Well, it turns out that there _was_ a problem in DNS but it is not the MX
record. The last time someone edited the zone file for mainstream.net, they
tried to comment a line with a # which, just about everywhere else, is
normal. In zone files, this is a big no-no and causes named to reject the
entire file. Hence, the problems with sending mail to the qmail server.
The thing that is weird is that I could send mail to our normal mail hub
(which is running sendmail). Is there something in qmail that would cause
this behavior? And why would nslookup resolve qmail.mainstream.net on the
same server that had trouble sending the mail?
Warren
Andy Bradford wrote:
>
> On Wed, 22 Nov 2000 08:21:10 EST, Warren Small wrote:
>
> > I'm sure a lot of you will say that the problem is obviously a DNS lookup
> > issue but I can lookup this server name successfully from the same server
> > that is having problems talking to the qmail server. This problem is also
> > not confined to one server and I can change the configuration to send the
> > mail to our current mail hub and it will be delivered successfully.
>
> I hate to state the obvious, but yes, it is obviously a problem with
> DNS. Sure, the hostname resolves fine, but your DNS does not return an
> MX for it. See results below:
>
> [andy@mail andy]$ dnsmx qmail.mainstream.net
> dnsmx: fatal: unable to find MX records for qmail.mainstream.net: temporary failure
>
> This should, in the very least return a preference of 0 for the server
> itself. Instead it is failing---something is misconfigured in your
> DNS. The same results can be found with dig:
>
> [andy@mail andy]$ dig qmail.mainstream.net mx
> ; <<>> DiG 8.1 <<>> qmail.mainstream.net mx
> ;; res options: init recurs defnam dnsrch
> ;; got answer:
> ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: SERVFAIL, id: 40425
> ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
> ;; QUERY SECTION:
> ;; qmail.mainstream.net, type = MX, class = IN
>
> Please, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe it is a
> problem with DNS. :-)
>
> Andy
