by josh » Mon May 08, 2006 6:10 pm
preservationcoalition.org doesn't have an 'A' record, rather it has a 'CNAME' record pointing to preserv.bfn.org
I believe sendmail takes the 'CNAME' record with priority over the MX record(s) for the hostname, and then tries to send the mail to preserv.bfn.org rather than the MX host(s).
I know that whenever I set up an MX record, BIND insists that the hostname used for the MX designation correspond to an 'A' record, and won't allow me to specify a hostname that has only a 'CNAME' record. Evidently, the DNS service you're using doesn't place that same restriction.
I'm not sure we can change the behavior of sendmail in this regard, and if we can, I'd be afraid to because of the potential effects on other domains. Can you put in an 'A' record for preservationcoalition.org, pointing it to the IP address of the top priorty MX host? Another way to approach it would be to create an 'A' record for something like mail.preservationcoaltion.org (with the IP address pointing to the existing top priority MX host) and then set mail.preservationcoalition.org to be the top priority MX host for preservationcoalition.org.