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From: jackv@turnkey.tcc.com (Jack F. Vogel)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
Subject: sendmail & nameservice
Message-ID: <1990Dec21.121210.17836@turnkey.tcc.com>
Date: 21 Dec 90 12:12:10 GMT
Reply-To: jackv@turnkey.TCC.COM (Jack F. Vogel)
Organization: Turnkey Computer Consultants, Westchester, CA
Lines: 20

Can someone tell me why sendmail is coded to be "all or nothing", as it were,
dependent on the nameserver? What I mean is that the way things are set up,
if you define NAMED_BIND then getcanonnname() does a res_search() and if that
fails due to a server being down or whatever then you are SOL, in fact, there
is no error checking at all. On the other hand, if NAMED_BIND is not defined
then getcanonname() uses gethostbyname(). Now, at least with AIX the routine
gethostbyname() will first attempt a nameserver query, and if that fails
falls back to parsing the host file. Can someone tell me, particularly other
vendors, how you handle this dichotomy? As things stand if I compile with
NAMED_BIND defined that binary fails for someone not using a nameserver. I
am considering altering getcanonname() to fall back on the host file, but
I was wondering whether there was something I was missing?? Has no-one run
into this before???

Any enlightenment appreciated.

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