Sort order of MX records while doing nslookup

[Jeff Reasoner]

Unfortunately, probably not. My guess is that your mail server needs to
resolve MX records almost exclusively from servers you do not manage.
Answers to those queries, including the ordering, will be determined by
the authoritative servers not your client resolver. If that is not true,
and your servers are actually authoritative for all the domains your
mail server sends to, then a version of Bind that supports fixed rrset
ordering could do what you're asking.

However, assuming that all the listed MXes are actually mail servers, it
shouldn't matter. I don't think there's any reason the mail has to go
*only* to the MX with the highest preference.

Otherwise, "a very small and stupid smtp server" upgrade may be the only
fix.

On Mon, 2006-03-06 at 11:39, Martin Rådbo wrote:
> If we run the command "dig domainname.com MX" or similar (could be nslookup 
> or whatever) the dns server responds with a list of MX-records for that 
> particulary domain name, i.e.
> 
> dig teknologia.com returns
> teknologia.com.         14400   IN      MX      20 mail3.latitud.net.
> teknologia.com.         14400   IN      MX      30 mail4.latitud.net.
> teknologia.com.         14400   IN      MX      10 mail.latitud.net.
> 
> The sort order is different each time, is there a way to change this?
> I am aware that in normal circumstances this is without need because the 
> mail server will automatically pick the row with the lowest weight number.
> 
> But we are in a situation running a very small and stupid smtp server (a 
> part of a fax server program) and it seems to choose the first line on t he 
> list instead of the lowest weight numbered row.
> 
> Is it possible to change the way BIND returns this list or not?
> 
> Best regards
> Martin Rådbo
> Teknologia 
> 
>