Path: utzoo!dptcdc!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!ucsd!rutgers!cmcl2!ccnysci!dan
From: dan@ccnysci.UUCP (Dan Schlitt)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: mail headers
Message-ID: <1628@ccnysci.UUCP>
Date: 18 Apr 89 14:03:54 GMT
References: <248.244422A4@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us> <636@dtscp1.UUCP>
Reply-To: dan@ccnysci.UUCP (Dan Schlitt)
Organization: City College Of New York
Lines: 50

In article <636@dtscp1.UUCP> scott@dtscp1.UUCP (Scott Barman) writes:
:In article <248.244422A4@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us> mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst) writes:
:>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!
:> >
:>The Received: headers come in VERY handy when your mail hasn't gotten from
:>point A to point B, and you'd like to know why.  They're often useful
:>in discovering sites that do "active" rerouting (and thus enabling you
:>to route around them if it's a problem).
:
:Then why all the verbosity?  As I recall from my old version 7 days,
:what happened to the "From" lines as post marks?  
:
:NOW, because
:"someone" decided that my mail has to be delivered with the finger
:prints of every system it touches, I have to go out and get software
:loaded with "creeping featurisms" just to read the darned mail without
:all the garbage!
:
:-- 
:scott barman
:{gatech, emory}!dtscp1!scott

I don't understand this "NOW" bit.  I don't remember a time when the
uucp mail didn't have Received: lines.  And that goes back 8 years or
so.  The From line is a uucp relic and is not useful for much of
anything.  The official header line is the From: line and it should
contain an address, not a route.

Those people who complain about having this information in their
messages evidently don't have users come around and ask why the
address (route) their friend told them to use to send them mail
doesn't work.  (Often they even have received mail from their friend.)
The headers are the only real tool that I have to help solve this
problem for them.  If the message is bounced back then I can tell
where it has been.  With the multitude of networks and the gateways
between them some sort of audit trail in the message is essential.

If you don't encounter this sort of problem them maybe you aren't
getting the full use out of the communications network that you have
at your finger-tips. :-)

-- 
Dan Schlitt                        Manager, Science Division Computer Facility
dan@ccnysci                        City College of New York
dan@ccnysci.bitnet                 New York, NY 10031
                                   (212)690-6868