Re: Mailspool headers

[John Hammond]

I don't really care if the person actually read the message or if the 
person can read at all. I also don't care if the message has been 
removed from the server. When people decide to leave messages on the 
server(regardless of whether they should or not) I suspect there is a 
way to tell from the headers if that message has been downloaded from 
the server to the client. Whether qpopper leaves Status: behind is 
configurable and has not been configured as such for the mailspools 
that I want to look at. There are the logs but they are only 
maintained for 3 months. I would like to be able to say definitively 
when the last time the person downloaded mail was. I can't look at 
the status of the file itself because there are programs that touch 
the spool files.

My guess is that there is something in the X-UIDL: that will tell me 
the download status and then I can use the date of the message to 
complete the answer. Does anyone know if the X-UIDL contains this 
info? I believe there is a hashing algorithm that is used to create 
the X-UIDL, maybe not. Has anyone looked into this? written a script 
to decipher?

thanks for any help
John
At 10:24 AM +1000 8/6/04, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 >
 On Thu, 5 Aug 2004 16:27 -0500, David Champion wrote to John Hammond:
 > * On 2004.08.05, in <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
 > * "John Hammond" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
 >>
 >> is there a way from the headers in the mailspool to see whether a message
 >> as been read or not?
 >
 > For UNIX v7 ("mbox") mail files, if it has a Status: header, it's been
 > read.
 That depends on what you mean by "read".  Presence of a "Status:" header
 simply means it has been seen by mail client software.  In the context of
 qpopper, it means it has been uploaded to the mailbox owner's POP3 client
 software.  It doesn't mean he/she has actually read it.
The question that I (and I think the original poster) would like answered
(and maybe it has) is:
 Is there a way to tell if a message in the mail spool has been 'completely
 downloaded' by the user. In the context of the answers given (thanks, btw)
 does qpopper write that 'Status' header after the message has been
 successfully downloaded?
As Chip points out, we can't tell if they have read it or even if they
can read!
The qpopper log file, of course merely shows (in summary) that messages
have been deleted or left on the server...
Kind regards, Peter Vaskess
Netlink Connect