14.5 Sending Real Mail

The client.cf file is now complete and ready to use for sending all kinds of user mail. As you did before, send mail to yourself by using sendmail directly:

% ./sendmail -Cclient.cf you
Subject: testing
To: you

testing
.

Retrieve this message as you usually receive mail and save it to a file. The contents of that file should look something like this:

From [email protected] Fri Dec 13 05:47:47 1996
Return-Path: <[email protected]>
Received: from here.us.edu ([email protected] [123.45.67.8]) by mail.us.edu
(8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id FAA13451 for <you>; Fri, 13 Dec 1996 05:47:46 -0700
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996 05:47:44 -0700
From: [email protected] (Your Full Name) 
Message-Id: <[email protected]>                           note
Received: by here.us.edu; Fri, 13 Dec 1996 05:47:44 -0700
Subject: testing
To: you

testing

Note the change between this message's header and that of the previous message you sent. Instead of the hub machine adding a Message-ID: header, the local machine added that header. You can tell because the local machine's name appears there instead of the hub's name.

Actually, the Date: header was also added locally, but there is nothing to indicate that fact. A Date: header should be added locally to accurately reflect the posting date of the message. If you didn't supply a Date: header, instead allowing the hub to supply it, and the hub were down for a while, that header would be inaccurate by the amount of time the hub was down.