Path: utzoo!dptcdc!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!parmelee
From: parmelee@wayback.cs.cornell.edu (Larry Parmelee)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
Subject: Re: MX records...
Keywords: vicious circle...
Message-ID: <27008@cornell.UUCP>
Date: 18 Apr 89 12:01:16 GMT
References: <5140@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Sender: nobody@cornell.UUCP
Reply-To: parmelee@wayback.cs.cornell.edu (Larry Parmelee)
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY
Lines: 21

In article <5140@hubcap.clemson.edu> hubcap@hubcap.clemson.edu 
(Mike Marshall) writes:
> host X has two MX records           10 -> host X
>                                     20 -> host Y
> 
> When X is down, mail for X from all over the Internet queues up on
> host Y.  [But] When Y tries to send mail to X and X's address MXs 
> over to Y... 
> 
> 553 Local configuration error, hostname not recognized as local

That little gotcha isn't documented as clearly as it probably
should be....  The "w" macro in sendmail.cf must be set to your
site's full official internet name (which is also the name that
appears on the MX records).  If "hostname" on your machine
returns something other than the fully-domain-qualified official
hostname, you'll have to explicitly set the "w" macro to be the
official name.

-Larry Parmelee
parmelee@cs.cornell.edu