FQDN Hostnames, Sendmail and Spamassassin.

[Eric Crist]

On Jul 30, 2007, at 6:23 PMJul 30, 2007, RW wrote:

> I have my hostname in rc.conf defined as a FQDN - ending in a dot.  
> IIRC
> it's needed to prevent sendmail waiting a long time for DNS if the
> network is unavailable at boot-time.
>
> I recently noticed that when I send myself email through sendmail I'm
> hitting this spamassassin test at my email service:
>
> 2.3 FH_HELO_ENDS_DOT       Helo ends with a dot
>
> It doesn't actually matter to me, because I don't use sendmail much,
> but what are the rights and wrongs of this? I was under the impression
> that any name used in an helo/ehlo should be a FQDN.
>

AFAIK, an FQDN does not need to end with a dot.  While they do, by  
definition, end with a dot, that nomenclature is typically only used  
in DNS zone files.

FWIW, I've never noticed a problem with slow boot when there's  
network problems.  If you do notice problems, simply make an entry in  
the /etc/hosts file to map the local hostname to it's corresponding  
IP address.

HTH.

Eric Crist