Re: [MacPerl] Find SMTP server(s): nslookup?

[Milivoj Ivkovic <mi@alma.ch>]

>} Does Net::DNS work on Macs? (It doesn't on Win95).
>
>Yes, it works, but don't count on it being installed.  It requires that

That's OK, we have eval.

>there be a "/etc/resolv.conf", which isn't a real problem, except MacPerl
>users don't usually have one.  You have to construct one and point Net::DNS
>at it.

Not sure what you mean by construct one. You mean that if the user doesn't have a "/etc/resolv.conf" file, I have to tell Net::DNS which DNS to use? Would make sense. Any way to get the info out of the system? If there is, it probably should be part of Net::DNS, actually.

>} Would some Macs have environment variables like $ENV{MAILHOST} set?
>
>Mine does, but that's because I use MailTools.  In general, no.

So I guess that if there is one, it should also get a high priority. I wonder whether it is usually correctly set on Unix systems.

>} Or would some Macs have such a command (I read something about Unix tools
>}in a new Mac OS)?
>
>Sure, on Mac OS X server.  But the number of people willing to spend $500
>to run it on the limited number of models that will run it are few.  And
>they're probably running 5.005_03 or 5.005_5? rather than MacPerl in the
>blue box anyway.  Those you treat as BSD boxes, because in essence that's
>what they are.

So I can still try `nslookup`. It would just print an error message if it's not there? Or would it be smarter to first check whether this is an X server? Anything different in $^O from a "plain" Mac?

>Since I've tested Mail::Sendmail multiple times, and edited test.pl, I've
>always thought what you should do is have the test simply prompt the user
>and ask for the address to send the test to and the server address.  The

Yes, these goodies have been postponed too long. Still, I feel it would be cool finding the SMTP server(s) first, and prompting the user with good defaults. I hate having to type these names over and over. It would also be nice to figure the user's e-mail address, but that would be far too much trouble for something that would only work occasionally. But the SMTP servers I'll try.

>software.  Ordinarily I hate prompting software, but here you need only two
>things, and the test is run only once for each release.

It has been 3 releases in 2 days this time, but it should stay quiet again now :-)...

Milivoj

>
>-----
>Paul J. Schinder
>schinder@pobox.com


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