[Info-vax] Are MX records mandatory to send mail from VMS to an SMTP server?

[Phillip Helbig---undress to reply]

In article
<30759835.617.1336461387046.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums at vbx14>, DTL
<didier.morandi at gmail.com> writes: 

> Are MX records mandatory to send mail from VMS to an SMTP server?

No.

> I understand MX records allow me to handle my mail by myself on my box
> or on my server on an ISP site. 

When someone sends an email, it looks at MX records and tries them in 
order of priority.  An MX record basically says "I know how to handle 
mail for this domain; send it to me".  Personally, I have the highest 
priority MX record as my public IP address (which gets mapped to the 
TCPIP cluster alias) and others are backup MX servers which kick in 
automatically if there is a problem at my end.

> My VMS box has no domain published on the Internet and I do NOT wish
> to receive mail on it. My gmail account is fine. 

You will get lots of spam.  People (or, more probably, bots on
virus-infected Windows PCs) will just send to your IP address.

> The question is: Is it possible to separate send and receive? I mean,
> be allowed to send mail from the box to an smtp server on the Internet
> and configure nothing to be able to receive mail? 

Sure, just run the client and not the server.