jordan@nike.UUCP (07/13/86)
Rob McMahon <cudcv@daisy.warwick.ac.uk> writes: attempts to get there get refused at berkeley. >> From MAILER-DAEMON@EDU.BERKELEY.UCBVAX Fri Jul 4 13:48:30 1986 >> Subject: Returned mail: Host unknown >> >> ----- Transcript of session follows ----- >> 550 rice.edu.tcp... 550 Host unknown >> 550 <SUN-SPOTS@RICE.EDU>... Host unknown OUCH. (first of all, it's not entirely clear why it went to ucbvax anyways) In any case, this is real trouble. rice.edu is in fact a legit hostname, the problem is one with the nameserver ucbvax is running. Sendmail has been hacked up to present several different "grades" of error conditions dealing with the ability (or lack of therein) to resolve a domained address into an IP address. The gethostby*() routines now give a better idea of what is going on if they can't give you the answer. For instance, if it just can't find an answer (due to a down server somewhere, or an unexistant domain that no one will _authoritatively_ deny, it will return a transient error, and keep the message in the queue for up to the time out period, with the hope that the next time the queue is run the nameserver will have a better chance. Evidently, when you sent your message, ucbvax was experiencing nameserver troubles and somewhere someone claimed authoritatively that rice.edu didn't exist ... the last time I saw this happen was when the time servers around UCB experienced a time warp and jumped ahead 20 years, timing out the entries for the root servers and giving "the power of god" to the local servers, who, of course, had never heard of .arpa ... I would just resend. /jordan