Computer systems blamed for feeble hurricane response?

Tue Sep 13 15:06:57 UTC 2005

On Tue, 13 Sep 2005, Christian Kuhtz wrote:

> william(at)elan.net wrote:
>
>> 
>> 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).
>
> Uh, which mainstream mail server out there is ignorant enough not to send to 
> A record?

I came around windows mail server that ddnt (not exchange, some small
one that I don't remember now). There are also unix php scripts that
don't work properly with it.

Also earlier versions of postfix did not properly retry delivery if the 
domain had no MX and connection to they server did not work. Other mail 
server may also have various types of "unusual" behavior when they see
no MX. Also some servers like exim have option not to send email if
there is no MX record (or rather turn off default behavior of falling
back to A record if MX is not there).

So having no MX server is really not such a good idea nowdays...

Obviously FEMA's problems are a lot worth since ip address 205.128.1.44
is behind firewall and does not accept port 25 connections.

-- 
William Leibzon
Elan Networks
william at elan.net