Re: lookuphost router

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Author: Richard Gilbert
Date:  
To: Philip Hazel
CC: exim-users
Subject: Re: lookuphost router
On Mon, 12 May 1997, Philip Hazel wrote:

> They just set options in the resolver call
>
>   qualify_single    sets the RES_DEFNAMES option
>   search_parents    sets the RES_DNSRCH option

>
> The man page for the resolver that I've got says
>
> RES_DEFNAMES
> If set, res_search will append the default domain name to
> single-component names (those that do not contain a dot).
>
> RES_DNSRCH
> If this option is set, res_search will search for host names in the
> current domain and in parent domains.
>
> I have made a note to say explicitly in the Exim manual that it just
> sets those options and lets the resolver do its stuff.


My man page says pretty much the same...

     RES_DEFNAMES        Append the default domain name to single
                         label queries.  This is the default.


     RES_DNSRCH          Search  up  the  domain  tree  from  the
                         default  domain,  in  all  but  the  top
                         level.  This is the default.


The DNS stuff does what I want it to do so maybe I shouldn't worry. The
bit in the manual which confused me was the sentence: "[search_parents] is
different from the qualify_single option in that it applies to domains
containing dots." I read it as meaning that it only applied to domains
containing dots, but maybe that's just me. There is no need to respond to
this message, Philip. However I have copied it to the list in case there
are any DNS experts out there who might like to comment on the following
observations...

stoat is a host in the same domain as the host on which exim is running,
i.e. shef.ac.uk, so I would like user@stoat to resolve to
user@???. I also want user@cam to resolve to user@???.
If I set qualify_single to false neither of the addresses user@stoat and
user@cam succeeds. If I set qualify_single to true but search_parents to
false then user@cam fails, as I would expect. But...

1. Why should the success or failure of user@cam depend on whether or not
the local domain is appended to the single component, cam?

2. Why doesn't user@stoat get resolved to user@??? when
search_parents is true irrespective of the setting of qualify single?

Richard
--
Richard Gilbert
Corporate Information and Computing Services
University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S10 2TN, UK
Phone: +44 114 222 3028 Fax: +44 114 275 3899