domain name system - messed up confused dns records!

I'm totally new to this, please help. While trying to redirect the mail from my server to gmail using MX records, I think I've messed up, and I'm way confused about that.

First: I can set DNS records both in DomainCentral (registrar) and in cPanel (server). I don't know where the changes should be done. Should I remove all records from cPanel?

Second: I changed CNAME in DomainCentral like this: mail -> ghs.google.com for many hours now. And removed CNAME entries in cPanel. mail.mydomain.com doesn't work.

Third: removed mx.mydomain.com and added the following to DomainCentral:

1   @       ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
5   @       ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
5   @       ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
10  @       ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
10  @       ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.

it doesn't work.

Fourth: DKIM setup requires two fields to be filled in, and DomainCentral offers one field for TXT.

Answer

1. Your DNS should be changed with your DNS provider. This might be the same as your registrar, or it could be in your cpanel. We can't answer that one for you, but my money is on CPanel. If your registrar has "nameserver" records, do not touch these.




2. Did you put a full stop . at the end of ghs.google.com? You've done it correctly in step #3. DNS propogation can take time though, so if it's taking a while, it depends on what the TTL (Time To Live) of the previous record was. Hours is often not enough time to wait. Sometimes it takes days.




3. See above. DNS propogation takes time, especially if the upstream DNS servers are badly behaved (smack, bad DNS). What you've got there looks totally correct though.




4. You'll need to contact DomainCentral's support and ask them for additional TXT records. Although to be honest from what I've read in the past, you're lucky to even have one.

If you're really serious about it, you might want to consider seperating your DNS from your hosting provider. This gives you the ability to dump your host without having to re-configure all your DNS, and also means that you can guarantee that your DNS settings are correct, without having to guess where you're meant to go to get it work.

-- Update --

I've done an nslookup on your domain, and the MX records look totally correct:

> set q=mx
> christian-linux.com
Server:  enetsdc1.enets.local

Address:  192.168.161.2

Non-authoritative answer:
christian-linux.com     MX preference = 10, mail exchanger = aspmx3.googlemail.com
christian-linux.com     MX preference = 1, mail exchanger = aspmx.l.google.com
christian-linux.com     MX preference = 5, mail exchanger = alt1.aspmx.l.google.com
christian-linux.com     MX preference = 5, mail exchanger = alt2.aspmx.l.google.com
christian-linux.com     MX preference = 10, mail exchanger = aspmx2.googlemail.com

aspmx3.googlemail.com   internet address = 72.14.213.27

aspmx2.googlemail.com   internet address = 74.125.43.27

That all looks correct, so I'd say it's just a propogation thing.