Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!turnkey!jackv
From: jackv@turnkey.tcc.com (Jack F. Vogel)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.aix
Subject: Re: Sendmail and MX records.
Message-ID: <1990Oct03.131111.23523@turnkey.tcc.com>
Date: 3 Oct 90 13:11:11 GMT
References: <14315@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Reply-To: jackv@turnkey.TCC.COM (Jack F. Vogel)
Organization: Turnkey Computer Consultants, Westchester, CA
Lines: 36

In article <14315@hydra.gatech.EDU> scott@prism.gatech.EDU (Scott Holt) writes:
>
>Does anyone know of a way to make Sendmail under AIX 3.1 understand
>nameserver MX records? Our primary mail drop here is a domain called
>prism.gatech.edu - which is actually an MX record pointing to 
>hydra.gatech.edu in our name server. Our 6000s seem to have trouble 
>sending mail to the prism domain; they claim that its an unknown host.
 
>If the big clue here is something other than "port Sendmail 5.61", please
>let me know. 
 

Although the 3.1 sendmail is not a pure 5.61 port, it definitely does have
the getmxrr code in it. As Robert Fries noted in another posting, it even
has code for using other type records, although without server support this
isn't particularly useful at the moment. So, I don't think your answer is
to port 5.61.

I would be fairly confident that there's a problem in your sendmail.cf. Before
the routine getmxrr is called the options to the resolver to append the default
domainname and to do a domain search are turned off, so you must be sure that
this routine is passed a fully qualified name, otherwise the lookup will
fail. This means you must pass whatever smtp mailer you are calling the fully
qualified name. I have seen this problem in some of the sendmail.cf files
used internally here at Locus. That is where I would begin. Also, if this
is really a problem, have you called and opened an official problem report
with IBM? You should do so if you haven't. 

Good Luck!

Disclaimer: I speak for myself, not my employer.

-- 
Jack F. Vogel			jackv@locus.com
AIX370 Technical Support	       - or -
Locus Computing Corp.		jackv@turnkey.TCC.COM