Solved Google Cloud DNS, Cloudron and Email Forwarding

[senthilkumaran]

I used to host my domains with Google Domains, and I actively used the Email Forwarding Feature provided by Google Domains.

When I set up Cloudron on my domain, I had to change from Google Domains to the Google Cloud DNS.
However, I now realize that Google Cloud DNS does not provide Email forwarding (that is forward xyz@mydomain.com to myname@gmail.com) and there is no way for me to set this up. Just adding MX records won't serve the purpose. (Another User mentioning this limitation).

All my emails sent to xyz@mydomain.com have been lost since I changed this DNS set up.

• I want to go back to using Google Domains.

• Since Cloudron had set up some records in the Google Cloud DNS, is it that I simply pointer over these records in Google domains? Do I need to take care of anything else?

• I assume, I will not be able to add new apps to do that domain that I switching over, and that is okay with me.

[girish]

@Senthil-Kumaran So, what you can do is this:

• First, go to Domains and then edit and change the DNS provider from Google Cloud DNS to say Wildcard.
• Switch over your domain from GCDNS to Google Domains
• Add a wildcard entry (*.domain.com with A record to the server's IP address) in Google Domains. Wildcard entry has lower priority than your other entries, so nothing to worry about existing DNS entries.

Once you have done above (give it a a couple of minutes) and then you should have my.domain.com already working and giving you access to the Cloudron dashboard. If you go to the Email section -> Status, it will tell you the various DNS records that you hvae to setup by hand in Google Domains. You can also now install apps in subdomains of domain.com.

Let me know if that works out.

One thing is since you use wild card DNS, be sure to keep port 80 of your server/firewall open. This is required for let's encrypt certs to work.

[girish]

BTW, Cloudron 4.2 has added support for forwarding to external domains. So, you can create a mailbox in Cloudron and then have it forwarded to gmail.com address. But 4.2 is not released yet and will take this week.

[senthilkumaran]

@girish said in Google Cloud DNS, Cloudron and Email Forwarding:

First, go to Domains and then edit and change the DNS provider from Google Cloud DNS to say Wildcard.

I could not do this.

Unable to resolve cloudrontestdns.mydomain.org

I did not see any entry by name cloudrontestdns and not sure why this was looked up.

I changed the rest of the settings from Google Cloud DNS to Google Domains.

[girish]

@Senthil-Kumaran My bad, the step 1 can move to the end.

• Switch over your domain from GCDNS to Google Domains
• Add a wildcard entry (*.domain.com with A record to the server's IP address) in Google Domains. Wildcard entry has lower priority than your other entries, so nothing to worry about existing DNS entries.
• First, go to Domains and then edit and change the DNS provider from Google Cloud DNS to say Wildcard. The cloudrontestdns will resolve now because you added the wildcard entry in the step above.

[girish]

Also, note that changing the nameserver sometimes takes a bit of time. So, you might have to wait a bit between step 2 and step 3.