[EXIM] check_dns_names not working?

I am trying to figure if I'm doing something wrong, check_dns_names is
not working correctly in 2.02, or perhaps something else. (This is
on a Red Hat Linux 5.1 box.) I upgraded straight from 1.92 to 2.02 this
evening.

I received a piece of mail which caused exim to abort grabbing mail from
my pop server. I can manually reproduce the problem, for example:


[bob@pixel]; telnet localhost 25
Trying 127.0.0.1...
220 pixel.foo.bar ESMTP Exim 2.02 #1 Fri, 7 Aug 1998 03:05:42 -0400
Escape character is '^]'.
Connected to localhost.
EHLO localhost
250-pixel.foo.bar Hello root at localhost [127.0.0.1]
[snip]
MAIL FROM:<root@???_lux>
501 <root@???_lux>: malformed address: _lux> may not follow
<root@???
RCPT TO:<bob@localhost>
503 No sender yet given
QUIT
221 pixel.foo.bar closing connection
Connection closed by foreign host.


And, yes, that root@???_lux did show up in the headers <ugh!>.

I figured the problem was 'check_dns_names' doing its job, so I set it to
false in the config file. Ran the test again. Same thing. In order to
satisfy myself exim wasn't somehow reading the config file incorrectly, I
went into src/globals.c and changed check_dns_names to default to FALSE.
Recompiled and ran the test again. Same result. <scratch head>

I reinstalled 1.92. It let the message go through with no problems.
The odd thing is the final From: and Return-Path: headers show a properly
formed address.

If check_dns_names is part of the problem, why can't I turn off? (I only did
a little digging at this late hour.)

I know the *real* problem the original sender. <sigh> A filter to bounce
junk like this would be nice, but first exim has to accept it. :) If
anyone wants, I can post the full headers of the received message. BTW,
the message was *not* spam, but legit mail to another list.

Thanks for any clues. :)

       bob
-- 
bob billson     email: kc2wz@???  -or-  bob-bee@???     ham: kc2wz
   (\                               /)                             
  {|||8-  second year beekeeper  -8|||}          Linux!  Because there's no
   (/      2 colonies--now  :)      \)                   place like $HOME.

--
*** Exim information can be found at http://www.exim.org/ ***