Stefano, I really appreciate your help in this ordeal.
I copied your response to Register. According them, RFCs are now simply 'suggestions'... Is that true? I thought they were already mandatory. The one thing that is still nagging at me is the fact that James is widely used, and Register.com is not exactly a tiny outfit. Yet I'm the only person in the world having this problem (????). According to what everyone has said, it would seem EVERY instance of James in the world sending mail to any domain hosted by Register.com would have the same problem. I don't see it. I don't know any other domains offhand that are hosted by Register. I'd love to find out that other mx records are actually correct at Register. In the meantime, apparently two wrongs will have to make a right. If you could consider adding the incorrect implementation to deal with screwups like Register, I'd appreciate it. Here is their response... I give up.... ================================= Thank you for contacting Register.com. We understand your position, and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. However, as the email from apache stated, many services support the aliased mx records we are currently using as the RFCs are still suggested practices. Until such time that the RFC guidelines become mandatory, our email services will remain in the manner they are currently configured for our customers. You can disable the cname check on your end to have the emails send/receive properly, however we do not have plans to make changes to our mx records at this time. -----Original Message----- From: Stefano Bagnara [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 03, 2006 3:16 AM To: James Users List Subject: Re: "Can't find DNS for domain" when domain does exist JWM wrote: > Stefano, > > The domain in question is: brandilyncollins.com # host -t mx brandilyncollins.com brandilyncollins.com mail is handled by 0 mxmail.register.com. # host -t a mxmail.register.com. mxmail.register.com is an alias for rcom-outblaze-com.mr.outblaze.com. rcom-outblaze-com.mr.outblaze.com has address 205.158.62.41 rcom-outblaze-com.mr.outblaze.com has address 205.158.62.200 rcom-outblaze-com.mr.outblaze.com has address 205.158.62.206 rcom-outblaze-com.mr.outblaze.com has address 205.158.62.207 rcom-outblaze-com.mr.outblaze.com has address 205.158.62.229 rcom-outblaze-com.mr.outblaze.com has address 205.158.62.230 So, it is clear that the mx host name for brandilyncollins.com does not have A or RR but instead it only provide a CNAME. The specification is REALLY clear about this, you can see that they provided a full paragraph to say that an hostname used as MX record must NEVER be a CNAME (alias) RFC2181 10.3: "Thus, if an alias is used as the value of an NS or MX record, no address will be returned with the NS or MX value.". If I understand correctly, supporting the CNAME for the MX would be AGAINST the rfc. So the problem is that RFC is extremely clear but Sendmail, postfix, qmail, and exim, all support the aliased MXs. We could consider to add this option to James, too, but don't expect to happen soon. "The Register" is not RFC compliant, so they are not providing a compliant DNS service, and you should complain again. I added an "improvement request" in our issue tracker to remember this issue. Stefano ----------------------- here is the full 10.3 paragraph from rfc2181 (Clarifications to the DNS Specification) 10.3. MX and NS records The domain name used as the value of a NS resource record, or part of the value of a MX resource record must not be an alias. Not only is the specification clear on this point, but using an alias in either of these positions neither works as well as might be hoped, nor well fulfills the ambition that may have led to this approach. This domain name must have as its value one or more address records. Currently those will be A records, however in the future other record types giving addressing information may be acceptable. It can also have other RRs, but never a CNAME RR. Searching for either NS or MX records causes "additional section processing" in which address records associated with the value of the record sought are appended to the answer. This helps avoid needless extra queries that are easily anticipated when the first was made. Additional section processing does not include CNAME records, let alone the address records that may be associated with the canonical name derived from the alias. Thus, if an alias is used as the value of an NS or MX record, no address will be returned with the NS or MX value. This can cause extra queries, and extra network burden, on every query. It is trivial for the DNS administrator to avoid this by resolving the alias and placing the canonical name directly in the affected record just once when it is updated or installed. In some particular hard cases the lack of the additional section address records in the results of a NS lookup can cause the request to fail. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
