Does smtplib lookup MX records?

[Just van Rossum]

Lad wrote:
> 
> Just van Rossum <just at letterror.com> wrote in message news:<3BF56916.8834B8D7 at letterror.com>...
> > Dale Strickland-Clark wrote:
> >
> > > I've been trying to send emails with smtplib and had a large number of
> > > failures. Investigation seems to reveal the the smtplib module does a
> > > simple connect passing the hostname to socket.connect without trying
> > > to resolve the MX record.
> > >
> > > In some cases this works where the mail server happens to have an
> > > A-type DNS record anyway but otherwise it fails with a connection
> > > error.
> > >
> > > Is this really the case?
> > >
> > > If it is, what do I need to do to lookup the MX record myself?
> > >
> > > (This is rather urgent now as this program was hastily written to help
> > > a client out who's mail server has died.)
> >
> > Are you sure you're using smtplib correctly? I *think* it's mostly meant
> > to talk to a local relay host (eg. smtp.my-isp.com). The smtp server
> > will take care of the rest. If you insist on delivering yourself, then
> > yeah, you'd have to look up the mx record for each recipient, but I
> > wouldn't consider that typical usage of smtplib. Am I missing something?
> >
> > Just
> 
> If you use windows you can use , for MX records lookup,
> http://www.internext.co.za/stefan/aspmx/aspmx.zip
> It works well.
> Ladislav

But isn't the point that you shouldn't *have to* look up mx records? Just use
your local smtp server and you're set.

Just