[Exim] wishlist: delay and xdelay in the log

Hi,

Would it be possible to have the time the message have been on the queue
added to the delivery log entry, like sendmails delay= and xdelay=? This
would make it easy to spot and track email delays without having to do
eximstats on the large logfiles or track delays from email headers.

I assume Philip already knows about this, but anyway. From the sendmail
docs:

26.1.3.2 delay= total time to deliver

A mail message can be delivered immediately, without ever having been
queued, or it can be queued and retried over and over again until it
either times out or succeeds. The delay= shows the total amount of time
the message took to be delivered. This period of time starts when sendmail
first receives the message and ends when the message is finally delivered
or bounced. This interval is displayed with the delay= syslog line equate:

delay=days+HH:MM:SS

The time expression shows the time it took in hours (HH), minutes (MM),
and seconds (SS) to handle delivery or rejection of the message. If the
delay exceeds 24 hours, the time expression is prefixed with the number of
days and a plus character. For example, the following message took 5
seconds to deliver or bounce:

delay=00:00:05

The following message took 4 days, 2 hours, 16 minutes, and 2 seconds to
deliver or bounce:

delay=4+02:16:02

Note that the delay= equate is shown only for recipient records.

26.1.3.13 xdelay= transaction

The xdelay= equate shows the total amount of time the message took to be
transmitted during final delivery. This differs from delay= in that delay=
is computed from when the message was originally received (and can be
days), whereas this xdelay= shows how fast the receiving host was (and is
usually seconds).

In the case of SMTP mail the xdelay= computation starts when sendmail
successfully connects to the remote host. In the case of locally delivered
mail the computation starts when sendmail executes the delivery agent. The
computation ends when the dot is accepted at the close of the DATA SMTP
phase or when the local delivery agent exits.

The form of the xdelay= looks like this:

xdelay=HH:MM:SS

The time expression shows the hours (HH), minutes (MM), and seconds (SS)
it took to perform delivery via the final delivery agent. In the case of
networked mail that interval can be long:

xdelay=00:41:05

But in the case of locally delivered mail this interval can seem
instantaneous:

xdelay=00:00:00

Note that the xdelay= equate is shown only for recipient records.


/Thomas Egrelius