Computer systems blamed for feeble hurricane response?

william(at)elan.net william at elan.net
Tue Sep 13 14:23:33 UTC 2005



>>> The newspaper did not say which computer systems FEMA uses.
>>
>> $ dig mx fema.gov
>> ;; ANSWER SECTION:
>> fima.org.               3600    IN      MX      0 smtp.secureserver.net.
>> fima.org.               3600    IN      MX      10 mailstore1.secureserver.net
>
> That's interesting -- I'm not getting that response.

Sorry about that, as you could probably get from dig, I did it on
fima.gov instead ...

correct one is:

-----------------------------------------------------------------
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;fema.gov.                      IN      MX

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
fema.gov.               1642    IN      SOA     ns.fema.gov. 
root.ns2.fema.gov. 2005090901 10800 3600 604800 1800
-----------------------------------------------------------------


Which indeed means they have no MX servers listed and that MAY be a 
problem for some mail servers (though normally mail servers are supposed 
to send email based on A record then).

Obviously not having MX record is not considered to be good email
service setup in this century and it also means if they receive
too many messages and their mail server can not handle all the
connections, the mail will bounce (since there is no secondary
mail server to go to).

-- 
William Leibzon
Elan Networks
william at elan.net



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