[Mailman-Users] Bad dating of cron mailings?

[J B Bell]

Greg Ward wrote:

> 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?


D'oh, I can't believe I forgot that.  Qmail.



>>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?


Yes, that's right.  List posts are working fine.


> 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?


<rummage rummage>

Hm, now this *is* interesting.  Please forgive me, I just started using 
Mozilla for my mail and only recently finally figured out how to view 
really really all the headers.  Here they are:
Return-Path: <yogabc-admin at yabc.ca>
Delivered-To: cipher at eschatek.com
Received: (qmail 31194 invoked from network); 1 Dec 2001 13:00:07 -0000
Received: from localhost.intergate.ca (HELO demiurge.eschatek.com.) 
(szcdsd at 127.0.0.1)
   by localhost.intergate.ca with SMTP; 1 Dec 2001 13:00:06 -0000
Subject: eschatek.com mailing list memberships reminder
From: mailman-owner at demiurge.eschatek.com
To: cipher at eschatek.com
X-No-Archive: yes
X-Ack: no
Sender: yogabc-admin at yabc.ca
Errors-To: yogabc-admin at yabc.ca
X-BeenThere: yogabc at yabc.ca
X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.5
Precedence: bulk

Note the utter and complete lack of any Date: header whatsoever.

It is odd that neither Mailman nor the local MTA is providing a Date: 
header though.


> 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:


[Raw SMTP convo. deleted for brevity]

Aha!  Same result.

Mutt, bless its doggy heart, handles it anyway.


> 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?


Nothin'.  Zero.  Zip.  Nada.  I really need to switch to Postfix.


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


:-)  "date" shows the correct date, but I thank you for your 
thoroughness.  Seeing now that it is indeed qmail that's handling all 
this, via the usual SMTP path, I'm baffled that it has decided to stop 
putting in a Date header.

Possibly too, this is a very subtle y2k bug within the mozilla mail 
client, where it was handling stuff before 11/31/00, but turned over to 
'69 on 12/1/00.

Irksome, is what it is.  Ah well, thanks kindly for your help.


--JB