Configuring DNS/Apache for MX?

[Tiembo]

I currently have a site (let's call it blah.com) that I registered through Registrar ABC (I don't want this to sound like an advertisement). ABC lets me create subdomains (*.blah.com) through their web interface, but they pretty much just act like cloak redirections. Pretty cool at first, but then I started to play with DNS entries, because I wanted to learn Apache and php on my own box. Everything seemed properly pointed, except the MX - any sent mail to *@blah.com is returned to the sender with the error message "Relaying is denied".

ABC offers a 10MB mailbox (which is checked through mail.abc.com), and email forwarding. How should I set up the MX so that the email to *@blah.com is still handled by ABC, but the rest of the blah.com traffic is pointed to my box? Is this done through the DNS entry, or does Apache's httpd.conf process it?

On another note - the freeDNS service I used doesn't seem to be around anymore. One that I've found is www.zoneedit.com - are they good? Anyone recommend another freeDNS service?

[Edit] One more thing - I know that I can tell the DNS to forward just blah.com to my box, and have Apache's httpd.conf set up the subdomains. How do I go about editing the httpd.conf file to do this? I think it has something to do with Section 3 and the Virtual Hosts...correct?

Thanks.

 

[N11]

I would recommend the following

An A record to point blah.com to the IP address of your box.
An A record to point mail.blah.com to the IP address of ABC's mail server.
An MX record for mail.blah.com

This mail handling is done via DNS, not through apache's config file. You will only want to edit apache's config file when you want to change how http/https traffic is handled by your server.

When setting up subdomains you will add virtual host entries -- section 3 is intended for this. There should be a sample entry for you. The only directives you should be concerned with are DocumentRoot and ServerName. The rest you can do without. I would however recommed a directive for error logging so that you can see what is going on when you are having difficulties with your php scripts.

-N11