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Date:      Wed, 7 Oct 1998 11:22:46 +0930
From:      Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
To:        charlespeters@tecpro.com, questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Why so long til I see my message posted to the list?
Message-ID:  <19981007112246.F27781@freebie.lemis.com>
In-Reply-To: <000d01bdf160$b467d520$c8730418@ci1000971-d.sptnbrg1.sc.home.com>; from Charles A. Peters on Tue, Oct 06, 1998 at 03:37:07PM -0400
References:  <000d01bdf160$b467d520$c8730418@ci1000971-d.sptnbrg1.sc.home.com>

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On Tuesday,  6 October 1998 at 15:37:07 -0400, Charles A. Peters wrote:
> Whenever I post a message to the mailing list, it
> usually takes about 1 hour to show up.
>
> Is this normal, or am I doing something wrong?

This is normal.  The message first goes to hub.freebsd.org, where it
is queued with other messages waiting for delivery.  Then it gets
distributed to a number of secondary systems, designed to be
topographically closer than hub, for redistribution.  There it is
queued with other messages waiting for delivery.  Finally, it gets
delivered, one destination at a time.  Thus it's possible to get a
reply before you see your own message.

You can follow this by looking at the headers.  They are "newest
first".  Here's what I get for your message.  Your headers for the
same message will look the same at the bottom, but will diverge after
hub:

> From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Oct  7 05:56:13 1998
> Received: from sarip.sol.net (mail@sarip.sol.net [169.207.30.120])
>         by allegro.lemis.com (8.9.1/8.9.0) with ESMTP id FAA23831
>         for <grog@lemis.com>; Wed, 7 Oct 1998 05:56:09 +0930 (CST)

This is the final hop: your message got here at 5:56 am our time,
which is 8:26 pm yesterday UTC.

> Received: from hub.freebsd.org (hub.FreeBSD.ORG [204.216.27.18])
>         by sarip.sol.net (8.8.8/8.8.8/SNNS-1.02) with ESMTP id PAA21669;
>         Tue, 6 Oct 1998 15:25:56 -0500 (CDT)

sarip.sol.net is the relay host for my domain.  The message got there
at 3:25 pm CDT, 8:25 pm UTC.  This was just one minute before it
arrived at allegro.

> Received: from localhost (daemon@localhost)
>           by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id MAA27354;
>           Tue, 6 Oct 1998 12:40:54 -0700 (PDT)
>           (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions)

Here hub is receiving the outgoing message to the mailing lists.  The
time is 12:40 pm PDT, 7:40 pm UTC.  Thus it took it 45 minutes to send
the message to sol.  The probable reason for this would be a couple of
timeouts on other systems which were tried first.

> Received: by hub.freebsd.org (bulk_mailer v1.6); Tue, 6 Oct 1998 12:36:49 -0700

4 minutes earlier the bulk mailer at hub received the message.

> Received: (from majordom@localhost)
>           by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id MAA26611
>           for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Tue, 6 Oct 1998 12:36:47 -0700 (PDT)
>           (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG)

This is still the message going out from hub, 2 seconds earlier.

> Received: from chickenbean.ais-gwd.com (chickenbean.com [205.160.97.50])
>           by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id MAA26583
>           for <questions@freebsd.org>; Tue, 6 Oct 1998 12:36:37 -0700 (PDT)
>           (envelope-from charlespeters@tecpro.com)

Here's your message coming in to hub at 12:36:37 PDT, 7:36 pm UTC, 10
seconds before it was scheduled for rebroadcast.

> Received: from ci1000971-d.sptnbrg1.sc.home.com (ci1000971-d.sptnbrg1.sc.home.com [24.4.115.200])
>         by chickenbean.ais-gwd.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id PAA07162
>         for <questions@freebsd.org>; Tue, 6 Oct 1998 15:52:33 -0400 (EDT)
>         (envelope-from charlespeters@tecpro.com)

Here's your message being received by your ISP (or whatever) at 15:52
EDT, 7:52 pm UTC.  This suggests that the clock is wrong on this
machine, since it arrived at hub (which is ntp synchronized) 16
minutes earlier.

One problem with the current distribution method is that messages are
sent one destination at a time, a non-responding mail server can cause
significant delays.  Jonathan Bresler, the FreeBSD postmaster, has
just announced that he's changing to a different remailer which is
better in this respect.  Expect the change to be completed within a
week (and if you're using procmail or some such to filter mail, expect
to have to change it: the headers won't be quite the same).

Greg
--
See complete headers for address, home page and phone numbers
finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key

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