>Ok.. let me rephrase my question: do you know one MTA which is so stupid
>that it will not deliver to a secondary MX if the primary MX is down?
Yes; I don't know WHAT it is, but I have headers. See below...
First, some background, and another reason the Primary MX isn't always
available: In Xerox, there are many many mail domains
(xis.xerox.com,adoc.xerox.com,etc. etc.). All mailservers are behind the
firewall. To get mail, the Primary is the mail server, and the secondary MX
host is a firewall mail relay. So, in my case,
xis.xerox.com preference = 10, mail exchanger = terminator.xis.xerox.com
xis.xerox.com preference = 100, mail exchanger = mailer-east.xerox.com
where terminator is my local internal mail server, and mailer-east is on the
firewall.
Mail servers try to reach terminator, fail because there's no route, and
back off to try mailer-east. The succeed, mailer-east passes the mail
along, and we get our mail.
The benefit of doing it this way (or so I assume) is that no one has to
keep a central list of what the mailserver for any given Xerox domain is.
The owner of that domain and that mailserver generally also owns DNS for
that domain, and can change the final mail host through DNS without ever
having to figure out who in Xerox they'd need to talk to about changing
things. Instead of a 'smtproutes' file with N entries for N Xerox entities,
all of which shift around like jumping beans, the bookeeping is distributed
via DNS.
Now, as to the broken mail client: A friend forwarded me this bounce.
The way I read it, the mail server didn't back off to try the secondary.
I'd love to figure out what the mail server is, based on this version
number: (5.65v3.2/1.1.8.2/23Jun97-1209PM)
Here's the bounce:
----- Transcript of session follows -----
While talking to terminator.xis.xerox.com:
>>> QUIT
<<< 421 eagle.nhes.state.nh.us Sorry, unable to contact destination SMTP
daemon.
421 terminator.xis.xerox.com (smtp)... Deferred: Connection reset by peer
during greeting wait with terminator.xis.xerox.com
----- Unsent message follows -----
Received: from [172.23.31.84] by alfraido.nhes.state.nh.us;
(5.65v3.2/1.1.8.2/23Jun97-1209PM)
id AA25444; Wed, 13 Jan 1999 15:04:16 -0500
Message-Id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.5 (16)
I assume the bounce doesn't come from the PC with Eudora light, as there
are three hosts in this list (alfraido, eagle, and 172.23.31.84). But other
than that version string, no sign of the bouncer's ID...
--
gowen -- Greg Owen -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
