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Re: SMTP 'From ' line TimeStamp
- listuser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <listuser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
|---
| This is kinda a newbie question. Flames to /dev/null :)
|
| I'm curious as to how qmail or SMTP in general handles the timestamp
| at the top of the message header. I assumed that it just stamped the
| local system time at the top upon time of arrival, but that doesn't
| seem to be the case.
Yes it is so, but the time zone used is UTC (also known as GMT), which
is shown as -0000 in Received: headers. The From line format does not
include the time zone designation. (Actually, I am told that some unix
systems keep internal time as TAI rather than UTC, in which case I
presume the time stamp will be TAI too. The difference between TAI and
UTC is due to inserted leap seconds in UTC, and is presently 31
seconds. <URL:http://maia.usno.navy.mil/leapsec.html>)
| I changed the time on a Win 95 box to Sep 30 1 PM GMT-8 without
| resetting the box.
The time on the sender is irrelevant for everything except headers
generated by the sender (usually the Date: header).
| The destination mailbox was on a local system running qmail 1.01
| that has the time set to Oct 1 12 AM GMT-5.
12 noon, or midnight?
| The timestamp on a test message showed Oct 1 4 AM. How was this
| timestamp derived?
The time on the receiving system must have been just that. If your
local time zone is GMT-5 then that should be 11 PM on Sep 30 local
time. I would venture a guess that the time and/or time zone is set
wrong on the server. Try the two commands "date" and "date -u" and
compare the results. The server you sent your mail from seems to have
it right though:
| Received: (qmail 22225 invoked by uid 1009); 1 Oct 1997 04:53:14 -0000
| Message-ID: <19970930235314.50255@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
| Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 23:53:14 -0500
If that is the same machine you ran the test on then it seems to be
your report that is inaccurate.
- Harald
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