Suppressing message-id generation locally

Suppressing message-id generation locally

[Harry Putnam]

Following along with the sender header discussion I decided I should
disable message-id generation on my end and let the posting host for
news or smtp (outgoing) for mail set it.

Kai suggested:
  (setq message-required-news-headers (delete 'Message-ID
  message-required-news-headers))

Which does the job for news, but what about mail?

I thought maybe a similar thing like this:
   (setq message-required-mail-headers (delete 'Message-ID
   message-required-mail-headers))

Which does stop gnus from generating the id but it still gets
generated locally (and incorrectly) like below:
        <200105261236.f4QCaU927207@reader.local.lan>

So how to proceed, if one wanted to disable message-id at the local
MTA level so that my local MTA (sendmail-8.11.2-14) passes the message
to outgoing mail machine at ISP (where I have no say in config) with
out a message-id, so that regardless of MUA the message id would get
generated at the outgoing smtp machine.

I'd like the mail handling software to deal with this, without my
having to force a correct message-id.  But not so clear how to do
that.  I'm behind my own firewall, on a locally named/addressed
machine in 192.168 range with no (internet recognized) FQDN.

My firewall, a NETGEAR FR314 DSL/router holds my static IP address but
does not process mail, beyond passing it through.  I can think of
several ways to kludge this so it comes out right but wanted to follow
`Rats' advice and let the mail handling software and network settings
deal with it, and get it right.

Re: Suppressing message-id generation locally

[Paul Jarc]

Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> writes:
> So how to proceed, if one wanted to disable message-id at the local
> MTA level so that my local MTA (sendmail-8.11.2-14) passes the message
> to outgoing mail machine at ISP (where I have no say in config) with
> out a message-id, so that regardless of MUA the message id would get
> generated at the outgoing smtp machine.

I don't know how to do this with sendmail, but am I correct that your
sendmail will hand the message to your ISP via SMTP?  I don't think an
SMTP receiver normally generates Message-ID when it's missing, so this
may require special cooperation from your ISP.  Try telneting directly
to the SMTP server and sending yourself a test message without a
Message-ID to see if this will work at all.

> My firewall, a NETGEAR FR314 DSL/router holds my static IP address but
> does not process mail, beyond passing it through.

As long as that machine never generates Message-IDs, and only one of
your internal machines does, there would be no problem in using the
router's hostname in your Message-IDs.  That would probably be the
easiest way, assuming you can tell sendmail to use that hostname for
Message-IDs.


paul