ietf-smtp
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RE: domain name definition in RFC2821

2006-04-22 01:43:37

By the way the "ws." syntax appears "invalid" according to every RFC I read.

-----Original Message-----
From: Valdis(_dot_)Kletnieks(_at_)vt(_dot_)edu 
[mailto:Valdis(_dot_)Kletnieks(_at_)vt(_dot_)edu]
Sent: Saturday, April 22, 2006 1:13 AM
To: william(at)elan.net
Cc: Yuri Inglikov; ietf-smtp(_at_)imc(_dot_)org
Subject: Re: domain name definition in RFC2821

postmaster(_at_)ws ?

ws.                     21600   IN      MX      10 mail.worldsite.ws.

Gaak.  I hope that's not a wildcard MX. ;)

A 4AM re-reading of 2821 seems to indicate that's a *legal* setup.  But
I suspect there are *so* many software packages that will try to convert
'@ws' to a FQDN at message submission time as per 2821, section 6.3:

   The following changes to a message being processed MAY be applied
   when necessary by an originating SMTP server, or one used as the
   target of SMTP as an initial posting protocol:

   -  Addition of a message-id field when none appears

   -  Addition of a date, time or time zone when none appears

   -  Correction of addresses to proper FQDN format

(For instance, on my Fedora Linux box, the default resolv.conf setting of
'options ndots:1' means that 'ws' will be canonalized to a FQDN, while
'ws.' will behave the way Yuri apparently expects 'ws' to work.  Now
try to explain to your average end user why 'postmaster(_at_)ws' and
'postmaster(_at_)ws(_dot_)' do different things....