[Exim] Request for comment: changing Received header timesta…

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Author: Tabor J. Wells
Date:  
To: exim-users
Subject: [Exim] Request for comment: changing Received header timestamps
I posed this question to Philip directly and he asked that I bring it up on
the list for discussion. Currently Received: headers are written after the
headers are received. I'd like to see that changed to them being written
after the body is received.

Given the following Received headers:

Received: from central.example.com ([10.0.0.1]:35689)
        by mercury.example.net with esmtp (Exim 4.14)
        id 1AzA5G-0000VF-6d
        for mysqlnotify@???; Fri, 05 Mar 2004 01:49:26 -0500
Received: from mysql by central.example.com with local-bsmtp (Exim 4.23)
        id 1Az5ZB-0005UO-IJ
        for mysqlnotify@???; Thu, 04 Mar 2004 22:00:01 -0500


you'd think that the message was submitted to the queue on central
at 22:00:01 and then sat on queue for close to 4 hrs before being delivered
to mercury. However that was not the case. It was a script that started at
22:00 and slowly wrote data to the BSMTP pipe over the next 4 hrs.

Arguably, the way things are now give an inaccurate portrayal of the message's
lifetime on the queue. I also think that that having them written before the
entire message is received is counter-intuitive.

Also in this case it would lead an admin who was looking for info on
1Az5ZB-0005UO-IJ in the logs given those Received headers to look in the
wrong place since the entry for 1Az5ZB-0005UO-IJ does not appear in the
Thursday logfiles as the headers suggest it should:

37 [central][10:02am][mysql]# grep 1Az5ZB-0005UO-IJ /var/log/exim/mainlog.01
38 [central][11:48am][mysql]# grep 1Az5ZB-0005UO-IJ /var/log/exim/mainlog
2004-03-05 01:48:52 1Az5ZB-0005UO-IJ <= mysql@??? U=mysql
P=local-bsmtp S=6481 T="central mysqldump report for 2004-03-04" from
<mysql@???> for mysqlnotify@???
2004-03-05 01:48:55 1Az5ZB-0005UO-IJ => mysqlnotify@???
F=<mysql@???> R=dnslookup T=remote_smtp S=6608
H=relay2.example.net [10.0.0.2] C="250 OK id=1AzA5G-0000VF-6d"
2004-03-05 01:48:55 1Az5ZB-0005UO-IJ Completed

Any comments?

Thanks,

Tabor
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Tabor J. Wells                                     twells@???
Fsck It!                 Just another victim of the ambient morality