Re: [EXIM] Silly Question

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Author: James FitzGibbon
Date:  
To: James Fidell
CC: Exim
Subject: Re: [EXIM] Silly Question
* James Fidell (james@???) [990414 11:42]:

> Equally, I've heard tell of one admin. who doesn't have any MX records
> for his domain, but puts in an A record for the actual domain name
> and expects all mailers to deliver to that.


According to the RFCs, that's proper behaviour. I don't have a copy of
RFC821 handy, but the IETF draft that will replace it states:

"The lookup first attempts to locate an MX record associated with the name.
If a CNAME record is found instead, the resulting name is processed as if it
were the initial name. If no MX records are found, but an A RR is found,
the A RR is treated as if it was associated with an implicit MX RR, with a
preference of 0, pointing to that host."

So it's ok to do things this way (though not very polite, as it doesn't
provide any backup mail hosts). It would also be improper for an MTA to not
follow this resolution sequence.

Exim does "the right thing" presuming that you don't use the 'gethostbyname'
or 'mx_domains' options in the lookuphost router.

--
j.

James FitzGibbon (JF647)                                        james@???
EHLO Solutions                                         Voice/Fax (416)410-0100


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