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Date:      Mon, 20 May 2002 12:57:55 -0700
From:      Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>
To:        Damon Anton Permezel <dap@damon.com>
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: 4.6-* sendmail misfeatures
Message-ID:  <3CE95543.122D22FF@mindspring.com>
References:  <20020520105154.E962@damon.com>

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Damon Anton Permezel wrote:
> Further investigation dug up this manifesto in the sendmail README:
> 
>         When attempting to canonify a hostname, some broken name
>         servers will return SERVFAIL (a temporary failure) on T_AAAA
>         (IPv6) lookups.  If you want to excuse this behavior, include
>         WorkAroundBrokenAAAA in ResolverOptions.  However, instead,
>         we recommend catching the problem and reporting it to the
>         name server administrator so we can rid the world of broken
>         name servers.
> 
> So, in violation of the networking "be liberal in what you accept and
> conservative in what you produce", sendmail in it's new form will have many
> perplexed sysadmins spending lots of time tracking down these mysterious
> failures.
> 
> I suggest that the version of sendmail configs shipped with FreeBSD
> should default to having WorkAroundBrokenAAAA set by default.

FreeBSD has a history of enabling T/TCP by default (among other RFC
compliance TCP options in the rc.conf), which originally broke things
like Livingston Portmasters (which tended to respond, incorrectly,
with "Christmas Tree" packets).

I don't think it's incorrect to do this, so long as you are in
strict compliance with the RFC's.

I don't think "Be conservative in what you produce" was intended
to promote the use of down-rev protocols.  If I were similarly
"conservative in what you produce" when it came to HTTP clients,
then I would ver support HTTPS, since I would always conservatively
try HTTP first.

If the "workaround" disables IPv6 support, then it is no workaround
(IMO).

-- Terry

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