On Wed, Jan 12, 2000 at 11:25:31AM -0000, John Horne wrote:
> On 11-Jan-00 at 18:16:40 Dave C. wrote:
> > CNAMES provide a way of doing this by mapping 'logical' or 'functional'
> > hostnames onto real hostnames. I dont think that was its original
> > purpose, but there isnt anything else that does..
> >
> You are actually right in our case, and that is in fact one reason why I
> asked the original question. Internally we do use a CNAME for the mailhub
> simply because users ask which POP server to use, which mailhub (smtp
> system), etc.
Indeed, and I imagine that practically every site does this. But this
is different from using them for MXs...
> It was easier to assign it an alias and let everyone know that. We then
> simply change the one CNAME entry. The current DNS zone files are built by a
> convoluted procedure. If that gets sorted out then, yes, I would rather use
> the canonical name.
Ah, ok.
I suppose if your zone file was an m4 file, then you could have:
define(MAILHOST, `flux')dnl
@ IN MX 5 MAILHOST
@ IN MX 10 wisp # relayhost
@ IN MX 10 metz # relayhost
smtp IN CNAME MAILHOST
pop IN CNAME MAILHOST
imap IN CNAME MAILHOST
flux IN A 10.0.1.1
wisp IN A 10.0.1.2
meta IN A 10.0.1.3
But I guess that's no use to you :}
SHR
--
Steve Haslam, Production Engineer, Excite UK steve.haslam@???
i sit and stare at the gun pointed at my head
and think about all the possibilities