't like you running commercial type things on a residential connection. Second you generally are given a large number of email accounts you can do with a isp. Third would be using something like postfix or such if you do have it set that you want to do privatedomain.mydomain.com. its quite easy to do. Lastly, you can just set it up where instead of using privatedomain.mydomain.com to be your smtp server, you just set up myisp.com as it, and it should send it out correctly assuming that it works as it stands now.

as always more info is always a plus about exactly what your doing, how its working etc

[bluemike]

I guess what I am really trying to avoid is having to change our primary email addess. It's been published for years, and I don't want to change it.

I think I understand what you say about using the ISP smtp. That makes sense. I do have Postfix, and I have seen that option is the CF file. My concern is the incoming mail (pop). My ISP currently host both out email and our website. When the times comes, how do I get the email coming to me but the web traffic still going to the ISP? I don't want incoming my sent to publishedaddress@mydomain.com just disappearing into space....

On thing I have thought of...I could give the email server it's own public IP. We get 6 public IP's from our ISP, and I have a few that I can use if I want.

I've decided that setting up Linux email servers is hard :P

[tsunam]

hmm for that you can do something like. ISP hosted server is main mx record. Create a record for mail.domain.com that points to your own server. SMTP should go out by default to the domain.com via the isp's setup. I'm fairly certain that should work.

It should allow you to have all future email to the published email go to your own box for filtering etc. So you keep the stuff you had but don't use it for the incoming. The one possible thing is that after say the 8h-2 days for the mx to propigate you then remove the isp's version of the address so it doesn't try and use that etc.

Basically you are just routing via mx the mail to go to your server instead of the isp's