On Fri, 26 Jan 2007, W B Hacker wrote:
> Understanding that all you want to publish is the mailserver, it is
> still, just IMNSHO, not necessarily a 'good thing' to have no 'A' record
> for the bare <domain>.<tld>. i haven't researched whether it is is / is
> not a standards violation, but lots of things rely on the'A' recpord for
> the 'raw' <domain>.<tld> and some of these MAY be used by SOME
> mailservers - ident callouts, to name one.
Ignoring the supposed ident callouts, what other "things" would be relying
on me having an 'A' record called 'strath.ac.uk'? Other than vetoing the
idea that we should have a web server answer on that address, I have never
come across any other use for such.
Indeed, our worthy contributor Peter Bowyer <peter@???> reported a
few years ago on SPAM-L that MyDoom.O/M sent direct-to-A as well as to MX,
and noted:
"Time to remove the A record, and (as I should have done ages ago), ACL
the mailbox server so it only allows SMTP from the MXs."
(assuming that message wasn't a forgery in his name! :)
So I would love to hear of a good reason for needing, or desirability for
having, an A record called 'strath.ac.uk'.
Jethro.
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Jethro R Binks
Computing Officer, IT Services
University Of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
