[plug] explicit e-mail routing; postfix/sendmail

[Mike Holland]

folks,

The MX records pointing to a Telstra SMTP server at 203.24.170.3 have
gone. Is there a way to address mail to that server? ie explicit manual
routing?  I vaguely remember seeing this kind of thing.
   The server was refered to by an MX record for the mobilenet.telstra.net
domain, but thats gone. So is the mailhost.mobilenet.telstra.net alias.
  The name tmd-liv1.mobilenet.telstra.net still exists, and I can telnet
directly to the SMTP port, and 'forge' a mail.
  BUT, and I dont understand this, if I send an e-mail to that domain, it
sits in the mail queue:

  -Queue ID- --Size-- ----Arrival Time---- -Sender/Recipient-------
  A78D721AC       358 Wed Aug 15 13:53:03  myk at donau.golden.wattle.id.au
  (Name service error for domain tmd-liv1.mobilenet.telstra.net: Host not
  found, try again)

  61409xxxxxx at tmd-liv1.mobilenet.telstra.net

(actual phone number removed for the archives)
Why is sendmail... wait - I'm running postfix now, and so is spark.
Just tried to send from a sendmail host, and it connects.
So is postfix insisting on an MX record, while sendmail accepts a hostname
in the e-mail address, as a fallback?
...Wait! Sendmail didnt actually work either. Log shows:

  Aug 15 14:17:51 salween sendmail[13621]: OAA13619:
  to=61409xxxxxx at tmd-liv1.mobilenet.telstra.net, ctladdr=myk (501/501),
  delay=00:00:38, xdelay=00:00:33, mailer=esmtp,
  relay=tmd-liv1.mobilenet.telstra.net., stat=Deferred: Name server:
  tmd-liv1.mobilenet.telstra.net.: host name lookup failure

Q1) Why doesnt mail to ... at tmd-liv1.mobilenet.telstra.net work?
    A manual telnet to port 25 works OK.

Q2) How can I get procmail/sendmail (on my ISP) to forward mails
    directly to the given server, when the MX record has gone?

here is the DNS:

% dnsquery tmd-liv1.mobilenet.telstra.net
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 52529
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 3, ADDITIONAL: 4
;;      tmd-liv1.mobilenet.telstra.net, type = ANY, class = IN
tmd-liv1.mobilenet.telstra.net.  41m44s IN A  203.24.170.3
mobilenet.telstra.net.  41m40s IN NS    tmd-dev1.mobilenet.telstra.net.
mobilenet.telstra.net.  41m40s IN NS    tmd-liv1.mobilenet.telstra.net.
mobilenet.telstra.net.  41m40s IN NS    ns1.telstra.net.
tmd-dev1.mobilenet.telstra.net.  41m44s IN A  203.24.170.2
tmd-liv1.mobilenet.telstra.net.  41m44s IN A  203.24.170.3
ns1.telstra.net.        32m38s IN A     139.130.4.5
ns1.telstra.net.        32m38s IN A     203.50.0.24


-- 
Mike Holland  <mike at golden.wattle.id.au>
                          --==--
When a cow laughs, does milk come out of its nose?