[Dovecot] Dovecot failing to parse some UTF-8 encoded attachment filenames, returning empty string instead

[Andrew Richards]

Hi,

I'm seeing a strange problem with some attachment filenames that are
UTF-8 encoded. The problem seems to be related to spaces and/or
unusual characters in filenames, like accented characters (or perhaps
just to filenames if UTF-8 encoded; I've not explored that fully).
These filenames are shown as empty strings in IMAP using Dovecot. I've
attached a sample message that exhibits this problem, trimmed down to
fairly bare essentials. By comparison I find that (for example)
Courier happily returns the filename (still encoded). Although I
suspect the problem lies within Dovecot, it may be an underlying
Unicode or other component that's at the root of the problem.

I can replicate this by putting the attached message in a mailbox (I'm
using Maildir format mailboxes, so I just drop the raw file in
Maildir/new and change the ownership of the file to match the mailbox
owner). Then a pretend IMAP session to show the problem,

$ telnet localhost 143
Trying ::1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
* OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 LITERAL+ SASL-IR LOGIN-REFERRALS ID ENABLE
IDLE AUTH=PLAIN] Dovecot ready.
0 login  some.one at test.domain password
0 OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 LITERAL+ SASL-IR LOGIN-REFERRALS ID ENABLE
IDLE SORT SORT=DISPLAY THREAD=REFERENCES THREAD=REFS MULTIAPPEND
UNSELECT CHILDREN NAMESPACE UIDPLUS LIST-EXTENDED I18NLEVEL=1
CONDSTORE QRESYNC ESEARCH ESORT SEARCHRES WITHIN CONTEXT=SEARCH
LIST-STATUS] Logged in
0 select inbox
* FLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft)
* OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft \*)]
Flags permitted.
* 4 EXISTS
* 0 RECENT
* OK [UNSEEN 1] First unseen.
* OK [UIDVALIDITY 1316621730] UIDs valid
* OK [UIDNEXT 8] Predicted next UID
* OK [HIGHESTMODSEQ 1] Highest
0 OK [READ-WRITE] Select completed.
0 fetch 4 body
* 4 FETCH (BODY (("text" "html" ("charset" "iso-8859-15") NIL NIL
"base64" 278 5)("application" "octet-stream" ("name" "") NIL NIL
"base64" 18) "mixed"))
0 OK Fetch completed.
0 logout
* BYE Logging out
0 OK Logout completed.
Connection closed by foreign host.
$

especially note the ("name" "") part showing a supposedly empty filename.

I've observed this behaviour on the following versions of Dovecot,
 - 1.2.9 on Ubuntu 10.04LTS (pre-compiled version)
 - 1.2.17 on Fedora 13 (pre-compiled version)
 - 2.0.15 on Fedora 13 (from source)

I don't think the Dovecot configuration is relevant, but I've put it
below for good measure for the 2.0.15 setup.

Any ideas on what might be causing this?

Best regards,

Andrew.

# dovecot -n
# 2.0.15: /usr/local/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
# OS: Linux 2.6.34.9-69.fc13.i686.PAE i686 Fedora release 13 (Goddard)
auth_debug = yes
default_login_user = nobody
log_path = /var/log/dovecot.log
passdb {
  args = /usr/local/bin/checkcdb
  driver = checkpassword
}
protocols = imap pop3
service auth {
  user = root
}
service imap-login {
  inet_listener imap {
    ssl = no
  }
}
service pop3-login {
  inet_listener pop3 {
    ssl = no
  }
}
ssl = no
userdb {
  driver = prefetch
}
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