Strange MX Record for altavista.com

Barry Margolin barmar at alum.mit.edu
Thu Sep 2 03:14:32 UTC 2004


In article <ch5mlr$1ioj$1 at sf1.isc.org>,
 Christian Smith <none at i.am.invalid> wrote:

> In article <ch5fte$14et$1 at sf1.isc.org>,
>  Barry Finkel <b19141 at achilles.ctd.anl.gov> wrote:
> 
> > That is a strange MX record.  When that mail system (MX Exchange)
> > tries to send the mail, it opens an SMTP port 25 connection to one of
> > my DNS servers.  Is this what is supposed to happen?  Thanks.
> 
> Well, that MX record is pretty much busted. The mail server -should- 
> probably just barf and refuse to deliver the message, but some other 
> behavior is not too unexpected.

There's no reason for any special-casing.  The mailer should try to look 
up an A record for "." (the root domain).  Since there is no such 
record, it should handle it just like any other MX record that points to 
a name without an A record -- log a complaint and bounce the mail.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***


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