Re: message-Id has localhost

Michael Richardson <[email protected]> Sun, 31 Dec 2023 13:17:15 -0500

Newsgroups	gmane.mail.nmh.devel
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

Ken Hornstein <[email protected]> wrote:
    >>> 4) Some people, for reasons I would classify as "vague", prefer to
    >>> generate their Message-IDs locally so their saved copy of the
    >>> message has the Message-ID in it.
    >>
    >> The reason you state seems precise rather than vague.

    > I mean, that's not a reason in my thinking?  Like, WHY do people
    > want that?  That's where things get vague when this came up before.

Because, when my message aren't getting through your spam filter, I can refer
to the message-Id from my outbox, as a thing you can grep your logs for.
(or have your ISP do that)

I've also had various ideas about making the message-ID cryptographically
strong such that I could recognize when message-ID were really made by me or
not.  This would help with identifying bounce messages which were really the
result of things I sent, vs things where I was impersonated. I think DKIM
makes this need obsolete.

    > FWIW, I took a quick look at the MTAs Postfix and Sendmail; Postfix does
    > not seem to have any Message-ID-specific configuration knobs, it hardcodes
    > adding a Message-ID based on it's idea of the local hostname.  Sendmail,
    > yes, it looks like you could change it if you really want to; it also
    > defaults to something based on the local hostname.  I am personally
    > skeptical that people actually configure this.

gethostname() is not the same as what you said we were doing, which takes a
trip through /etc/hosts.

    > My personal feeling is that the people who (a) care about generating a
    > local Message-ID, and (b) actually care WHAT appears right of the '@'
    > either need to configure their system appropriately or write code to
    > change nmh behavior.

I'm fine with that.  I think that gethostname() is enough.

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