[Alpine-info] two SMTP servers in .pinerc, plus a "role"

[Jacob Wegelin]

My .pinerc file contains the following lines

# List of SMTP servers for sending mail. If blank: Unix Alpine uses sendmail.
smtp-server=smtp.gmail.com/user=jacob.wegelin at gmail.com/novalidate-cert,
 	cedar.vcu.edu/ssl/user=jwegelin/novalidate-cert

Gmail is first on the list because colleagues at VCU complain that the
emails they send using the local server frequently disappear in the
ether. Also I figure that a huge organization like google, for which
servers are its very life, would be more
likely to keep its servers up and running than Virginia Commonwealth
University.

My .pinerc also contains the following "role," because the VCU IMAP server appears to be easier to handle in Alpine than the google IMAP server. (With gmail I frequently get the "message to save shrank!" message.)

# Patterns and their actions are stored here.
patterns-roles=LIT:pattern="/NICK=Always Use!/FLDTYPE=ANY" action="/ROLE=1/FROM=Jacob Wegelin <jwegelin at vcu.edu>/RTYPE=NC/FTYPE=NC/CTYPE=NC"

But in spite of the fact that google is a much bigger organization, etc., recently, several times when I attempted to send an email, I got a message that said that the gmail server had "gone away," and the email got sent out (apparently) through cedar.vcu.edu.  For instance, when I was at a bed and breakfast in Casper, Wyoming recently, connecting through the B&B's wireless internet, my emails apparently all went through cedar.vcu.edu.

Is there any way to understand why the gmail server would be unavailable, and why it would be consistently unavailable from a wireless connection in Casper, Wyoming? Am I naming the server incorrectly in my .pinerc?

Is there a foolproof way to tell from the header of an email by which server it was sent? For instance, I thought that I got a "gmail server unavailable" message right before the following email went out, yet I don't see where it says that it went through gmail:

[begin embedded email]

>From jwegelin at vcu.edu Mon Jun 16 09:58:52 2008

Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:58:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jacob Wegelin <jwegelin at vcu.edu>
X-X-Sender: user at SPHBSTR3083.local
To: wegelin at u.washington.edu
Subject: second test
Message-ID: <alpine.OSX.1.00.0806160956520.343 at SPHBSTR3083.local>
User-Agent: Alpine 1.00 (OSX 882 2007-12-20)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; format=flowed; charset=US-ASCII


By which server does this go out?
Really?
[end of embedded email]

Then I quit and re-opened Alpine and sent the following email, which I thought went out using the gmail server:

[begin embedded email]

>From jwegelin at vcu.edu Mon Jun 16 10:00:25 2008

Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:59:59 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jacob Wegelin <jwegelin at vcu.edu>
X-X-Sender: user at SPHBSTR3083.local
To: wegelin at u.washington.edu
Subject: third attempt to send using gmail server SMTP
Message-ID: <alpine.OSX.1.00.0806160959330.351 at SPHBSTR3083.local>
User-Agent: Alpine 1.00 (OSX 882 2007-12-20)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; format=flowed; charset=US-ASCII

This is the third attempt.
Hmm.
[end of embedded email]

In neither of these emails do I see something that says through what server it was sent.

In spite of the fact that I cannot see what SMTP server was used, the email clients used by people to whom I send emails, must be able to recognize what server was used. I know this because often, when people reply to my emails, they send them to my gmail address, even though I do not give out that address.  How does someone's email client figure out that I sent the email via gmail?

Thanks for any enlightenment.

Jake

Jacob A. Wegelin
jwegelin at vcu.edu 
Assistant Professor
Department of Biostatistics
Virginia Commonwealth University
730 East Broad Street Room 3006
P. O. Box 980032
Richmond VA 23298-0032
U.S.A. 
http://www.people.vcu.edu/~jwegelin