Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!torsqnt!lethe!tvcent!comspec!scocan!chance!john
From: john@chance.UUCP (John R. MacMillan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.3b1
Subject: Re: Silent mail handler
Message-ID: <1991Mar27.043807.8160@chance.UUCP>
Date: 27 Mar 91 04:38:07 GMT
References: <526@morpho.UUCP>
Organization: Haphazard
Lines: 35

|I've recently noticed that my machine doesn't leave an audit-trail
|header on mail that passes through it.  (I'm sure that's not what
|it's called.  I'm referring to the "Received:" by/from lines at the
|top of all mail files.)

Adding Received: headers is the job of the Mail Transfer Agent (or MTA
in mailspeak), and the quick answer is that what acts as an MTA on the
3B1 (mail/rmail) doesn't.

If you want this functionality (and other stuff, like adding other
required headers, understanding user@site.dom addresses, etc.) you'll
have to put a new MTA on the machine.

Other MTAs available include:

smail2.5 - A very small, simple MTA, does the basic stuff and nothing
fancy.  Quite probably all you need if you're happy with everything
except the Received: headers now.

smail3.1 - Unrelated to the above except in name.  This is intended to
be a drop in replacement for sendmail (below) but is much easy to
configure, and more flexible.  It's much bigger than smail2.5.
Incidentally, it's what's I run on chance.

sendmail - The defacto standard in the BSD world, it's as easy to
operate and as painless as using manually powered dental tools on
yourself.  I had to understand .cf files at one time, and I still
haven't quite recovered.

MMDF - Not a huge following, but expect that to change somewhat as SCO
is shipping MMDF as its default MTA.  It has a lot going for it, but
also has some ugly bits.  It's very gentle on system resources.

PP - A fairly new MTA, a descendant of MMDF by some of the MMDF
developers.  Your only real option if you want X.400 compatibility.