How to set up reverse DNS on Ubuntu 12.04 VPS

Question

As far as I can remember when setting up my VPS and mail server on it, I had configured the mail server correctly. However, a few of my clients get SMTP errors,

host mx1.zonnet.nl[62.58.50.9] said: 553 We do not accept mail from IP addresses without reverse DNS. See http://wikipedia.org/wiki/reverse_dns (in reply to RCPT TO command)

So could anyone get me further to address whether I've configured it wrong or even worse: Not configured at all.

And of course: How to resolve it?

Oh, I see that I didn't had BIND installed, so that may help most of you.

Sadly, most tutorials I find are about different subjects, instead of resolving reverse DNS on Ubuntu 12.04 VPS.

Thanks!

Edit, extra: I'm seeing things such as

Edit /etc/bind/named.conf.local and add the following:

zone "1.168.192.in-addr.arpa" {

type master;

file "/etc/bind/db.192";

};

Source

Where, 1.168.192, need to replaced with my networking IP, but what's my networking IP..? My IP(v4) is completely different than 1.168.192, which actually is 159.xxx.x.xxx.

Answer 1

You cannot set the reverse DNS yourself -- you have to ask your VPS provider to do that.

With an IP of 159.x.y.z the reverse DNS is basically a lookup of z.y.x.159.in-addr.arpa., as described in the Wikipedia article. With a local BIND you might get a reverse DNS configuration on your own server, but nobody else would ask your server and see it. So it has to be configured by the network operator who manages the IP address range and has the DNS zone delegation for it (most probably the VPS provider or its upstream ISP).