I just finished installing a test server. My setup is behind a firewall, so the server has an IP address of 192.168.1.7. My hostname is served by DNS that gives a valid internet address (points to my firewall) which is different from the actual local address mentioned above. My /etc/hosts has this local address. The ONLY way I could get this setup to work was with an internal DNS server that supplied the local address for my host and the proper MX record as well. It seems that parts of the backend use the /etc/hosts file and other parts (probably postfix) look to DNS.
It is fairly common practice to have a DNS server serve local addresses to servers and even local machines on the local net. I don't see this as a 'Kludge'. It makes sense. Why have local machines go out to the internet, back in the firewall and to your server when you can have them go direct? Just a thought.
- Rob |