Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!eecae!cps3xx!usenet From: usenet@cps3xx.UUCP (Usenet file owner) Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail Subject: Re: sendmail, the resolver and /etc/hosts Message-ID: <717@cps3xx.UUCP> Date: 23 Sep 88 20:55:29 GMT References: <713@ncar.ucar.edu> <1469@valhalla.ee.rochester.edu><1473@valhalla.ee.rochester.edu> <285@hal.UUCP> <729@ncar.ucar.edu> <286@hal.UUCP> <733@ncar.ucar.edu> <287@hal.UUCP> Organization: Engineering, Michigan State U., E. Lansing MI Lines: 30 In-reply-to: ane@hal.UUCP's message of 21 Sep 88 21:41:53 GMT In article <287@hal.UUCP>, ane@hal.UUCP (Aydin Edguer) writes: >In article <733@ncar.ucar.edu> woods@handies.UCAR.EDU (Greg Woods) writes: > (...) >>All they know is that they can FTP there but they can't mail there, >>and in their eyes it is my fault, since I'm in charge of mail. >[note: this should never happen on your machine since ftp uses > the nameserver too! Unless your running with improperly compiled > programs.] There are still a few sites out there (like this one) which don't have software for full nameserver support. We're running SunOS 3.5 (yes, we should upgrade to 4.0, but convincing everyone of this, especially when their software would break, is hard). We have a patched version of sendmail that uses the name server; nothing else does yet. So we have the same problem, at least until we convert over to 4.0 (just when is management's decision). So sometimes we need workarounds for these sorts of things. Convincing people around here to upgrade is hard (some machines are still running 2.x!!!). I agree that looking in /etc/hosts could slow down the conversion process (to nameservers); however, we aren't really going there right now anyway. Anton Rang DISCLAIMER: All opinions and mistakes are either my own, or those of an alien which has taken over my mind (who knows which?). +---------------------------------------------------+ | Anton Rang (grad student) | "VMS forever!" | | Michigan State University | | +---------------------------------------------------+