Not totally obvious. I had an A record, a CNAME pointing the A record, then an MX record pointing to the CNAME. That is a no go. I RTM and fixed my error by making the CNAME the A record and the A record the CNAME. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but the RFC's had a better idea. Usually they win over my [in]sanity. ;) Jason Montleon ----- Original Message ----- From: "M A Young" <m.a.young@durham.ac.uk> To: <psyche-list@redhat.com> Sent: Wednesday, October 16, 2002 12:35 PM Subject: Re: Is Redhat's postman asleep? > 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 > -- Psyche-list mailing list Psyche-list@redhat.com https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/psyche-list
