I tried to get mail working on two more machines on my home network
(so I could send-pr right there) and stumbled accross on of sendmail
un-orthogonalities.

My *.mc file looks like this:

---8<---
divert(-1)
#
#  HWART - forward all (even local) mail to rumolt
#
divert(0)
include(`../m4/cf.m4')
OSTYPE(bsd4.4)
FEATURE(nodns)
FEATURE(nocanonify)
define(`confMESSAGE_TIMEOUT', 5d/2d)
FEATURE(nullclient, rumolt.teuto.de)
--->8---

Note the "nocanonify" and "nodns". This avoids most DNS lookups on my 
mail host (rumolt.teuto.de).

It doesn't work with this config (or, probably doesn't work as I understand
on the mail host as well, but doesn't matter there) because sendmail now 
insists on looking up the MX record of rumolt.teuto.de before forwarding
the mail to it. I do have DNS configured, but the server is behind the dial-up
connection and I realy don't want it to be used for local mail delivery.

I cannot configure a local DNS, since I don't have authority for the domain
I'm in and would have to do some mystical scripts to named_xfer the zone, 
edit it and update my local version. This is error prone and just looks wrong.

So, there simply must be a way to tell sendmail to never ever touch dns at
all. This should be documented, in the install notes, in the FAQ and maybe
asked for by the setup scripts, as many new users won't have DNS right
from the start or ever at all.

If there is no such feature, I sincereley ask for dropping sendmail completely.


Any hints?


Martin