[exim] Received-header counting

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Author: A. Wik
Date:  
To: exim-users
Subject: [exim] Received-header counting

I've been getting a number of delivery failure reports similar
to the one below, after joining a new mailing list where excessive
"Received:"-header additions at multiple sites sometimes coincide
to produce more than a dozen of these headers.

Manual inspection of the messages bounced, as well as filtering
through 'grep ^Received: | wc -l' suggests the Received-header
count is 16.

According to "exim -bP" the received_headers_max setting is 30.

So, why does Exim classify them as having too many "Received"
headers? Have I overlooked something, or is there a bug causing
the headers to be counted twice?

I'm currently running Exim 4.34, but planning to upgrade soon.

-aw

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 22:32:05 +0000
From: Mail Delivery System <Mailer-Daemon@???>
Subject: Mail delivery failed: returning message to sender

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

  email@???
    Too many "Received" headers - suspected mail loop


------ This is a copy of the message, including all the headers. ------

[ mailing list message with 16 "Received:"-headers snipped ]