[Mailman-Users] Bad dating of cron mailings?

Greg Ward gward at mems-exchange.org
Mon Dec 3 16:13:49 CET 2001


On 01 December 2001, J B Bell said:
> Mailman is suffering some brain damage all of a sudden.  I've not 
> changed my version of Python nor anything like that, though I have 
> fiddled with my kernel in ways that presumably should not affect this. 
> Other cron-inspired mailings are getting through with a normal date.

What MTA are you using?

> All my Mailman automated mailings are coming up with the date
> 12/31/69.

By "automated mailings", I presume you mean things like password
reminders, and *not* regular list posts.  Correct?

And by "date", I presume you mean the "Date:" header, *not* the other
dates in an RFC822 header (eg. in Received headers or the "From "
line).  Correct?

If so, one idea that occurs to me: perhaps Mailman doesn't add its own
Date headers, and relies on the MTA to do so.  (This would be kind of
sloppy on Mailman's part, though.)  What happens if you do something
like this:

  $ telnet localhost 25
  EHLO localhost
  MAIL FROM:<you at your.domain>
  RCTP TO:<you at your.domain>
  DATA
  Subject: test (no date header)

  hello
  .
  QUIT

Your MTA should add a "Date" header (I don't know if this is mandated by
any RFC, but most MTAs seem to do it to workaround stupid SMTP
clients).  What's in that header?

And, of course, what does the "date" command show?

        Greg
-- 
Greg Ward - software developer                gward at mems-exchange.org
MEMS Exchange                            http://www.mems-exchange.org




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