I'm having a very strange problem.
Whenever a wrong/non-existing external address is entered, say
"hotdoddoddoddod.com", sendmail trys to connect to "c13-ss-2-lb.cnet.com"
or 216.239.116.65, which is not a mx record of any hosts. Fortunately,
this particular IP is not accepting email. Why is this happening and how
can I stop it?

benjam [at] net.com.info writes:

> I'm having a very strange problem.
> Whenever a wrong/non-existing external address is entered, say
> "hotdoddoddoddod.com", sendmail trys to connect to "c13-ss-2-lb.cnet.com"
> or 216.239.116.65, which is not a mx record of any hosts. Fortunately,
> this particular IP is not accepting email. Why is this happening and how
> can I stop it?

What is reported by the two test commands below?
sendmail -bv x [at] hotdoddoddoddod.com
echo '3,0 x [at] hotdoddoddoddod.com' | sendmail -bt

--
[pl>en: Andrew] Andrzej Adam Filip : anfi [at] priv.onet.pl : anfi [at] xl.wp.pl
Without freedom of choice there is no creativity.
-- Kirk, "The return of the Archons", stardate 3157.4

In article <fd0md7$o7i$1 [at] netnews.hinet.net>, benjam [at] net.com.info wrote:

> I'm having a very strange problem.
> Whenever a wrong/non-existing external address is entered, say
> "hotdoddoddoddod.com", sendmail trys to connect to "c13-ss-2-lb.cnet.com"
> or 216.239.116.65, which is not a mx record of any hosts. Fortunately,
> this particular IP is not accepting email. Why is this happening and how
> can I stop it?

Look more carefully at the domains which are doing that. Unless your
basic problem is horrendously configured name resolution, they are not
random and the one you cite is not one of them.

CNet owns com.com and has a wildcard CNAME record for unused names in
the zone. Hence, any random foo.com.com name resolves to that same
host. The very bad name resolution config that can cause attempts to
contact that host is a DNS search strategy that at some point tacks on
'.com' to unresolvable names.

--
Now where did I hide that website...