in.named MX records - help

[Simon J. Gerraty]

I have a network of mainly Sun's that I hope to bring onto the
Internet shortly.  Just about everything is ready.  I even seem
to have in.named running correctly - or at least it seems to
keep nslookup happy.

My question relates to sendmail.mx (I understand it is just
sendmail linked with the resolver rather than YP lookup stuff)
and MX records in named's database.

I have followed the example in the manual eg.

;domain	ttl	addr-class  	MX	preferenc 	mail-exchanger
zen.OZ.			IN	MX	0	sun0.melb.bull.oz.au.
*.OZ.			IN	MX	0	sol.melb.bull.oz.au.

Both sol and sun0 are on my ethernet.  Sol is my gateway to
ACSnet (a local OZ network).  Sun0 has a uucp link to zen, but
zen wants to appear to be on the ACSnet (ie in domain .OZ).

I currently have all this working by using some imaginative
stuff in sendmail.cf on both sol and sun0.  However the MX
record facility seems to be just the ticket.  
Trouble is I can't seem to make it work.

The sum total of information my manuals contain about MX and
named in general is "quite small".  I have tried running
sendmail.mx in address test mode, and it seems to ignore the MX
records.  I figured this may in part be due to the fact that
until I connect to the Internet, my named cannot reach any
rootservers.
 
So I tried the following...

*.tn.bull.oz.au.	IN	MX 0 venus.melb.bull.oz.au.

and watched the debug output from in.named while I ran 
/usr/lib/sendmail.mx -bt
> 0 user at host.tn.bull.oz.au

This is what I got...
> datagram from 134.211.128.101, 10  1104 (33)
> req: nlookup(host.bull.oz.au) id 512 type=1
> req: found 'host.bull.oz.au' as 'bull.oz.au' (cname=0)
> req: answer -> 134.211.128.101 10 (1104) id=2 Local
> datagram from 134.211.128.101, 10  1105 (28)
> req: nlookup(host.oz.au) id 768 type=1
> req: found 'host.oz.au' as 'oz.au' (cname=0)
> findns: No root nameservers?
> req: answer -> 134.211.128.101 10 (1105) id=3 Local

I even tried 
host.bull.oz.au.	IN	MX 0 venus.melb.bull.oz.au.

with the same result.

I am sure I must be doing something wrong, but I have nothing to
refer to.  I could work it out *eventually* by lateral thinking
and enough experimentation...  but I can't help thinking that
someone must have sorted all this out before.

It could be that I have made some fundamental mistake in setting
up named, or that there is just some simple little item missing
from my database...

Could some kind soul point me at a source of decent
documentation?  I would appreaciate it greatly.

Please e-mail rather than reply to the list.  We are not
receiving this list at present - we lost our ARPAnet connection
in June. 

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Simon Gerraty	          --- ACSnet:   sjg at sun0.melb.bull.oz
Bull Information Systems  --- Internet: sjg%sun0.melb.bull.oz.au at munnari.oz
677 Victoria Street       --- UUCP: ...!uunet!munnari!sun0.melb.bull.oz.au!sjg
Abbotsford AUSTRALIA 3067 --- Phone: +61 3 420 0927     FAX: +61 3 420 0955

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