Re: [Exim] Request for comment: changing Received header tim…

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Author: Philip Hazel
Date:  
To: Tabor J. Wells, Ollie Cook, Matthew Byng-Maddick, Fred Viles
CC: exim-users
Subject: Re: [Exim] Request for comment: changing Received header timestamps
On Fri, 5 Mar 2004, Tabor J. Wells wrote:

> 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.


On Fri, 5 Mar 2004, Ollie Cook wrote:

> My opinion is that "received" suggests "finished receiving" and it would
> therefore make sense to write the header after the whole message is received.


On Fri, 5 Mar 2004, Fred Viles wrote:

> FWIW I agree. I don't think it makes much difference in typical
> cases, but it does for unusual cases like Tabor's example. I can't
> think of any reason to object to the change conceptually, so it would
> just be a matter of implementation effort -vs- benefit.


On Fri, 5 Mar 2004, Matthew Byng-Maddick wrote:

> Without thinking about the architectural considerations first, it might be
> sensible to have a comment that details how long the message took from, say,
> MAIL FROM to final dot. In this way, the queue wouldn't be so inaccurate.


Thanks, guys. It seems that a change is perhaps in order. (I think the
current arrangement goes right back to Exim 0.0.) I propose the
following:

(a) Change the time to the time after the body was received, but
*before* the DATA or non-SMTP ACL is run (because you might want to
inspect the Received: headers in those ACLs).

(b) If the difference between the time of starting to receive the
message and this time is greater than 10 minutes (say), add an extra
comment to the Received: line saying "(started at xxxxxx)". This
would be the start of the DATA segment rather than MAIL FROM (because
that is all contained in one module and I don't think the extra effort
to take it from MAIL FROM is worth it - but you may disagree...)

> Of course, architecturally, that means that you add this header after final
> dot. That is fun when it comes to writing out the -H queuefile, because
> you need to create it at header time with the current architecture.


No, that's not the way it currently works. It doesn't actually write the
-H file until the -D file is safely written. Up to then, the header
lines are kept in main memory.

Philip

--
Philip Hazel            University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@???      Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.