Regarding the hosts file and the line "127.0.0.1   mail.domain.tld mail  localhost.localdomain localhost"
If i have multiple lines with different ips, should i make all look the same or just the 127.0.0.1 ?
should i remove the rest?
i believe my lookup error has something to do with this

edit: I did some more searching online and it seems i need to have the loopback ip and the external ip
so now, the hosts file is looking like this:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
external_ip mail.domain.tld mail

when i do a nslookup on the mail domain it gives the proper server ip
when i do a dig on the mail domain it also gives the proper info ip
mynetworks variable in postfix gives 127.0.0.1 using the postconf mynetworks command
using the vmail name and password from the config files i can login to mysql

i could do a server reinstall but i am afraid it will give the same results