I spoke too soon....Seems that it only worked since I copied an existing host (with a defined 'dns' test). So I had 2 lines of the same host, both testing dns, but probably not from $foo on the second line. Changing $foo to smtp did not work. Oh well, live and learn. Sorry about the extra email folks.
Tim McCloskey wrote:
bb-hosts: $foo="dns" ipaddress servername # $foo