[comp.mail.misc] ucbarpa's sendmail config

dheller@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Dan Heller) (01/10/89)

In article <697@utkcs2.cs.utk.edu> moore@cygnusx1.cs.utk.edu (Keith Moore) writes:
>Moral: throw out that /usr/lib/sendmail that came from your CPU vendor and
>use the one from ucbarpa.berkeley.edu.

I'm curious about something.  This config file is used all over berkeley,
as it is at many other sites.  Sometimes, when mail is sent out or when
mail is routed thru said machine, the name-server might fail and your
hostname is not expanded correctly into the fully qualified domain.

The result is the recipient gets mail that says something like:
    From: dheller@cory
As opposed to
    From: dheller@cory.Berkeley.EDU

Many times, I mail to people and they can't reply because "cory" doesn't
make sense (cuz it's not qualified).

The same problem happens when I mail to people at Santa Cruz Operation.
"sco" talks to ucscc.ucsc.edu, so I address the mail:
    To: sco!user@ucscc.ucsc.edu
but when ucsc gets the message, sometimes (when the name server fails to
get info about "ucscc") it rejects the mail with the error:
    ucscc.ucsc.edu: I refuse to talk to myself.

So,  the bottom line is, is it possible to configure a sendmail.cf file
so that if a hostname lookup or a name server lookup fails, it can be
replaced by a known/preset value so that mail can continue to work as
it should.
Dan Heller	<island!argv@sun.com>