[Dovecot] possible dovecot problem (fwd)

[Mark E. Mallett]

I'm just forwarding this verbatim from somebody who works here.
Comments ?

mm

----- Forwarded message from Dave Chamberlain <davec at mv.mv.com> -----

> Subject: possible dovecot problem
> From: "Dave Chamberlain" <davec at mv.mv.com>
> Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 21:29:48 -0400 (EDT)
> To: mem at mv.mv.com (Mark E. Mallett)
> 
> Ok, I'm kind of confused at what dovecot's imap implementation is doing.
> 
> I seem to be spending more time than I need to correctly decipher the headers of
> email messages.
> 
> I have included here the text from 7.4.2 as it explains the response from a
> fetch of an ENVELOPE.  The last paragraph specifies that the FROM, SENDER
> and REPLYTO fields cannot be nil because some of them must be present per
> RFC822 and the IMAP spec will default values.  I have many examples where
> this is not the case, where the fetch of the envelope is returning NIL for
> some of these values.
> 
> In the example below, the message shows that the from, replyto and sender
> are all set to jaentc at aukware.com (ok, a spelling error, but that was her
> typing it in wrong).  The next field after those three is NIL, that is the
> TO line (more of my text after the IMAP conversation)
> 
>   a uid fetch 902 ENVELOPE
>   * 113 EXISTS
>   * 1 RECENT
>   * 104 FETCH (UID 902 ENVELOPE ("Tue, 20 May 2003 16:05:04 -0500" "From A Friend:
>   'TheWMURChannel.com  - News - Law Raises Age Children Must Be In Seat Restraints'"
>   (("Janet" NIL "jaentc" "aukware.com")) 
>   (("Janet" NIL "jaentc" "aukware.com")) 
>   (("Janet" NIL "jaentc" "aukware.com")) NIL NIL NIL NIL 
>   "<200305202105.h4KL5xo20860 at qbert.ibsys.com>"))
> 
> Following is the complete header from the message.  There is a valid To address
> supplied, and it is in one of the allowed formats.  I would have thought that
> possibly it was the format that was causing the problem.  I first theorized that
> it didn't understand the emailaddress (personalname) format.  However, the 
> From field is in that format, and was correctly picked up (notice that "Janet"
> exists above as the Personal name, so it did understand that format).
> 
> I have found multple cases where the FROM was NIL, the SUBJECT was NIL and
> the TO is NIL, yet when looking at the header they are visible.  
> 
> This is causing problems with more than just my things, OE is having a problem
> with it as well.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> >From jaentc at aukware.com Tue May 20 21:26:43 2003 UTC
> Received: (qmail 24772 invoked from network); 20 May 2003 17:52:17 -0400
> Received: from iridium.mv.net (HELO mv.mv.com) (qmailr at 199.125.85.17)
>   by mercury.mv.net with SMTP; 20 May 2003 17:52:17 -0400
> X-Peer-Info: remote-ip 199.125.85.17 local-ip 199.125.85.40
>   local-name mercury.mv.net
> Received: (qmail 21564 invoked by uid 134); 20 May 2003 17:26:53 -0400
> Delivered-To: davec at mv.com
> Received: (qmail 3533 invoked from network); 20 May 2003 17:06:26 -0400
> Received: from qbert.ibsys.com (66.187.197.24)
>   by iridium.mv.net with SMTP; 20 May 2003 17:06:26 -0400
> X-Peer-Info: remote-ip 66.187.197.24 local-ip 199.125.85.17
>   local-name iridium.mv.net
> Received: from 10.0.0.24 (cfusion3.ibsys.com [10.3.0.53])
> 	by qbert.ibsys.com (Switch-2.1.0/Switch-2.1.0) with ESMTP id h4KL5xo20860
> 	for <davec at mv.com (Dave)> Tue, 20 May 2003 16:05:59 -0500 (CDT)
> Message-Id: <200305202105.h4KL5xo20860 at qbert.ibsys.com>
> Content-type: text/plain
> Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 16:05:04 -0500
> From: jaentc at aukware.com (Janet)
> Subject: From A Friend: 'TheWMURChannel.com  - News - Law Raises Age Children Must Be
> In Seat Restraints'
> To: davec at mv.com (Dave)
> 
> 
> Section 7.4.2
> 
>       ENVELOPE
>          A parenthesized list that describes the envelope structure of a
>          message.  This is computed by the server by parsing the
>          [RFC-2822] header into the component parts, defaulting various
>          fields as necessary.
> 
>          The fields of the envelope structure are in the following
>          order: date, subject, from, sender, reply-to, to, cc, bcc,
>          in-reply-to, and message-id.  The date, subject, in-reply-to,
>          and message-id fields are strings.  The from, sender, reply-to,
>          to, cc, and bcc fields are parenthesized lists of address
>          structures.
> 
>          An address structure is a parenthesized list that describes an
>          electronic mail address.  The fields of an address structure
>          are in the following order: personal name, [SMTP]
>          at-domain-list (source route), mailbox name, and host name.
> 
>          [RFC-2822] group syntax is indicated by a special form of
>          address structure in which the host name field is NIL.  If the
>          mailbox name field is also NIL, this is an end of group marker
>          (semi-colon in RFC 822 syntax).  If the mailbox name field is
>          non-NIL, this is a start of group marker, and the mailbox name
>          field holds the group name phrase.
> 
>          If the Date, Subject, In-Reply-To, and Message-ID header lines
>          are absent in the [RFC-2822] header, the corresponding member
>          of the envelope is NIL; if these header lines are present but
>          empty the corresponding member of the envelope is the empty
>          string.
> 
>             Note: some servers may return a NIL envelope member in the
>             "present but empty" case.  Clients SHOULD treat NIL and
>             empty string as identical.
> 
>             Note: [RFC-2822] requires that all messages have a valid
>             Date header.  Therefore, the date member in the envelope can
>             not be NIL or the empty string.
> 
>             Note: [RFC-2822] requires that the In-Reply-To and
>             Message-ID headers, if present, have non-empty content.
>             Therefore, the in-reply-to and message-id members in the
>             envelope can not be the empty string.
> 
>          If the From, To, cc, and bcc header lines are absent in the
>          [RFC-2822] header, or are present but empty, the corresponding
>          member of the envelope is NIL.
> 
>          If the Sender or Reply-To lines are absent in the [RFC-2822]
>          header, or are present but empty, the server sets the
>          corresponding member of the envelope to be the same value as
>          the from member (the client is not expected to know to do
>          this).
> 
>             Note: [RFC-2822] requires that all messages have a valid
>             From header.  Therefore, the from, sender, and reply-to
>             members in the envelope can not be NIL.

----- End forwarded message -----