Bill Moseley wrote: > On Fri, Jan 26, 2007 at 06:13:11AM +0800, W B Hacker wrote: >> Digging @ns1.hank.org and @ns2.hank.org finds that the record type is odd. >> i.e. there is an 'A' record as well as an 'MX' record for the mailserver, >> but no >> 'A' record for the bare domain.tld. >> >> If it were my domain, I would: >> >> - add an 'A' record for whmoseley.com > > That's what I was wondering. But, is that required? > I mean, isn't this everything that should be needed to find the > machine?
That depends to some extent on the software ATT is using. Understanding that all you want to publish is the mailserver, it is still, just IMNSHO, not necessarily a 'good thing' to have no 'A' record for the bare <domain>.<tld>. i haven't researched whether it is is / is not a standards violation, but lots of things rely on the'A' recpord for the 'raw' <domain>.<tld> and some of these MAY be used by SOME mailservers - ident callouts, to name one. I am also of the opinion that having BOTH an 'A' AND an 'MX' entry, plus, ISTR, the (only?) SOA attached exclusively to the mailserver only is not what folks expect either. > > $ dig mx whmoseley.com. > ;; ANSWER SECTION: > whmoseley.com. 86400 IN MX 5 mail.whmoseley.com. > > $ dig A mail.whmoseley.com. > ;; ANSWER SECTION: > mail.whmoseley.com. 86400 IN A 63.205.225.170 > > Clearly it's worked for all other senders for a few years. Maybe > att.net has one picky MTA that doing extra tests on the DNS. > > >> - pull the 'A' record for mail.whmoseley.com >> >> - optionally add an 'MX' record for mx.whmoseley.com >> (some folks do seek that....) > > Do you mean literally "mx." ? > Actually yes. One can easily have both 'mail.<domain>.<tld>' and 'mx.<domain>.<tld>' in the record - both as 'MX' entries, and with the same IP and priority. Last year on one of our servers we did have a problem with a correspondent that was looking for the unexpected one. Providing both solved that issue for us. No idea how common that might be - it was only the one sender, but one we needed to correspond with on a regular basis. But AFAIK, mx.<whatever> and mail.<whatever> MX records are harmless, your entries less so. QED. Bill -- ## List details at http://www.exim.org/mailman/listinfo/exim-users ## Exim details at http://www.exim.org/ ## Please use the Wiki with this list - http://www.exim.org/eximwiki/
