However, the O'Reilley "DNS and BIND" book does recommend that you always use MX
records (p 94, 3rd ed). Although it is not required, apparently.
Of course, this does not answer the problem which originated this thread. Mr.
McKenna is apparently too snide to care, but it seems he is right, so I guess he may
now gloat at will. Some people are like that.
Adam McKenna wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 07, 2000 at 12:03:55PM +0200, Jost Krieger wrote:
> > On Thu, Sep 07, 2000 at 01:48:00AM -0400, Adam McKenna wrote:
> >
> > > 2) It is *not* the frigging MX record. That has nothing to do with it. Any
> > > mailer that breaks when there is only an A record is a broken mailer.
> >
> > And who says so? I'm sure every mailer SHOULD fall back to the A record,
> > but the RFCs don't demand it.
>
> RFC 974 January 1986
> Mail Routing and the Domain System
>
> [snip]
>
> Issuing a Query
>
> The first step for the mailer at LOCAL is to issue a query for MX RRs
> for REMOTE. It is strongly urged that this step be taken every time
> a mailer attempts to send the message. The hope is that changes in
> the domain database will rapidly be used by mailers, and thus domain
> administrators will be able to re-route in-transit messages for
> defective hosts by simply changing their domain databases.
>
> [snip]
>
> If the response does not contain an error response, and does not
> contain aliases, its answer section should be a (possibly zero
> length) list of MX RRs for domain name REMOTE (or REMOTE's true
> domain name if REMOTE was a alias). The next section describes how
> this list is interpreted.
>
> Interpreting the List of MX RRs
>
> NOTE: This section only discusses how mailers choose which names to
> try to deliver a message to, working from a list of RR's. It does
> not discuss how the mailers actually make delivery.
>
> [snip]
>
> It is possible that the list of MXs in the response to the query will
> be empty. This is a special case. If the list is empty, mailers
> should treat it as if it contained one RR, an MX RR with a preference
> value of 0, and a host name of REMOTE.
>
> Thanks for playing.
>
> --Adam
--
__ Jack O'Toole
__ Vice President
__ QWSI.net Inc.
__ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
