Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 11:56:15 MET DST
From: Johnny Eriksson <bygg@sunet.se>
To: drums@cs.utk.edu
Subject: Re: Message-IDs and tracing 
In-Reply-To: Your message of 11 Sep 1997 03:02:29 -0000 
Message-ID: <CMM.0.88.873971775.bygg@bar.pilsnet.sunet.se>

In an unidentified msg "D. J. Bernstein" <djb@koobera.math.uic.edu> wrote:

>       Message-ID is an inferior substitute for the receipt; the same
>       Message-ID can appear on thousands of deliveries.

You can mean two things here:  either you mean that the same Message-ID
can appear on several different messages, in which case some software is
VERY broken, or you mean that when a single message gets delivered more
than once, the Message-ID on the different deliveries will be the same.
In the latter case, at least I think that this is exactly right.

> So Message-ID logging isn't helpful. Its main effect is to waste disk
> space, forcing the sysadmin to shorten the log duration. (Measure your
> own compressed log files, with and without Message-IDs, if you don't
> believe me.)

I see nothing that prevents a disk-space-challenged sysadmin from simply
stipping the Message-ID's from his log entries, especially if he don't
see a use for them.

> ---Dan

--Johnny