Trying to setup a Mail server at Home.

Ok, i have a dynds domain like, http://abid.mine.nu

this is basically the free service without any mail hop. but i do have premium update service meaning lets me update my IP more than once in an a minute..

I assume you have Dynamic DNS Pro, then, which allows you to set the TTL (Time-To-Live) to a value as low as 20 seconds. This does not mean that you can update your hostname more than once a minute, however.

The TTL specifies how long a hostname may be cached by DNS resolvers (such as your ISP's DNS servers, and even your operating system), measured in number of seconds. A TTL of 20 means that your hostname's IP address should be cached for no longer than 20 seconds. The lower the TTL, the faster changes to the hostname are propagated throughout the Internet (i.e. there will be a shorter period to wait until everyone will see your new IP address, after you have updated your hostname with a new IP).

i have been trying to setup a MX record but it doesnt setup.

Basically, MX records are only needed if you need to specify a (different) destination for your e-mail.

Keep in mind that the basic concept of e-mail transmission has always been that your e-mail address by itself will include all the information needed for the sender to know where to transmit the message. The host part of the e-mail address (the part after the "@" sign), in your case abid.mine.nu, tells the sending server where to transmit the message (unless it finds an MX record for your domain, telling it to send to a different server instead). The user part of the e-mail address (the part before the "@" sign) tells the receiving server (your server) which user the message belongs to.

I hope you now understand why you do not need an MX record, as long as e-mail to http://abid.mine.nu is supposed to be delivered to http://abid.mine.nu. If it's still hard to grasp, let me know, and I'll try to break it down in a simpler way.

can you give me an example of the mx record to be input? like IN MX 10 http://mail.abid.mine.nu is this correct?

The web interface on http://DynDNS.com only asks for a hostname. That is all you would need to specify. But A) you must specify an existent A or AAAA record (no other record types allowed), and B) you cannot specify your own hostname to be an MX for itself (because then the purpose of specifying an MX is gone).

i am considering purchasing the mailhop service but would like to see how it turns out on the free version first.

That sounds like a good idea. Configure your e-mail server, and check to see if you're able to connect to it from outside your network.

For a free hostname you don't have to set up an MX. You only need an MX record if you don't want email for <user@abid.mine.nu> to go to the host http://abid.mine.nu. Indeed I believe that the DynDNS system will remove an MX for a host that is the host itself.

I'd also recommend that you check your ISP doesn't block port 25/TCP. You can use MX Toolbox to test your mail server yourself remotely. If after you've forwarded ports (25/TCP) and checked that you can reach your mail server from another host on the LAN it still doesn't work then you'll probably need a service like MailHop Relay.

I'd also direct you to this question which is about sending email from a home PC.

Finally, don't forget to apply the tick if this answer is useful - that's how we know we got it right.

Blocking on port 25 is typical to prevent open mail relays. If you mail server supports alternate addresses, you can enable 465 and/or 587. You can also use a custom port, many people use 2525 an alternative port.

If your ISP is blocking inbound port 25, then you are stuck without a service like MailHop Relay that will receive your mail on port 25 and then send it on an alternate port (such as 2525 or 10025) to your server. There is no way to set an alternate receive port that other mail servers will know about.

If your ISP is blocking outbound port 25, then you have some more options such as using a 3rd-party outbound SMTP server (such as our MailHop Outbound service).

Cry and Viking many thanks for your response...actually i am now alot closer to understand this whole thing.

so i understand that i should just leave the http://abid.mine.nu as it is and setup my mail server to receive email and use my isp's mail server to relay my messages? right?

EDIT, ok just checked that my ISP is blocking port 25,

so apart without using the mailhop is there an alternative which will allow me to change port from 25 to soemthing else say 26 or 30?

regards Abid