route ????

[Thi Vu]

Hello,
This could be the second message - I screen just went blank after I hit ENTER key in error.
Here's my query ...

Is there a command to trace the routing of your email. For example, if I response to a survey and want to trace the route it takes and the destination of the survey. I thought I heard of a command "trace ..." or "route ...". Thank you for your help.

Thi

[Douglas Cromby_1]

I do not think that this question can be answered until you say which mail system you are using.

Are you using mail, mailx, sendmail, Exchange or something else?

[Berlene Herren]

If you are using sendmail, try increasing the logging level to 9, in /etc/mail/sendmail.cf, then stop and restart sendmail. It will log to /var/adm/syslog/mail.log.

Logging Level 9:
Log internal queue ID to external message ID mappings. This can be useful for tracing a message as it travels between several hosts.

Berlene

[Douglas Cromby_1]

If you are using sendmail, the first thing that I would try is to using sendmail with the verbose option. eg:

sendmail -v abc@xyz.com < /etc/hosts

this will send the hosts file to this user abc. You will see information about how the message was routed. Refering the mail.log is also very useful.

[Rainer_1]

i don't know how to trace an email but i think you are looking for

traceroute (on HP-UX)

or

tracert (on Windows/DOS)

With this utility you can trace the routing to a given host or IP address.

[Dave Kelly_1]

Provided that you have sendmail 8.x and above, you can make use of Delivery Status Notification.

e.g.,

sendmail -Nsuccess -v user@domain.com

will request a delivery receipt.

When this arrives back in your mailbox, it should look like this:


----- The following addresses had successful delivery notifications -----
(successfully delivered to mailbox)

----- Transcript of session follows -----
... Successfully delivered

--LAA08660.977483478/domain.com
Content-Type: message/delivery-status

Reporting-MTA: dns; domain.com
Received-From-MTA: DNS; your.domain.com
Arrival-Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 11:11:18 GMT

Final-Recipient: RFC822; user@domain.com
Action: delivered (to mailbox)
Status: 2.1.5
Last-Attempt-Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 11:11:18 GMT

--LAA08660.977483478/domain.com
Content-Type: text/rfc822-headers

Return-Path:
Received: from your.domain.com (sender@your.domain.com [xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx])
by domain.com (8.8.6 (PHNE_14041)/5.64) with ESMTP id LAA08659
for ; Fri, 22 Dec 2000 11:11:18 GMT
From: sender@your.domain.com
Received: (from root@localhost)
by your.domain.com (8.8.6 (PHNE_14041)/8.8.6) id LAA24689
for user@domain.com; Fri, 22 Dec 2000 11:18:11 GMT
Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 11:18:11 GMT
Message-Id: <200012221118.LAA24689@your.domain.com>

--LAA08660.977483478/domain.com--


The information will show which route the original message took.