[Chapter 14] 14.5 Sending Real Mail
Author: Bryan Costales & Eric Allman
Date: 1999-01-06T18:38:34Z

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| Chapter 14 Headers, Precedence, and Trust |

## 14.5 Sending Real Mail

The client.cf file is now complete and ready to use for sending all kinds of user mail. As you did before, send mail to yourself by using sendmail directly:

>     % ./sendmail -Cclient.cf you
>     Subject: testing
>     To: you

>     testing
>     .

Retrieve this message as you usually receive mail and save it to a file. The contents of that file should look something like this:

>     From you@mail.us.edu Fri Dec 13 05:47:47 1996
>     Return-Path: <you@mail.us.edu>
>     Received: from here.us.edu (you@here.us.edu [123.45.67.8]) by mail.us.edu
>     (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id FAA13451 for <you>; Fri, 13 Dec 1996 05:47:46 -0700
>     Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996 05:47:44 -0700
>     From: you@mail.us.edu (Your Full Name)
>     Message-Id: <199509091244.GAA13434@here.us.edu>                           note
>     Received: by here.us.edu; Fri, 13 Dec 1996 05:47:44 -0700
>     Subject: testing
>     To: you

>     testing

Note the change between this message's header and that of the previous message you sent. Instead of the hub machine adding a `Message-ID:` header, the local machine added that header. You can tell because the local machine's name appears there instead of the hub's name.

Actually, the `Date:` header was also added locally, but there is nothing to indicate that fact. A `Date:` header should be added locally to accurately reflect the posting date of the message. If you didn't supply a `Date:` header, instead allowing the hub to supply it, and the hub were down for a while, that header would be inaccurate by the amount of time the hub was down.

14.4 Precedence |  | 14.6 Trusted User