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[fetchmail]fetchmail SIGPIPE error with unescaped ^\.$

2002-04-15 14:00:28
First, thanks for fetchmail - a marvelous tool!

I consolidate mail from an IMAP server (and others) onto my linux box
via fetchmail 5.9.7, and from time to time a message comes along that
converts this fine state of affairs to a mess.  I've discovered that
this is triggered to a "." all by itself on a line in the mail but I'm
not sure whether fetchmail, smtp, imap, or the way I integrate them is
to blame.

The fetchmail error is:

 fetchmail: reading message 500 of 1074 (17581 octets) fetchmail: SIGPIPE 
thrown from an MDA or a stream socket error
 fetchmail: socket error while delivering to SMTP host linuxfreemail.com
 fetchmail: Query status=2 (SOCKET)
 fetchmail: terminated with signal 13

Sendmail thinks it has gotten a good message (presumably because of
the "." on a line by itself) and puts it in the mail box.  But
fetchmail thinks things didn't work, leaving all the mail in place for
safety.  Then when fetchmail wakes up in another 5 minutes, the exact
same thing happens, I get one more partial message in my local inbox,
and my mail is effectively blocked until I log into the remote IMAP
server and manually remove the offending message.

Fetchmail doesn't use port 25 to connect to sendmail on my box - I
don't keep a daemon listening to avoid the security exposure.
Instead I specify:

  defaults mda "/usr/sbin/sendmail -oem -f %F %T"

It also leaves zombie sendmail processes ala:
 neal     18307  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        Z    Feb06   0:00 [sendmail 
<defunct>]

The IMAP server is also a bit unusual.  Since the machine
doesn't really run an IMAP daemon and since I want security,
I connect via ssh and run the imapd by hand:

  .... proto imap plugin "ssh %h /local/usr/etc/imapd" auth ssh;


An example of the mail message content that triggers this is

So far, I have found it to work pretty well as an "integrated" offering=
 .

I.e. the "." appears because of some mime encoding.

It seems like somewhere along the line the "." is not being
escaped properly, as I believe it needs to be for SMTP.

The Solaris IMAP server uses that Sun-specific Content-Length: 8835
stuff, so I suppose that somewhere along the line one of the programs
may think that the "." doesn't have to be escaped.

Does anyone know where the problem lies, and if it has been or can be
fixed?

Versions:

 Linux box: redhat 7.1, fetchmail-5.9.7, sendmail-8.11.2-14
 IMAP server: solaris 5.6, imapd IMAP4rev1 v10.234

Many thanks,

Neal McBurnett <neal(_at_)bcn(_dot_)boulder(_dot_)co(_dot_)us>
http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/
GPG/PGP signed and/or sealed mail encouraged.  Keyid: 2C9EBA60


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