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I run a small company and we have feedback from some of our customers that when they attempt to email us the email is immediately rejected with the following error:

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address failed:

"[email protected]":

domain has no valid mail exchangers

This was happening infrequently at first but is now becoming more common, most email seems to work fine (the registration for this site for example) and it is OK to send email out.

These are the settings from the domain name registration page (I only add these as I have found some reference online to this being the issue in another case, but I am not sure why)

DNS          TYPE   PRIORITY      DESTINATION/TARGET
ENTRY
@             MX    10          mail.everfurniture.com      
@             A                 178.18.127.99         
ftp           CNAME            ftp.myserverworld.net      
mail          CNAME            mail.myserverworld.net         
www           A                 178.18.127.99

Any help or guidance to what to look for is much appreciated!

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  • Have you spoken to your DNS provider about this? Do you own "myserverworld.net" as well?
    – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
    Oct 3, 2014 at 18:04
  • I am not very tech savvy when it comes to these settings, I was involved in setting them up in the first place (by instruction) but this was some years ago! So the settings I listed are under the 123-reg.co.uk settings whom sold me the domain name, the myservworld.net are the company that provide the email address space, originally they also provided the server space for the website but 5 years ago we had our website updated and the creator wanted the content on his own server.
    – malc2003
    Oct 3, 2014 at 19:42
  • You should contact your DNS and email providers for assistance.
    – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
    Oct 3, 2014 at 19:43

1 Answer 1

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2

This entry:

@ MX 10 mail.everfurniture.com

is invalid because the domain name lacks a trailing dot. This is mentioned in RFC1537 (Common DNS Data File Configuration Errors):

  1. "Name extension surprise"

    Sometimes one encounters weird names, which appear to be an external name extended with a local domain. This is caused by forgetting to terminate a name with a dot: names in zone files that don't end with a dot are always expanded with the name of the current zone (the domain that the zone file stands for or the last $ORIGIN).

    Example: zone file for foo.xx:

    pqr MX 100 relay.yy.
    xyz MX 100 relay.yy
    (no trailing dot!)

In addition, the name mentioned in the MX record must not be an alias to another name, it must be directly resolvable. This appears to be the problem with mail.everfurniture.com, which (see dig's output below), is a CNAME to mail.myserverworld.net.

$ dig mail.everfurniture.com
[...]
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;mail.everfurniture.com.        IN  A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
mail.everfurniture.com. 14400   IN  CNAME   mail.myserverworld.net.
mail.myserverworld.net. 14400   IN  A   94.136.40.62

The CNAME record should be removed and instead there should be an A record pointing directly to 94.136.40.62

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  • Looked it up on the provider's website. Their directions also say "Please note: MX records must be terminated with a full stop or they will not work correctly." The advanced settings are at this location
    – cathoo
    Oct 4, 2014 at 13:14
  • Thanks for the answer, that makes sense but I apologise as it is my error in copying the records since I missed the . at the end but actually on the records it does exist at the end of the .com and the 2 .net entries.
    – malc2003
    Oct 4, 2014 at 18:37
  • @malc2003: OK, I realize there's another problem with the MX record which might explain the reject, see my edit.
    – Daniel Vérité
    Oct 4, 2014 at 19:18
  • @DanielVérité I have deleted the CNAME entry mail.myserverworld.net and created a new entry type A 94.136.40.62 I have then send an email from an address which is known to have issues and it came straight through. I thank you so much for your help, it has been very clear and obviously very useful! fingers crossed that is the only issue! Thanks again!
    – malc2003
    Oct 4, 2014 at 19:38

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