On Thursday, Feb 27, 2003, at 20:11 Canada/Mountain, Don Hammond wrote:
I'm confused by the example given, and am relying on the description
just above it which seems clear enough to me. However, I'd suggest
that the Date: header is not the best place to get the date from. It
can be off by months or more from the actual delivery date which should
be contained in From_. That date should be available in the last (top)
Received: header. That header is generated by the last machine that
touches the message, so it is both reliable and predictable.
While it is possibly predictable, it is certainly not necessarily
reliable. For example:
From procmail-bounces(_at_)lists(_dot_)RWTH-Aachen(_dot_)DE Thu Feb 27
20:49:26 2003
Return-Path: <procmail-bounces(_at_)lists(_dot_)RWTH-Aachen(_dot_)DE>
X-Original-To: kremels(_at_)localhost
Delivered-To: kremels(_at_)localhost(_dot_)syth(_dot_)serveftp(_dot_)net
Received: from southgaylord.com (localhost [127.0.0.1])
by syth.serveftp.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6A5D4A1CDE9
for <kremels(_at_)localhost>; Thu, 27 Feb 2003 20:49:26 -0700 (MST)
Received: from [134.130.3.130] (HELO ms-dienst.rz.rwth-aachen.de)
by southgaylord.com (Stalker SMTP Server 1.8b9d14)
with ESMTP id S.0000567595 for <kremels(_at_)kreme(_dot_)com>; Thu, 27 Feb 2003
20:18:31 -0700
Since the top line is the receive header of my home machine, and since
that machine gets my mail via fetchmail, and since my fetchmail
processes was offline for a while, the From_ header shows the message
as arriving at 0349 GMT and the message REALLY arrived at 0318 GMT.
Depending on the stability of my connection, the last received header
can be as much as 30 hours off from the correct time.
I would, occasionally, find it useful if I could rewrite the From_
header to reflect, for instance, the date in the header
Received:.*by southgaylord.com
since my mailer sort the messages based on the time stamp in the From_
header.
Basically, the last mail sever in the Received chain may NOT be the
most reliable date stamp. Even in the best of circumstances the From_
date stamp will reflect a delay of 4-6 minutes due to fetchmail's
processing.
--
And the three men I admire most, the father son and the holly ghost,
they caught the last train for the coast...
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