Xref: utzoo comp.mail.uucp:2994 news.sysadmin:2261 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!allosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu!bob From: bob@allosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp,news.sysadmin Subject: Re: mail headers Message-ID: Date: 12 Apr 89 22:37:43 GMT References: <5463@ozdaltx.UUCP> <11470@s.ms.uky.edu> <627@dtscp1.UUCP> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Followup-To: comp.mail.uucp Organization: The Ohio State University Dept of Computer & Information Science Lines: 42 In-reply-to: scott@dtscp1.UUCP's message of 12 Apr 89 18:47:51 GMT In article <627@dtscp1.UUCP> scott@dtscp1.UUCP (Scott Barman) writes: In article <11470@s.ms.uky.edu> david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) writes: >But *do* *not* suggest that we take away the Received: headers! Why? Someone please explain to me what purpose do they serve besides making it more difficult to get to the real mail at the end. Please read RFC822, section 4.3.2 on pages 20-21 for the definitive justification and explanation for the existence of Received. I am more interested in the message not what software, version number, or even system the note passed through to get here. You may not be interested, and you're welcome to ignore them by proper use of your mail-reading software. But if you ever have to figure out what happened to a particular mail message, nearly the first thing that you (or your postmaster) will need to look at will be the Received: headers. Are all these header lines needed because we have so many brain-dead machines running brain-damaged software? Yes. I would figure by now most of the net-bugs have been ironed out and mail does pass pretty reliably to make these things unnecessary. It's the other 5% left over after that "pretty reliably" that make audit trails necessary. Also, it's an optional field. You're welcome to configure your system so as not to add it to headers as they pass through. It's not a friendly thing to do to your neighbors, though. Being only a five-year net veteran I have not had too many problems with mail. It sounds like your systems have been maintained well, and you've been corresponding with people on well-maintained systems over well-maintained connections. Others aren't so lucky, and need some help coping with the vagaries of life in an unreliable network.