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	   |		    |
+---------------------------------------------------+