Please Help? MX and domain name issue

[Kevin Darcy]

Why is the webserver listening on the SMTP port at all? I've heard that
most/all of those "stupid mailers" will eventually do an MX query if they
can't connect to the server in the A query...

That's the only thing I can think of to alleviate the problem other than,
of course, just telling folks to fix/replace their broken mailers if they
want to send you mail.

- Kevin

scottf at oit.edu wrote:

> I'm sorry, but my brain is feeling mushy from poring over DNS
> archives.
> Here is my situation. Two servers, one running sendmail / DNS, the
> other running Apache and is the main webserver. Webmaster wants
> domain.edu pointing to the webserver.  Thinks www.domain.edu is too
> hard for people to type. Sendmail masquerades for domain.edu
> addresses, so MX record is in DNS pointing to server running sendmail.
> Some stupid mailers ignore MX records, end up trying to go through the
> IP address associated with domain.edu - hence, the webserver.
> Webserver doesn't relay, bounces messages. Can I have my cake and eat
> it too? That is, have domain.edu point to the webserver, but ensure
> that stupid mailers go through mail server? Current setup is as
> follows:
> $TTL    86400
>
> $ORIGIN edu.
> domain     IN     SOA        server.DOMAIN.EDU.  contact.DOMAIN.EDU. (
>                 2002040904 10800 900 3600000 86400 )
>                 IN     NS           server.domain.EDU.
>                 IN     MX   10    server.domain.edu.
>                 IN     A              <webserver IP address>
>
> $ORIGIN DOMAIN.EDU.
> server       IN     A              <server IP address>
> www         IN     A              <webserver IP address>