mail-mode does not insert a date header

mail-mode does not insert a date header

[Florian v. Savigny]

Dear sendmail.el users,

My gut feeling is am being stupid, and must be missing something, but
I hope you will forgive. (The info manual, at least, is silent about
this, and sendmail.el has not really revealed anything which
strikingly resembles the solution.)

A number of people have brought to my attention that my messages do
not contain a "Date:" header. (As should be the case with this very
message.) I can confirm this when I send messages to myself, and a
check of my outbox confirms that this started in August 2012. I have
no idea why.

I could of course use (mail-rfc822-date) to set the Date header in
mail-default-headers, but my feeling is that this is not how it is
done (and certainly not how it worked on my system until summer
2012). Also, this would have the problem of setting the date when I
start writing the message, not when I send it. (And sometimes, I store
drafts for quite a while.)

Can anybody tell me what I must be blatantly overlooking? Thank you so
much!

Florian

Re: mail-mode does not insert a date header

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 13:24:41 -0400
> From: florian@fsavigny.de (Florian v. Savigny)
> 
> A number of people have brought to my attention that my messages do
> not contain a "Date:" header. (As should be the case with this very
> message.) I can confirm this when I send messages to myself, and a
> check of my outbox confirms that this started in August 2012. I have
> no idea why.
> 
> I could of course use (mail-rfc822-date) to set the Date header in
> mail-default-headers, but my feeling is that this is not how it is
> done (and certainly not how it worked on my system until summer
> 2012). Also, this would have the problem of setting the date when I
> start writing the message, not when I send it. (And sometimes, I store
> drafts for quite a while.)
> 
> Can anybody tell me what I must be blatantly overlooking? Thank you so
> much!

Isn't the Date header inserted by the MTA, as opposed by the MUA?
When I compose mail, I don't see that header in the *mail* buffer, and
yet it magically appears on my mails when I look at them in the forums
where I post.

Re: mail-mode does not insert a date header

[Kevin Rodgers]

On 3/10/14 1:01 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> Isn't the Date header inserted by the MTA, as opposed by the MUA?
> When I compose mail, I don't see that header in the *mail* buffer, and
> yet it magically appears on my mails when I look at them in the forums
> where I post.

Yes, but if Emacs is talking directly with a server via SMTP, Emacs is
effectively the MTA and should insert the Date header.

-- 
Kevin Rodgers
Denver, Colorado, USA

Re: mail-mode does not insert a date header

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Kevin Rodgers <kevin.d.rodgers@gmail.com>
> Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 23:33:01 -0600
> 
> On 3/10/14 1:01 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Isn't the Date header inserted by the MTA, as opposed by the MUA?
> > When I compose mail, I don't see that header in the *mail* buffer, and
> > yet it magically appears on my mails when I look at them in the forums
> > where I post.
> 
> Yes, but if Emacs is talking directly with a server via SMTP, Emacs is
> effectively the MTA and should insert the Date header.

How do you see that OP's Emacs is talking directly to the server?  I
don't see anything in his report which would indicate that; did I miss
something?

Anyway, even if Emacs is the MTA (e.g., via smptmail.el), it inserts
the Date header behind the scenes, so the answer to the OP's question
whether he should add that header to his mail before sending still
stands, I think.

Re: mail-mode does not insert a date header

[Florian v. Savigny]

Hi Eli and Kevin,

thank you very much for your replies back in March. I am sorry to say
that being very busy otherwise, I seem to have lost track of the
question then. But I have been able to continue now.


  > Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 17:52:27 +0200
  > From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
  > 
  > > From: Kevin Rodgers <kevin.d.rodgers@gmail.com>
  > > Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 23:33:01 -0600
  > > 
  > > On 3/10/14 1:01 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
  > > > Isn't the Date header inserted by the MTA, as opposed by the MUA?
  > > 
  > > Yes, but if Emacs is talking directly with a server via SMTP, Emacs is
  > > effectively the MTA and should insert the Date header.
  > 
  > How do you see that OP's Emacs is talking directly to the server? 

Indeed I did not indicate that in any way; sorry.

  > Anyway, even if Emacs is the MTA (e.g., via smptmail.el), it inserts
  > the Date header behind the scenes, so the answer to the OP's question
  > whether he should add that header to his mail before sending still
  > stands, I think.


Yes. I do use sendmail.el, i.e. I use Emacs as both MUA and MTA.

Your questions have now led to some deep searching on my part, and I
have managed to figure it out:

I had been using smtpmail-auth.el for ages, since a time when the SMTP
AUTH code was not yet included in smtpmail.el by default. Although I
should have suspected that it was going to be, and do follow Emacs
News, that news had somehow escaped me. (My guess is that happened
soon after I started using it.)

In addition, it seems that at some rather recent point in time (24.1.?
Does that match summer 2012?), smtpmail.el had somehow taken over the
responsibility of inserting the date header (wherefrom I don't know),
and obviously, the old smtpmail-auth.el was not accordingly updated,
so that's where it started to malfunction.

I have deinstalled the additional, old smptmail-auth.el, and switched
to default behaviour, with an ~/.authinfo file. Now, I do get the Date
headers (which should show above now). It seems that smtpmail-auth.el
is even completely off the web now, so I have apparently been
nurturing a fossil.

Thanks very much again,

Florian


-- 

Florian von Savigny
Melanchthonstr. 41
33615 Bielefeld