[CentOS] sendmail config problem

Sun May 21 03:19:38 UTC 2006
Paul R. Ganci <ganci at nurdog.com>

Les Mikesell wrote:

>You appear to have a wild-card mx for *.nurdog.com but aren't
>set up to handle all the possible names.   What should happen
>even if you add your domain to the unresolvable one is that
>
>you would still get a 'host not found' from the dns lookup.
>
Thanks Les I believe I understand now. I don't have a wild-card mx but I 
think I know where you were going with this. My zone file was originally 
put together by my ISP:

$ORIGIN nurdog.com.
$TTL 5h
;
@               IN      SOA     ns1.mric.net. support.mric.net. (
                                2006021901      ; serial
                                1h              ; refresh
                                30m             ; retry
                                7d              ; expiration
                                1h )            ; minimum
;
@               NS              ns1.mric.net.
@               NS              ns2.mric.net.

@               A       204.144.183.66
*              A       204.144.183.66

;
nurdog.com.     IN TXT  "v=spf1 a mx a:mail.nurdog.com a:smtp.nurdog.com 
~all"
@               MX      1       nureyev.nurdog.com.

I never changed anything from the original setup after I took control. 
With the wild-card A record I will never get a host not found error. 
Just now I removed the wild card A record and placed only explicit 
entries for hosts which I know about. Now I get the desired behavior:

# sendmail -bt -C./sendmail.cf
ADDRESS TEST MODE (ruleset 3 NOT automatically invoked)
Enter <ruleset> <address>
 > 3,0 jdavidson4 at home.com
canonify           input: jdavidson4 @ home . com
Canonify2          input: jdavidson4 < @ home . com >
Canonify2        returns: jdavidson4 < @ home . com >
canonify         returns: jdavidson4 < @ home . com >
parse              input: jdavidson4 < @ home . com >
Parse0             input: jdavidson4 < @ home . com >
Parse0           returns: jdavidson4 < @ home . com >
ParseLocal         input: jdavidson4 < @ home . com >
ParseLocal       returns: jdavidson4 < @ home . com >
Parse1             input: jdavidson4 < @ home . com >
Mailertable        input: < home . com > jdavidson4 < @ home . com >
Mailertable        input: home . < com > jdavidson4 < @ home . com >
Mailertable      returns: jdavidson4 < @ home . com >
Mailertable      returns: jdavidson4 < @ home . com >
MailerToTriple     input: < > jdavidson4 < @ home . com >
MailerToTriple   returns: jdavidson4 < @ home . com >
Parse1           returns: $# esmtp $@ home . com $: jdavidson4 < @ home 
. com >
parse            returns: $# esmtp $@ home . com $: jdavidson4 < @ home 
. com >

Thanks for pointing this out ... it was driving me crazy.

-- 
Paul (ganci at nurdog.com)