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I'm trying to find a guide to setup a mail relay in my vps for my home mail server.

What I'm trying to do is set it up so that my primary MX points to the VPS, with the home mail server as a secondary record.

All mail would delivered to the VPS initially, and then forwarded onto my home mail server.

So *@domain1.com, *@domain2.com, *@domain3.com, etc. are my domains, and I want all of the mail for these domains to be forwarded onto my home IP (on whatever port, it can be 25 if needed) whenever it can. I don't want to have to specify all the aliases/accounts for the domains manually if I can help it.

The important part is that I want the VPS to buffer the e-mail should the home mail server not be accessible (due to connectivity errors/server failure/etc.)

Is what I want possible?

Any ideas?

I'm a fairly experienced linux user, so I can follow a guide, just need to find a good one.

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closed as off topic by Shane Madden, Evan Anderson, mdpc, MDMarra, Ward Aug 1 '12 at 16:36

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1 Answer

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Regarding having your VPS be the primary mail server for reliability, you shouldn't have to worry about your home mail server being temporarily unavailable. Other SMTP servers should retry sending mail if your home mail server is down. This retry behaviour can usually absorb downtime in the order of hours and days (depending on the sending server's configuration). That said, If you really want to have your VPS relay mail for your home mail server, then you can set up relay functionality by looking up 'virtual domain hosting' for postfix, and it's called something similar for exim as well.

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Another thing you should know about, if you're sending mail from your home domain, is that many ISPs will filter SMTP ports in their network, and many DNSBLs (DNS Black Lists) will list dynamic IP ranges. – Justin Lynn Feb 13 '12 at 22:06
Don't have dynamic IP, and I'm using a home mail server at the moment, it's just that I'm dealing hardware failures. I want the reliability of the VPS, but the convenience of storing everything at home. I'll see if I can find something based on your suggestion – Martin Feb 13 '12 at 22:18
Ah, I see. Yes, then virtual domain hosting will probably work for you. That way, you can forward mail around quite nicely without setting up users all over the place, but still have the hardware reliability of a VPS. – Justin Lynn Feb 13 '12 at 22:23

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