I'm trying to host email server reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gerardit04 · 2023-11-02 13:55 I can send emails but not receive them. What is happening? I tried email tester and says the PTR record was not found but when I go to my cloud flare dns there a PTR record. I didn't know about PTR records until I tried selfhosting email so maybe it's wrong. The PTR record I added is like this: Let's say I have IP 1.2.3.4 it will be like 4.3.2.1.in-addr.arpa Is that right? Could not having properly PTR be the issue for not receiving mails? I'm trying sending mails with my personal Gmail account. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- cdemi · 2023-11-02 14:01 PTR record has to be done by whomever the PTR space has been delegated to, usually the ISP. The ISP can either do the PTR record for you, or else delegate PTR to you (which if you own less than `/24` they won't probably do. In any case, as far as I know, PTR records have impact on outgoing mail not incoming mail. So your problem for incoming mail is not the PTR record (but it might be for outgoing) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- taxigrandpa · 2023-11-02 14:05 if your receiving mail the server is working fine do you have an MX record for your domain? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Affectionate-Fig-805 · 2023-11-02 14:06 can you check your domain against mxtoolbox and share the result? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gerardit04 · 2023-11-02 14:44 Heres and [img](https://imgur.com/nwsERH4) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gerardit04 · 2023-11-02 14:52 Yes I do ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tech2but1 · 2023-11-02 15:23 > I tried selfhosting email so maybe it's wrong Usually, yes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- taxigrandpa · 2023-11-02 16:32 from your MXToolbox image, it appears that your DNS entries are failing (SOA issues). fix that first, i think everything else is fine ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gerardit04 · 2023-11-02 16:44 How do I fix that I've been reading it's some serial number but don't know how to generate it or how to set it ---------------------------------------------------------------------- taxigrandpa · 2023-11-02 17:15 I can't help with that, basically it's a link to some other dns server and it's not setup correctly. did you create the entry? I might copy it out to notepad, save the data and remove the entry and see if it works. It is not necessary for an mx record to have a separate dns entry to function. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gerardit04 · 2023-11-02 17:16 I didn't created any SOA entry ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gerardit04 · 2023-11-02 17:44 I use cloud flare as my DNS and read in a cloudflare forum that the SOA entry is configured by cloudflare. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- taxigrandpa · 2023-11-02 19:51 ok, then do this. go to where you edited the MX record, and edit this DNS entry. Copy all the data into a notepad file on your pc. then delete the entry. it takes about 4 hours usually to propogate, you can google dns propogation checker for a website that will show you dns resolutions around the world in real time. once it drops off, try again. If it doesn't help you can always add the DNS record back, ---------------------------------------------------------------------- autogyrophilia · 2023-11-02 21:15 From your extremely blurry mxtoolbox pic . It appears you are trying to proxy behind cloudflare. That's not going to work to receive emails. Not without buying their email routing product. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- skc5 · 2023-11-02 22:00 The SOA warning isn’t an error you can ignore it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- skc5 · 2023-11-02 22:02 They should absolutely not touch the SOA entry if they don’t know what they’re doing. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- phein4242 · 2023-11-02 22:14 The reverse (what you get when you lookup *.in-addr.arpa) needs to match your A record (the name you specified in the MX record after the number).