On Tue, 9 Oct 2001, [iso-8859-1] Adam Nealis wrote: =>> =>> The base question after that comes to be, when tracking a message through =>> =>> the queue for historical reasons, would using the inode number be a =>> =>> realistic possibility for a unique identifier =>> =>Inode number is guaranteed to be unique at any given instant. =>> So it will eventually be reused, and thereby over a year long period will =>> more than likely be used many more times than once. Alright. =>> =>> or would the message ID be a more appropriate (while harder to find) =>> =>> item to track? =>> =>Message-IDs are only theoretically unique. In practice, they collide =>> =>all too often. =>> That's unfortunate.. Has anyone ever considered placing in an MTA =>> Message-ID that can be more or less considered unique among all IDs? I =>> figure this would be a trivial thing, but I wonder if it has practical =>> application. =>If you consider going to that much trouble, then you might as well =>just post-process and combine the timestamp of the "new msg" entry. => =>e.g. => =>Oct 9 21:22:26 mail qmail: 1002658946.264686 new msg 147842 => =>could generate a unique ID of => =>1002658946.264686.147842 => =>or even (coz I dig hashes) => =>1002658946.264686 new msg 147842 => =>NaN, I know, but they _are_ unique (unless there is a policy of =>sending the clock back ;). Point is, there is already enough =>information in the log to make a given entry unique.
The whole idea of the MTA appending the Message-ID header instead of the client holds some appeal to me. However, the post processing method could work (though I have the TAI64N timestamps via multilog, instead of splogger's decimal format. It looks even fancier in an ID :) I suppose that some clients use their message-IDs for something, like sorting threads or whatever else, so outright modification of those items may cause some client headaches. Who knows... Anyway, this has gone beyond the scope of the LDAP list, so I think it should carry on in private or be killed off. :> I was just curious, more than anything. -- | Stephen "Slepp" Olesen / VE6SLP | Edmonton, Alberta, Canada / (780) 425-4798 | President of Geeks Anonymous + http://www.geeksanon.ca/ +---------------------------------
