Spamhaus RBLs

[Steve Freegard]

Steven Andrews wrote:
> DNS is giving me the same here.  Although, I can ping it from my comcrap
> machine.  Xbl should be 208.69.32.132 and when I am back on the
> connection that says unknown host I CAN ping that IP directly.

You don't 'ping' an RBL - they have to have an A record for the zone 
name at all (and most don't).  The only requirement is NS records:

[root at mail ~]# host -t NS zen.spamhaus.org
zen.spamhaus.org name server l.ns.spamhaus.org.
zen.spamhaus.org name server c.ns.spamhaus.org.
... snip ...

The standard way to test an RBL is via a test point, which is usually 
127.0.0.2:

[root at mail ~]# host 2.0.0.127.zen.spamhaus.org
2.0.0.127.zen.spamhaus.org has address 127.0.0.2
2.0.0.127.zen.spamhaus.org has address 127.0.0.10
2.0.0.127.zen.spamhaus.org has address 127.0.0.4

Spamhaus will return a DNS status of REFUSED if you are blocked by them 
and you will not get any test points returned.

Hope this helps.

Kind regards,
Steve.