On Sun, 27 Jun 1999, Guy Santiglia wrote:

> > Actually, that's not right. There is no chonju21.net. Your mail goes
> > right to guy.chonju21.net. You'll have to ask him to set up an MX
> > record, or alternate MX record for you.
> > 
> > Attached is what a real mx record looks like: enteract.com is mx'd to
> > four different machines; fb.sa.enteract.com isn't mx'd at all. 
> 
>   I took a look at that mx record you sent.  I don't quite understand
> this mx record stuff.  Where does this mx record need to be set?  Does it need
> to be set by someone who can assign the domain name?  Or can I do it on the
> linux server that we have in the other room.

The MX record goes on the domain name server for your domain. That's
easy. The hard part is getting someone with another machine to handle
_your_ mail. If you don't have an account on another machine or
control of another machine, you might as well skip it. As long is your
machine is connected most of the time, you shouldn't miss much mail.
If you only reboot to test kernels, say, a sender would get a "no
route to host" while you were down, but then he's supposed to keep
retrying for a day or two.

You can try sending a message to fredb@fb.sa.enteract.com on a weekday
afternoon CDT to see how that works. You'll get some kind of error
from your sendmail at preset intervals for up to a couple of days (if
I could stay of the 'net for that long!) Since I'm really only
connected for a few hours a day, it would be rude to advertise that as
my email address. If I had bought a domain name, I could ask my isp to
mx for me, but since I only have a static ip via a "grandfather
clause" I'm not going to push my luck.