Robby on Rails: Gmail for your domain

Gmail for your domain

Robby Russell — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 10:22:00 -0500

Last night I received my invitation for Google’s domain hosting. This gives me a gmail account for a custom domain name along with the integrated Google Calendar and Chat.

On one of my non-work projects, we’re now using this to share our calendars and host email.

Thanks Google!

You can sign up for your invite here.

"Gmail for your domain" by Ilya Grigorik

Mon, 04 Sep 2006 19:29:30 -0500

Hmm, looks interesting! How transparent is it? Can outside users tell that you use GMail servers? (Outside of sending queries for your MX records of course..)

Cheers, Ilya

"Gmail for your domain" by evan

Sat, 02 Sep 2006 21:04:17 -0500

Nevermind, FlashHaterLap helped me on IRC. You are supposed to only use “domain.com”, anything else for the host will not work.

"Gmail for your domain" by evan

Sat, 02 Sep 2006 00:48:18 -0500

It seems like it let me instantly sign up! Maybe because I already have an analytics account, I dunno.

Anyway, I am confused as to how to add the DNS records to everyDNS. Are the Google hosts supposed to be the “host” field, or the “value” field? And what goes in the other field? Right now I have it set to:

     host      type      value        MX ttl
mail.domain.com MX ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM 1 3600
mail.domain.com MX ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM 5 3600

but I suspect this is wrong.

"Gmail for your domain" by Juan Pablo

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 20:36:58 -0500

You can use this with ActionMailer? how?

"Gmail for your domain" by Luis Lavena

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 12:16:09 -0500

Ok, got my answers:

An MX record and a CNAME record cannot coexist at the same place in the DNS. That is, a name cannot be both a mail domain and an alias to something that isn’t a mail domain.

That’s why they exist. Note that you should never redefine the zone itself with a CNAME. That constitutes an illegal combination of DNS RR’s. Define an A record for coffee.com and a CNAME record for (for example) www.coffee.com that refers to coffee.com, as follows:

coffee.com. IN A 192.168.0.1
www.coffee.com. IN CNAME coffee.com.

Need to change my dns records ;-)

Sorry for the noise :-D

"Gmail for your domain" by Luis Lavena

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 12:01:15 -0500

Robby,

I’m using Sitelutions (part of a old account I have with them).

This domain just redirects to my .com one. I didn’t want to brake the existing mail system.

Also using subdomains for dyndns.

If I add a CNAME to my root domain (not www. subdomain) the mx records no longer “exist” (when doing a mx query with mxtoolbox )

Posted on Google Groups, no answer yet.

"Gmail for your domain" by Robby Russell

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 11:50:27 -0500

Luis,

What are you using to manage your DNS?

Email to the domain just points to their long list of servers.

"Gmail for your domain" by Luis Lavena

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 11:46:29 -0500

Hey Robby, I’ve been beta testing it too. How did you resolve the mx/cname issue? I’m trying to point mydomain.net and www.mydomain.net to www.mydomain.com

CNAME records for mydomain.net cannot co-exist with mx definitions…

Argh, a need a crash course on DNS :-P

"Gmail for your domain" by Robby Russell

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 11:40:00 -0500

Yeah… right now I only need a few email addresses. :-)

"Gmail for your domain" by Matt

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 11:34:39 -0500

I’ve been on the beta for a while now and I just love it. However, I believe it’s limited to 25 users by domain. (plenty enough for me)