On Wed, 16 Oct 2002, Jesse Keating wrote: > On Wed, 16 Oct 2002 14:23:27 +0100 (BST) > M A Young <m.a.young@durham.ac.uk> wrote: > > # > # I agree having seen that message that my suspicions were wrong, but > # if I > # understand your conclusion correctly; that dsl.pipex.com should have > # an A record as well as an MX record, then I disagree, because it would > # mean that I would be unable to post to this list, and clearly I can. > > RFC's state that MX records must point to an A record. MX records > cannot point directly to an IP address. Most mail servers, including my > own, will _not_ deliver to a domain that has a mis-configured MX record, > and not having MX point to an A record is "mis-configured" in my book. That is obvious, because if the MX record doesn't point to an A record, the mailer has no idea which machine to talk to to try to deliver the mail, so it can't possibly deliver it. What is being discussed here is whether there has to be an A record if there is an MX record with the same name, and I don't believe there is anything in the RFCs that requires that. The reason why many mail domains (eg. redhat.com) happen to have an A record of the same name is to do with lazy web address typing - redhat.com is a CNAME for www.redhat.com, not mx1.redhat.com - but this is a relatively recent phenomenon in internet history. Michael Young -- Psyche-list mailing list Psyche-list@redhat.com https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/psyche-list
