Mail Problems - Resolved - Explanation

[Nathan Aubrey]

All,

I have made some progress with my registrar and the company that maintains the 
domains for that registrar. Supposedly, in the next few hours I will receieve 
the authorization code and the domain will be unlocked...

1&1 here I come!

I apologize, I don't mean to be a 1&1 fan boy, but when you call tech support, 
someone answers. And while I really really really like it when they speak 
english, at this point I'm willing to speak to ANYONE!

But, I have done a few things wrong, and I thought I'd post it here to help 
anyone who may be doing things the way I have been...

My main server is called calvary, the FQDN is 
calvary.paysonfirstbaptistchurch.net
I registered paysonfirstbaptistchurch.net with my DNS, then created a CNAME 
for anything I needed, ie; www, mail, smtp, ssh, and a couple others. All 
pointing to the initial paysonfirstbaptistchurch.net A pointer.
Then I created my MX pointers. 

MX 20:mail.paysonfirstbaptistchurch.net 

I have several domains all hosted on the same computer and have them all setup 
somewhat the same. I also have multiple faked MX records

MX 10:zombie.paysonfirstbaptistchurch.net which pointed to 0.0.0.0 in an 
attempt to stop a lot of spammers that only go for the first or last MX 
record. This worked great, until AOL and Juno came into the picture, whereas, 
much like many spammers, only want your first MX record.

So then, I found out you cannot have your MX pointing to a CNAME ! Which ALL 
of my domains do. Even dumber than that, I didn't even think about it, but my 
mx is mail.paysonfirstbaptistchurch.net but the FQDN is calvary.pay...
So many other mail servers were bombing on me because it was a faked domain or 
something... You have to have all the names be FQDN's... Why I had not done 
this, is beyond me. I just don't know.

Anyway, thought I would share, hope it helps someone. I am now an expert on 
how (not) to set up an email server! lol

Thank you all for your help. As always, the knowledge on this list makes 
google look stupid.

Nathan