From owner-freebsd-questions  Tue Sep  3 05:14:02 1996
Return-Path: owner-questions
Received: (from root@localhost)
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id FAA25061
          for questions-outgoing; Tue, 3 Sep 1996 05:14:02 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from Campino.Informatik.RWTH-Aachen.DE (campino.Informatik.RWTH-Aachen.DE [137.226.225.2])
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id FAA25051
          for <freebsd-questions@freefall.FreeBSD.org>; Tue, 3 Sep 1996 05:13:52 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de (gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de [137.226.31.2]) by Campino.Informatik.RWTH-Aachen.DE (RBI-Z-5/8.6.12)
	with ESMTP id OAA10345 for <freebsd-questions@freefall.FreeBSD.org>; Tue, 3 Sep 1996 14:09:04 +0200
Received: (from kuku@localhost) by gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de (8.6.11/8.6.9) id OAA09999 for freebsd-questions@freefall.cdrom.com; Tue, 3 Sep 1996 14:21:23 +0200
Date: Tue, 3 Sep 1996 14:21:23 +0200
From: Christoph Kukulies <kuku@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de>
Message-Id: <199609031221.OAA09999@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de>
To: freebsd-questions@freefall.FreeBSD.org
Subject: mail delivery Q
Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk


My professor came to me today saying that his collaboration members
were complaining that they (some of them) received mail from him
with an 8 hour delay. He asked me how come and I looked into
/var/maillog where I could find that he sent said mail at 12:25.
The recipients were some users@host and somealias@domain.
The users@host received their mail immediately. Only the aliased (at the
destination) recipients were suffering from that long delay.

As I understand, sendmail resolves the host and contacts the host's
sendmail directly to deliver the mail, right? What happens in the case of
the host portion actually isn't a host but a domain? Does sendmail
send to the smart host (DS macro)? Or does it deliver to the host 
specified by the MX record in the nameserver if the nameserver has a
MX entry?

I'm trying to locate where the enormous delay came from. Can it be seen
from the headers at the receiving site?


--Chris Christoph P. U. Kukulies kuku@gil.physik.rwth-aachen.de