Re: POP3 email timestamp problem

From: Rich Jordan (duodec_at_speakeasy.net)
Date: 04/14/04 

Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 21:45:20 -0500

JF Mezei wrote:
> Rich Jordan wrote:
>
>>We restarted the POP server again (a faint hope that it reads the
>>differential on startup), but we're still getting the same problem.
>>Mail time on the Alpha from a terminal is correct, but once sent to a
>>PC, its shown as 2 hours early.
>
>
> POP server doesn't have to deal with timezone differential. It just spits out
> messages where the date is part of the content of the message. If you use MAIL
> to look at a message, you'll see the Date: line in the RFC822 header and it
> should contain a description of the time (either GMT, a time offset to GMT, or
> a known time zone.)
>
> Normally, the time would be added by the mail client that created the message.
> However, some SMTP servers will add a date of the PC client,s date is missing
> or invalid.
>
> What you would need to do is use VMSmail to send an email to some external
> system, and on that external system, look at the full headers to see how the
> VMS system encoded the date.
>
> Then, you can do the reverse, send an email from an external system to your
> VMSmail mailbox and from VMSmail , look at the RFC headers to see how the date
> was encoded.
>
> Note that when you look at VMSmail headers (as opposed to the RFC headers in
> the VMSmail contents), the date is the date received on that node, not the
> date of the message)
>
> When the POP server takes a "pure" VMS mail message without RFC headers, the
> POP server will fake RFC headers, at whcih point it will take the date of
> message as source, at which point the time offset may be important.

I wasn't sure if the POP server did translate local to GMT. There are a
number of different peecees running a number of different outhouse
versions, all giving the same results (2 hours off); the time setups on
the peecees have been verified. I'm going to try a Eudora client
tomorrow just to be different.

We sent smtp mail from the Alpha to our local Domino server and
earthlink webmail. Time displayed for the received email was correct.
Sent email from the Domino server (and from Earthlink webmail) to the
Alpha; time displayed in VMSmail for both messages was correct. Sent
some more, used one of the peecees to POP the mail into outlook, time
was off 2 hours. I did not examine the headers (didn't think of it, and
ran out of time) but will tomorrow.

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

Rich

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