qmail does not handle timezones properly?
Dear All I have a query regarding the way qmail (?incorrectly?) handles time zones. I have done various tests on this, the relevant portion of header of one test email below. Essentially I sent a mail out from a client on my internal network to qmail on my gateway machine, which forwarded to external web based email service which has an autoforward to send mail to my network e-mail address. I sent the mail from the client at 19:22 GMT +0200 (western Europe summer time) it arrived back to me about a minute later and displays on my client MUA as being received at **23:23** hours, i.e. four hours in the future! Of course you know the next thing I am going to say... before I installed qmail I have never seen or had this problem. The client PC clock said 17:22 (+0200) correct time, the Linux box said 17:22 and is setup correctly with TZ = GMT +0200. What's even funnier is when I send another email out from the same client (at 18:00 hours +0200) to two different external mail accounts I have one which is auto forwarded to my Linux box and qmail [smtpd] and one which is picked up from an ISP POP mailbox (not through qmail). Both emails arrive in the same timeframe, the one picked up from the ISP POP mailbox shows a sent time of 18:00 the other delivered via qmail shows a sent time of 22:00! The MUA stamps the message with the correct Date: field value. So I have the same email in my inbox with times four hours apart! and the qmail processed one four hours in the future. I have already read previous (heated) discussions on this topic on the list archive but could not discern a clear answer apart from some people saying qmail works as designed - why? It seems to be the only mail server that does so. Why does qmail use - when the PC it is running on is setup as GMT +0200? It clearly is causing a problem. Is there any configuration option which can be called to have qmail respect the time zone of the computer it is running on? Where and how would this be called for both qmail [POST] and SMTP daemons? Thanks in advance Patrick Starrenburg === Received: (qmail 1269 invoked from network); 11 May 2001 21:23:00 - Received: from unknown (HELO rmx452-mta.mail.com) (165.251.48.46) by xxx.homeip.net with SMTP; 11 May 2001 21:23:00 - Received: from smv635-ec.mail.com (smv635-ec.mail.com [165.251.32.19]) by rmx452-mta.mail.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA02057 for <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Fri, 11 May 2001 13:22:46 -0400 (EDT) Received: from spf1.us4.outblaze.com (205-158-62-23.outblaze.com [205.158.62.23] (may be forged)) by smv635-ec.mail.com (8.9.3/8.9.1SMV070400) with ESMTP id NAA04867 for <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> sent by <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Fri, 11 May 2001 13:22:46 -0400 (EDT) Received: from xxx.homeip.net by spf1.us4.outblaze.com (8.11.0/8.11.0) with SMTP id f4BHMiv03491 for <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Fri, 11 May 2001 17:22:44 GMT Received: (qmail 1266 invoked from network); 11 May 2001 21:22:45 - Received: from unknown (HELO starr02) (192.168.1.10) by xxx.homeip.net with SMTP; 11 May 2001 21:22:45 - Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> From: "xxx" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Test sent 19:22 GMT +0200 Date: Fri, 11 May 2001 19:22:30 +0200 _ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
Re: qmail does not handle timezones properly?
Peter van Dijk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >qmail uses - because it is the receiving MUA's task to display the date in the format the user desires. If your MUA is unable to do so, complain to the MUA author. It does, pls check my original mail. You will see that the MUA fully and correctly inserts the Date: field including TZ offset. >qmail uses - because only if all headers use the same timezone, reliable debugging is possible. ?? This logic seems a red herring to me. Anyway my testing does not bear this out, pls see my extra info email. >qmail uses - because timezone support adds a lot of code bloat that makes no sense in an MTA. Your sending client should add a date header. It does, pls check my original mail. Code bloat?? Doesn't seem like an excuse to me to (**possibly** we haven't determined this yet) have a fundamental error in a system because someone doesn't feel like adding code to internationalise something. Cheers Patrick _ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
Re: qmail does not handle timezones properly?
"Patrick Starrenburg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >>people saying qmail works as designed - why? >Because it makes debugging easier. ? I was meaning "works as designed" putting (possibly) incorrect timestamps on emails. Are you meaning debugging times or debugging qmail? If the former then that is why there is a worldwide standard of local time being GMT + TZ. If Linux can store file timestamps in GMT and display them on the fly in local time (GMT + TZ offset) then surely qmail can do the same also. >>It seems to be the only mail server that does so. >So what? Is that a problem? If it is wrong then yes! It's not a question of qmail versus the world but qmail correct or incorrect. If incorrect then DJB et. al. ought to fix it. _ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
qmail does not handle timezones properly? - More Info
Dear All OK, sigh... I was hoping to avoid the "religious OS wars" and I intend to stick to the facts, I hope everyone else can also. I need to give you some further details on the setup. Also I have done a further test and I still see a problem with qmail. I have a network (for purposes of this test we only need to worry about two machines) Linux box running Redhat 7.1 and W2K box (with a hamster named bill inside furiously running a spinning wheel to power the OS. Occasionaly I chuck in a used Emacs manual for him to chew on). Anyway... jokes aside - as far as I, and all the documentation I read, can see both machines are correctly configured for local time as GMT + TZ offset. I am in western Europe which is GMT +1 hour, at the moment (as it is summer and for once the sun is shining in Holland) with daylight saving it is GMT +02:00. So... *Linux box* [root@linuxbox patrick]# date Sun May 13 17:02:55 GMT+2 2001 - Check *W2K box* C:\>date The current date is: Sun 13/05/2001 - European date format naturally C:\>time The current time is: 17:03:13.83 System TZ settings GMT+01:00 (with Daylight Saving +1hour) = GMT+02:00 - Check Onto the test email... I created the mail on the W2K box, forget about the MUA used that is irrelevant. Just note that it correctly inserts the Date: field with GMT +0200 TZ offset. To simplify things I bounced the email off my ISP's SMTP server back to my e-mail account on the Linux box. Now here is the problem - firstly see that the ISP's server also uses +0200 local time TZ offset with same time as box my MUA is on *but* when it is picked up by qmail's SMTP daemon that timestamps it as 18:56:24 -. IF it was going to use - (GMT) THEN it should have changed time to 14:56:24 - which is 16:56:24 *minus* the extra two hours TZ offset for my location. Instead it has *added* two hours, then called it GMT, then when my MUA picks it up and looks at the **Received:** field in GMT format it *correctly* converts it to my local time of GMT +0200 and displays it to me as being received as 20:56 hours. Which, by the way, hasn't arrived yet! Thats how the 4 hours time difference comes about. Strange... if there is something wrong with my logic or setup of my Linux box then please tell me (nicely, no flaming of OS's) but it seems pretty straightforward to me. I remember something in the previous thread on this topic in the list archive about a qmail program called "datemail" is this meant to fix this problem and how does use it in conjunction with the qmail, smtpd & pop3d daemons. My setup was done using qmail-conf. Regards Patrick = *Test email* Return-Path: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Received: (qmail 6078 invoked from network); 13 May 2001 **18:56:24** - [[[ Where does 18: come from ??]]] Received: from unknown (HELO amsmta03-svc.chello.nl) (213.46.240.7) by xxx.homeip.net with SMTP; 13 May 2001 **18:56:24** - Received: from w2kbox by amsmta03-svc.chello.nl (InterMail vK.4.03.02.00 201-232-124) with SMTP id <20010513145513.IXEE12765.amsmta03-svc@w2kbox> for <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Sun, 13 May 2001 16:55:13 +0200 Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> From: "Patrick Starrenburg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Test 16:55 Date: Sun, 13 May 2001 16:55:43 +0200 _ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
Re: qmail does not handle timezones properly? - More Info
Thanks to Adrian Ho and Mark Jefferys explanations for the solution. Adrian you were halfway there with your first reply and Mark's link pointed me in the right direction to track down the problem. The TZ setting was GMT +2 which apparently means actually the box was calculating GMT **minus 2 hours**. That seems logical?! I had selected Amsterdam during installation of Redhat but obviously had changed it sometime thereafter during setup and testing of qmail. Obviously from the above I was not aware of the counter intuitiveness of Posix time zones!! I just wanted to point out a couple of things also to the list: 1) I *had* already read through the *complete* thread on this topic not wanting to rehash an old issue *before* I posted the question to the list but I did not determine that there was a clear explanation of the topic. I was aware of the discussion re: the Date: field. That's why I specifically mentioned that my MUA inserted it, however some persons simply erroneously jumped on that topic again. In my case it was nothing to do with the Date: field. 2) I recall that the discussion about this in the archive went on for *much* longer than this thread and still then there was no clear clean answer. This obviously is a point of potential confusion that perhaps one of the more experienced qmail members could write a FAQ about. DJB's document - http://cr.yp.to/immhf/date.html gives information but is not ideally suited to a FAQ type of document. 3) If this list is for technical questions regarding qmail then you are going to get people *starting* with qmail, and yes... maybe even starting with Linux. And that means starters questions. If we are going to follow DJB's wish to spread the use of qmail then you are going to get more of those types of questions... 4) And finally - On Sun, 13 May 2001, Peter van Dijk wrote: >I say we stop this thread. The user's box is misconfigured and he's >failing to see why UTC in headers is good. Let it be. Gee thanks Peter - you are the list owner are you? I believe your politeness is misconfigured. I'd like to point out that you didn't provide an answer, in fact you said... [snip] >>*Linux box* >>[root@linuxbox patrick]# date >>Sun May 13 17:02:55 GMT+2 2001 - Check >Yes. So you didn't pick up on the incorrect TZ setting. Of course we all suspected something was (possibly) wrong with my Linux box, even I was saying that! What we were looking for was a solution or a pointer to the solution. Perhaps this list *should* be moderated. Thanks again everyone esp. Adrian & Mark. PS _ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
Re: Slow start tcpserver
Dear Andriy I believe the -l switch should solve your problem as the other person mentioned. If you are getting into using tcpserver and the other services written by qmail's author you may wish to look at qmail-conf http://www.din.or.jp/~ushijima/qmail-conf.html as this does a nice job of setting up all configuration files and logging via multilog and you can look how the author sets up calling tcpserver. Read his docs though as the program does a complete setup which you may or may not wish to go with. Good luck Patrick == Hi ALL! I decided try tcpserver program for qmail services (smtpd & pop3d). It's work properly but sometimes tcpserver strarting very slow ( more than 30 sec ! ). _ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
Difficulties with 'long-term' list responders
Frank Tegtmeyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >>"Patrick Starrenburg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> saying that! What we were looking for was a solution or a pointer to >> the solution. >I told you two times to try CET. Did you do it? No. >It *is* the solution because it's your timezone. So where is the error >in behaviour? >When you are ignorant about provided help you shouldn't expect better >answers when asking the same question again. >Blaming Peter for not being polite is ridiculous. >Frank Dear Frank You know - I could hit the keyboard and write back a real flame e-mail calling you things like a Unix (and qmail) bigot with a closed mind - but I won't. I will attempt to gently point out to you the problems in a number of statements both you and Peter have made. First of all I think it is important to understand that the fundamental difficulty arose here because of the belief on my part whereby when I looked at the Linux machine saying "17:02:55 GMT+2" I conceivably could believe that it was saying the time was 17 hours GMT plus two hours. But no, we (now) know that this is one of those 'gotchas' where plus two actually means *minus* two. We naturally should all immediately recognise this ?? logic. Well you immediately did didn't you? And you immediately advised me of this fact didn't you? You made the statement - "If it says 17:22, it is *not* configured to GMT +0200. Try to set Timezone CET. It should say 19:22 then." in response to my >problem. The client PC clock said 17:22 (+0200) correct time, the >Linux box said 17:22 and is setup correctly with TZ = GMT >+0200. Firstly it doesn't matter *what* time zone is chosen on the Linux box, even the mistaken time zone I had chosen of GMT+2, the machine *can* say for example 17:22 GMT+2 *and* be showing the correct time for the local time zone chosen. This is a separate issue to whether the time zone selected is the correct time zone for the physical location you are actually in. Also the key point is what was the **offset** to GMT for the time zone I had current on the machine at that time. A very simple command you can use in the future Frank is "TZ=GMT date" this will show you what the GMT time would be on a machine and we would have immediately seen that the time zone I had current at the time was two hours *before* GMT not two hours *after* contrary to what I believed. This would have verified that there was an error that needed to be fixed and pointed how to fix it. Secondly your statement "it should say 19:22" is in error Frank, when I change the TZ from GMT +2 to Europe/Amsterdam (CEST) the clock jumps forward four hours, not two. I am not quite sure what you thought GMT +0200 was? And one reason I didnt change the time zone was I thought why would I want the Linux box to say 19:22 and the W2K box to say 17:22?? Didnt seem logical to me. Thats when I thought I would add some more information to help the discussion. You said, When you are ignorant about provided help you shouldn't expect better answers when asking the same question again. Well I am sorry Frank but you are wrong again in my second mail I cut and pasted the screen outputs from both my machines (as from my experience that sort of thing can often provide a clue) and that is when Mark Jefferys was immediately able to pin down the problem and not just provided better answers but the *solution*, he investigated & communicated Frank. You just made one sided pronouncements. Now as regards Peter, well I am afraid that his help was even of less value then yours. Peter said in response to my first e-mail "because it is the receiving MUA's task to display the date in the format the user desires. If your MUA is unable to do so, complain to the MUA author Your sending client should add a date header..." Firstly I *explicitly* said in my first e-mail "The MUA stamps the message with the correct Date: field value" because I had read the discussion about that point in the qmail archive thread about this topic which I had read in full before posting my query to the list, I had carefully checked this. I guess Peter missed that in his eagerness to trot out an easy answer - blame someone else. Secondly after 'injecting' no value to the thread *and* no solution Peter said, "I say we stop this thread. The user's box is misconfigured and he's failing to see why UTC in headers is good. Let it be." This was after he, just as quickly had agreed that the output from my Linux machine below was OK... >>*Linux box* [root@linuxbox patrick]# date Sun May 13 17:02:55 GMT+2 2001 - >>Check >Yes So Frank, I guess he doesn't know about (or should I say he is ignorant of) the fact of Posix negative values for posi
Re: Trouble with date
Dear Andrey There are a number of things to consider here - the server (qmail) side and your client (MUA) side: * qmail uses a more intelligent system of time stamping emails which pass through its system using GMT time which it (correctly) represents as (in your case) 06:57:47 - this says that at the time the message was processed by qmail the *GMT* time was - 06:57. This is used by qmail because it makes it more consistent regarding time values as messages are sent around the world. * Not sure on the time zone in Russia but if you want to check on your machine running qmail (if you are looking after that machine) run the command "date" note down the *local* time and the time zone it says which will be in your case (if we take 06:57:47 as the example) 10:57:47 and your local time time information. Then run command "TZ=GMT date" and note what time your server thinks is GMT. If the difference is correct for your time zone in Russia then your server, and therefore qmail, should be setup correctly for timezones. * Now the bad news may be that your client MUA email software does not/may not like working with the Received: field in the GMT - format with which qmail stamps it and it may not stamp emails with a Date: field which means that unfortunately (I believe I am not sure on this point) that as Robin & Frank say you have a problem. Does your client MUA email software stamp messages with a Date: field something like this - Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 11:02:03 +0200 - ? Regards Patrick From: Andrey Shirshov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Hello, . >why in my messages date is not rigth? >... with SMTP; 15 May 2001 06:57:47 - >date is 10:54!!! _ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
RE: tcpserver blues
Hi Chris
You put this query up on the 10th. and tc lewis replied? I would endorse his
answer to you, look into supervise from the daemontools toolkit.
If you are starting off with qmail and want to get it up and going then go
with one of the established methods of setting it up - Life with qmail
and/or Tetsu Ushijima's excellent qmail-conf which has complete
configuration scripts for setting up qmail.
http://www.din.or.jp/~ushijima/qmail-conf.html
I believe that it is not recommended to run qmail in the background, and
with tcpserver it is not necessary. The DJB suite has a special way of
working together with tcpserver, the relevant executable (qmail, smtpd,
pop3d) and multilog. tcpserver listens for connections to a port (e.g. 25)
and kicks off the relevant program (smtpd) as required. It is correct that
"2>&1" redirects stderr to stdout but this is actually used (I believe, one
of the regular guys can confirm this) as a special pipe for multilog to pipe
the output to the multilog log for the service.
This is my machines run script for smptd generated by Ushijima's qmail-conf.
You'll see that smtpd is called without the & background option. It works
:-)
Cheers
Patrick
#!/bin/sh
exec 2>&1 \
envdir ./env \
sh -c '
case "$REMOTENAME" in h) H=;; p) H=p;; *) H=H;; esac
case "$REMOTEINFO" in r) R=;; [0-9]*) R="t$REMOTEINFO";; *) R=R;; esac
exec \
envuidgid qmaild \
softlimit ${DATALIMIT+"-d$DATALIMIT"} \
/usr/local/bin/tcpserver \
-vDU"$H$R" \
${LOCALNAME+"-l$LOCALNAME"} \
${BACKLOG+"-b$BACKLOG"} \
${CONCURRENCY+"-c$CONCURRENCY"} \
-xtcp.cdb \
-- "${IP-0}" "${PORT-25}" \
/var/qmail/bin/qmail-smtpd
'
From: "Chris Ochap" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
=
>That is not correct, that will just redirect stderr to stdout.
>You need to put a single & at the end of the line that starts up
>tcpserver to put the process into the background.
_
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Re: installation Problems
You either don't have a compiler installed on your Linux/Unix machine or it is not on your path. Are you using one of the standard documents / methods to setup qmail - 'Life with qmail [LWQ]' (beginners) or qmail-conf (more advanced)? You should, if you don't know what that error means you are going to find getting qmail going difficult unless you follow something like LWQ very carefully :-) In LWQ it tells you how to check whether you have a compiler installed. You need one, if it not installed you need to read the docs for your distribution to see how to install it. Cheers Patrick p.s. best not to use Rich Text Format (i.e. HTML) to post to the list. Plain text is best. = Hello all. I tried to install the qmail but when i give the command MAKE i have the following msg : bash:make:command not found Anybody knows? _ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Hello all. I tried to install the qmail but when i give the command MAKE i have the following msg : bash:make:command not found Anybody knows?Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
