[Dovecot] Problem with Dovecot Delivery Agent, Extra "From" lines and mbox
When an mbox email contains a line that looks like a "Mail" header it should be quoted (per RFC 4155). Sendmail's delivery agent does this, as does Procmail delivery agent. Dovecot deliver does not do this.
Example line, with ">" quote:
From hokan@hokan.org Thu Mar 8 17:28:01 2008
When reading email (IMAP) that contains such an unquoted line, the email abruptly ends before the "Mail" line. There may (or may not) appear another email (visible to the client) that contains the rest of the email.
-- Hokan MEnet, a wholly owned subsidiary of Enet System Administrator Department of Mechanical Engineering hokan@me.umn.edu Institute of Technology 612.626.9800 University of Minnesota
Perhaps a demonstration will make the problem more clear.
If you are using Dovecot Deliver v 1.03 or 1.13 and most any IMAP server (I am using Dovecot IMAP) then I expect you will not see the rest of this email. Look at your INBOX directly on the server for more:
From hokan@hokan.org Thu Mar 8 17:28:01 2008 On Wed, Apr 09, 2008 at 04:03:58PM -0500, Hokan wrote: When an mbox email contains a line that looks like a "Mail" header it should be quoted (per RFC 4155). Sendmail's delivery agent does this, as does Procmail delivery agent. Dovecot deliver does not do this.
Example line, with ">" quote:
From hokan@hokan.org Thu Mar 8 17:28:01 2008
When reading email (IMAP) that contains such an unquoted line, the email abruptly ends before the "Mail" line. There may (or may not) appear another email (visible to the client) that contains the rest of the email.
-- Hokan MEnet, a wholly owned subsidiary of Enet System Administrator Department of Mechanical Engineering hokan@me.umn.edu Institute of Technology 612.626.9800 University of Minnesota
OK, my demonstration failed.
Something quoted my "From line". Was it the mailing list software?
On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 05:34:59PM -0500, Hokan wrote:
Perhaps a demonstration will make the problem more clear.
If you are using Dovecot Deliver v 1.03 or 1.13 and most any IMAP server (I am using Dovecot IMAP) then I expect you will not see the rest of this email. Look at your INBOX directly on the server for more:
From hokan@hokan.org Thu Mar 8 17:28:01 2008 On Wed, Apr 09, 2008 at 04:03:58PM -0500, Hokan wrote: When an mbox email contains a line that looks like a "Mail" header it should be quoted (per RFC 4155). Sendmail's delivery agent does this, as does Procmail delivery agent. Dovecot deliver does not do this.
Example line, with ">" quote:
From hokan@hokan.org Thu Mar 8 17:28:01 2008
When reading email (IMAP) that contains such an unquoted line, the email abruptly ends before the "Mail" line. There may (or may not) appear another email (visible to the client) that contains the rest of the email.
-- Hokan MEnet, a wholly owned subsidiary of Enet System Administrator Department of Mechanical Engineering hokan@me.umn.edu Institute of Technology 612.626.9800 University of Minnesota
On Wed, 2008-04-09 at 16:03 -0500, Hokan wrote:
When an mbox email contains a line that looks like a "Mail" header it should be quoted (per RFC 4155). Sendmail's delivery agent does this, as does Procmail delivery agent. Dovecot deliver does not do this.
Example line, with ">" quote:
From hokan@hokan.org Thu Mar 8 17:28:01 2008
When reading email (IMAP) that contains such an unquoted line, the email abruptly ends before the "Mail" line. There may (or may not) appear another email (visible to the client) that contains the rest of the email.
Dovecot is supposed to use Content-Length: header to skip over the mail body so it wouldn't require From lines to be quoted. This used to work with v0.99, but it got broken at some point.
I've also thought about quoting From line, and maybe I'll do that if I can't get Content-Length: to work properly. An annoying problem with the quoting is that it changes the mail content and breaks things like PGP signatures.
Anyway this is in my "would be a nice fix for v1.1.0, but doesn't block a release" TODO category.
On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 03:03:14AM +0300, Timo Sirainen wrote:
On Wed, 2008-04-09 at 16:03 -0500, Hokan wrote:
When an mbox email contains a line that looks like a "Mail" header it should be quoted (per RFC 4155). Sendmail's delivery agent does this, as does Procmail delivery agent. Dovecot deliver does not do this.
Example line, with ">" quote:
From hokan@hokan.org Thu Mar 8 17:28:01 2008
When reading email (IMAP) that contains such an unquoted line, the email abruptly ends before the "Mail" line. There may (or may not) appear another email (visible to the client) that contains the rest of the email.
Dovecot is supposed to use Content-Length: header to skip over the mail body so it wouldn't require From lines to be quoted. This used to work with v0.99, but it got broken at some point.
I've also thought about quoting From line, and maybe I'll do that if I can't get Content-Length: to work properly. An annoying problem with the quoting is that it changes the mail content and breaks things like PGP signatures.
Anyway this is in my "would be a nice fix for v1.1.0, but doesn't block a release" TODO category.
Thanks for the reply!
This is a big problem when it happens; very confusing for the end user. But it seems to be a rare occurance.
participants (2)
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Hokan
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Timo Sirainen