Subject: Tracing a message in Pine?

From: Mueed Ahmad <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 Dec 1994 09:13:41 -0600 (CST)

Does pine have an option to trace an outgoing message? By tracing, I mean
having the mail program tell me the major nodes a message goes through
as it travels to its destination.

Thanks!

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Mueed Ahmad                                      [email-masked] 
The University of Oklahoma               [email-masked]
Norman, Oklahoma USA                     #1 FAN -> Redskins, Rockets, Sooners

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From: [email-masked] (Jim Davis)
Date: 3 Dec 1994 15:05:06 -0700

In article <[email-masked]>,
Mueed Ahmad  <[email-masked]> wrote:
:
:Does pine have an option to trace an outgoing message? By tracing, I mean
:having the mail program tell me the major nodes a message goes through
:as it travels to its destination.

You don't say what type of system you're dealing with so I'll assume
it's a UNIX system on the Internet.

Short answer: No.

Longer discursive answer:

On UNIX systems Pine usually hands off the message to sendmail(8) to
do the real work of sending it. Sendmail will add "Received" headers
to the message as it travels to its destination, so the recipient can
get an idea of the path by which the message arrived.  Usually though
that's completely uninteresting data, unless you're a postmaster
trying to sort out a mail problem.  Then those headers are invaluable.
(Unfortunately I speak from experience.)  Pine doesn't normally show
you those headers unless you ask to see them by turning on 'Full
Header Mode'.

>From the sender's viewpoint, though, sendmail simply makes an SMTP
connection to the recipient's system, with no particular notion of
passing through "major nodes" along the way.  If you want to see the
actual network path that will be taken then you can try using the
'traceroute' program, though since routing on the Internet can change
dynamically there's no guarantee your email message will follow the
path traceroute showed you.  And email addresses don't necessarily
correspond to physical machines, so it could take some additional
sleuthing with DNS tools like nslookup(8) to figure out where email
really is destined.

Fortunately from a user's point of view you almost never need worry
about the path taken, any more than you need worry about the path a
letter takes after you drop it in a mailbox.