Re: Malformed Zone?

On 28 Apr 2010, at 13:45, James Sutherland wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 8:03 PM, Jonathan Duncan <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On 28 Apr 2010, at 12:20, Chris Pugh wrote:
>>> On 28 April 2010 18:47, Matthew Dempsky <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>> On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 4:52 PM, Jonathan Duncan <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>> Cpennypix.net:domains.smugmug.com:3600
>>>> 
>>>> CNAME records can't coexist at the same name with other records.
>>> 
>>> .. and why do you need them, anyway?
>> 
>> I need them because my client want their domain name pointed to the SmugMug service which does not provide an IP address for their accounts but instead direct incoming traffic based on the name.  Similar problem to Google Apps which requires CNAME records for all their MX servers.
>> 
>> Do you know of a better way?
>> 
>> Anyway, that seems to be beside the point.  The problem I am having is that mail is not being delivered.  The MX record for this Zone does not refer to a CNAME record so it should not be affected by the CNAME records.  Should it?
> 
> The CNAME records will be directing your email to the Smugmug servers
> as well as web and all other traffic. The obvious solution would seem
> to be to move the CNAME to be www.pennypix.net, then have a simple
> http forwarder redirecting pennypix.net URLs to www.pennypix.net. The
> CNAME record takes precedence over your MX records: whatever MX
> records you set will be ignored (and indeed shouldn't be there in the
> first place).
> 
> If you really, really need it to be pennypix.net rather than
> www.pennypix.net, you could try adding A records pointing to the IP
> addresses you get for e1021.c.edgekey.net - you'll lose all the CDN
> advantages of the Akamai hosting Smugmug use, but it will probably
> still work even though you're forcing the traffic to go to the wrong
> edge node for most users. Obviously this should be a last resort
> though! (If they didn't use Akamai, it would be fine as long as they
> don't change IP addresses, but of course Akamai's whole raison d'etre
> is that their hostnames resolve 'intelligently' to the nearest edge
> node...)

Chris actually pointed me to a SmugMug article that listed an IP so that I could use A records instead, thank goodness.

Just for my education, why would the CNAME record and the MX record clash?  I know that Matthew said, "CNAME records can't coexist at the same name with other records."  Why is this?  The A record "+pennypix.net" is the same name as "@pennypix.net" but they do not clash.  What is different about CNAME records?

Cpennypix.net:domains.smugmug.com:3600
@pennypix.net:198.66.255.206:mail.pennypix.net:10:3600

Thank you,
Jonathan