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Re: [fetchmail] Retrieval Error - incorrect header line

2003-07-22 22:55:04
On Mon, Jul 21, 2003 at 11:39:25PM -0400, Paul M Foster wrote:

On Mon, Jul 21, 2003 at 10:42:45PM -0400, Eric S. Raymond wrote:

Rob MacGregor <rob_macgregor(_at_)hotmail(_dot_)com>:
The general case is nastier than you know.  I wish *I* didn't know.

Even with those cases, I can see some value in Michael's suggestion that
corrupt/mangled emails be passed, as an attachment, to the postmaster (or
possibly to a "corrupt email" address, that way sites that only see this 
in
spam can black hole it).  Any chance of having such a feature added?

If nothing else, it might stop the regular flood of emails to the list
about the problem :-)

Well, I cleaned up some stuff in 6.2.2 that was contributing to the problem.
Mail with bad headers is no longer retained on the server; instead. we try
to deduce a location for the header/body split.

Let's see what corner cases are still causing problems before we try
anything more elaborate.

I'm not sure if I have a edge case or not.

Last time I got some of this malformed email (under 6.2.3), it hit a 
piece that was malformed and said so. Then I got a protocol error. 
Errors looked like this:

fetchmail: message delimiter found while scanning headers
flushed
fetchmail: client/server protocol error while fetching from <pop server>
fetchmail: Query status=4 (PROTOCOL)

There were more messages on that server, but it apparently broke the 
connection at that point. When I went back to fetch the rest, _all_ the 
mail was still on the server. (I had to run fetchmail -F to kill it.)

I've never had a protocol error with this server, and I haven't had any 
malformed-header emails since, so I can't say whether the behavior is 
consistent. (I'll let you know if it happens again.)

If others have seen this behavior in 6.2.3, or if the phenomenon rings a 
bell with you, then maybe it represents an edge case.

I've just confirmed that this behavior is consistent. If any further 
data is needed, let me know.

Paul