[svlug] Sendmail Frustrations

[Seth David Schoen]

George Bonser writes:

> On Sun, 1 Nov 1998, Seth David Schoen wrote:
> 
> > The default for SMTP is to use DNS.  In particular, sendmail will _not_
> > respect your /etc/hosts, which can be annoying.  It will function as an
> > ordinary resolver client which needs to talk to a DNS server, and which will
> > believe what (and only what) that server tells it.
> 
> WHAT!!! Red Hat configures Sendmail so that it MUST have DNS?!? That is
> rather arrogant. I can understand a search for an MX that fails or times
> out but it should then use the address in /etc/hosts once all else fails.
> There are a lot of hosts on a lot of nets that have no DNS server handy
> (email sent while the PPP interface is down, mail sent from sites with
> only uucp connectivity.)
> 
> It SHOULD send an email to a host if it can find the entry in /etc/hosts.
> If it will not, it should be reported to Red Hat as a bug.

If I remember correctly, sendmail on various versions of Slackware and
Red Hat never defaulted to reading /etc/hosts.  Take a look on your favorite
Red Hat or Slackware box, and I think you'll find this behavior.

This somehow feels natural to me by now, if annoying.  It does guarantee a
higher level of consistency between namespaces as seen from different
hosts.

On the other hand, I guess it should at least be well-documented how to turn
it on.

-- 
   Seth David Schoen L&S '01 (undeclared) / schoen at uclink4.berkeley.edu
He said, "This is what the king who will reign over you will do."  And they
said, "Nay, but we will have a king over us, that we also may be like all the
nations." (1 Sam 8)  http://ishmael.geecs.org/~sigma/   http://www.loyalty.org/

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