Issue with text to Mailman list serve
Hello,
One of our list serve administrators is experiencing an issue with one of her listserves. Here is her description of the issue. She is sending text to her listserve which is a moderated list. She approves the message but as a member of the list, the email is received with 3 attachments: ATT00001.c, ATT00002.htm, and ATT00003.c. The administrator has 2 other lists and when she sends text, she receives them as text. She would like email sent as text to be received as text. I have checked the configuration settings from her 3 lists, and the difference between the 3 is the one that is having this issue is the moderated. I would not think this to be the cause of the issue. At first, the issue was reported to me that email was sent as html but was received as text so I suspected the issue to be with the Content Filtering settings. So, I checked all 3 lists and they are exactly the same.
Just to inform the group, I did check the FAQ archives but have not found the issue. Also, we are using Mailman version 2.1.9.
Has anyone seen this and if so, what is the resolution?
Regards, Darren ODU
Darren G Pifer wrote:
One of our list serve administrators is experiencing an issue with one of her listserves. Here is her description of the issue. She is sending text to her listserve which is a moderated list. She approves the message but as a member of the list, the email is received with 3 attachments: ATT00001.c, ATT00002.htm, and ATT00003.c. The administrator has 2 other lists and when she sends text, she receives them as text. She would like email sent as text to be received as text.
The only time I've heard of anything like this is when there are different character sets being used in some of the headers or footers (sometimes space characters), thus causing the different parts of the message to be put in different MIME body parts (as described in FAQ 4.39 at <http://wiki.list.org/x/84A9>).
You could try deleting all list-specific headers and footers and re-creating them, this time making sure that you don't put in any non-ASCII characters. Or maybe you've got ASCII characters in there, but there are non-ASCII characters in the submitted message, such as accented characters in someone's name or signature?
Other than that, I have no idea how this kind of thing would happen.
-- Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org> If you like Jazz/R&B guitar, check out LinkedIn Profile: my friend bigsbytracks on YouTube at <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu> http://preview.tinyurl.com/bigsbytracks
Brad Knowles wrote:
Darren G Pifer wrote:
One of our list serve administrators is experiencing an issue with one of her listserves.
If it's a Listserv(r) list, why are you posting here :)
(Listserv(r) is a registered trademark[1] owned by the developer of a particular email list management product, and it shouldn't be used generically.)
Here is her description of the issue. She is sending text to her listserve which is a moderated list. She approves the message but as a member of the list, the email is received with 3 attachments: ATT00001.c, ATT00002.htm, and ATT00003.c. The administrator has 2 other lists and when she sends text, she receives them as text. She would like email sent as text to be received as text.
The only time I've heard of anything like this is when there are different character sets being used in some of the headers or footers (sometimes space characters), thus causing the different parts of the message to be put in different MIME body parts (as described in FAQ 4.39 at <http://wiki.list.org/x/84A9>).
You could try deleting all list-specific headers and footers and re-creating them, this time making sure that you don't put in any non-ASCII characters. Or maybe you've got ASCII characters in there, but there are non-ASCII characters in the submitted message, such as accented characters in someone's name or signature?
Other than that, I have no idea how this kind of thing would happen.
The .htm extension on the middle "attachment" which I assume is the message body indicates she is not sending a text/plain message but rather a text/html message, and content filtering is not removing the html part or converting it to plain text. The other "attachments" are probably the msg_header and msg_footer as Brad suggests. The FAQ Brad references is the relevant one. The difference between lists may be that this is the only one that adds msg_header and msg_footer.
I may not have this exactly right, but the only way to know for sure is to see a raw message from the list or at least the content of the three "attachments"
[1] <http://www.lsoft.com/corporate/trademark.asp>
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
Mark Sapiro wrote:
Brad Knowles wrote:
One of our list serve administrators is experiencing an issue with one of her listserves.
If it's a Listserv(r) list, why are you posting here :)
(Listserv(r) is a registered trademark[1] owned by the developer of a particular email list management product, and it shouldn't be used generically.)
Yea, it is incorrect to use listserve but it is common amongst our users so I have assimilated to use the same terminology :( It is a Mailman list.
Here is her description of the issue. She is sending text to her listserve which is a moderated list. She approves the message but as a member of the list, the email is received with 3 attachments: ATT00001.c, ATT00002.htm, and ATT00003.c. The administrator has 2 other lists and when she sends text, she receives them as text. She would like email sent as text to be received as text.
The only time I've heard of anything like this is when there are different character sets being used in some of the headers or footers (sometimes space characters), thus causing the different parts of the message to be put in different MIME body parts (as described in FAQ 4.39 at <http://wiki.list.org/x/84A9>).
You could try deleting all list-specific headers and footers and re-creating them, this time making sure that you don't put in any non-ASCII characters. Or maybe you've got ASCII characters in there, but there are non-ASCII characters in the submitted message, such as accented characters in someone's name or signature?
Other than that, I have no idea how this kind of thing would happen.
The .htm extension on the middle "attachment" which I assume is the message body indicates she is not sending a text/plain message but rather a text/html message, and content filtering is not removing the html part or converting it to plain text. The other "attachments" are probably the msg_header and msg_footer as Brad suggests. The FAQ Brad references is the relevant one. The difference between lists may be that this is the only one that adds msg_header and msg_footer.
As Brad wrote, I found some non-ascii characters in the introduction description from the general options for the list so I removed them. I asked the list admin to send another message to the list. BTW, I asked the admin to add me as a member so I can see what is happening.
I may not have this exactly right, but the only way to know for sure is to see a raw message from the list or at least the content of the three "attachments"
If this does not resolve the issue, I will add the attachments in my next email to the group.
Thanks, Darren ODU
Mark Sapiro wrote:
Here is her description of the issue. She is sending text to her listserve which is a moderated list. She approves the message but as a member of the list, the email is received with 3 attachments: ATT00001.c, ATT00002.htm, and ATT00003.c. The administrator has 2 other lists and when she sends text, she receives them as text. She would like email sent as text to be received as text.
You could try deleting all list-specific headers and footers and re-creating them, this time making sure that you don't put in any non-ASCII characters. Or maybe you've got ASCII characters in there, but there are non-ASCII characters in the submitted message, such as accented characters in someone's name or signature?
Other than that, I have no idea how this kind of thing would happen.
Re-creating the headers and footers did not resolve the issue. The .htm extension on the middle "attachment" which I assume is the message body indicates she is not sending a text/plain message but rather a text/html message, and content filtering is not removing the html part or converting it to plain text. The other "attachments" are probably the msg_header and msg_footer as Brad suggests. The FAQ Brad references is the relevant one. The difference between lists may be that this is the only one that adds msg_header and msg_footer.
I may not have this exactly right, but the only way to know for sure is to see a raw message from the list or at least the content of the three "attachments"
I have attached the files you requested, as sent to me by the list administrator. It appears to me what is happening is the list server is sending the email with 3 attachments but displays as 4 parts: there is the message header, the text version of the email, then an HTML version of the email, followed by the message footer. I see like a line separator between each part. (I use the Thunderbird mail client). This does not seem like normal behavior. If anything, there should be a minimum of 3 parts, not 4.
Let me know if there is any else you need from me.
Regards, Darren ODU
Darren G Pifer wrote:
I have attached the files you requested, as sent to me by the list administrator.
It appears to me what is happening is the list server is sending the email with 3 attachments but displays as 4 parts: there is the message header, the text version of the email, then an HTML version of the email, followed by the message footer. I see like a line separator between each part. (I use the Thunderbird mail client). This does not seem like normal behavior. If anything, there should be a minimum of 3 parts, not 4.
Let me know if there is any else you need from me.
The actual attachments didn't get to the list, but they are as Darren describes.
It appears that the original message to the list is multipart/alternative with test/plain and text/html alternative parts. The three message parts in addition to the headers are the text/plain part, the text/html part and the msg_footer.
Something is wrong with what is happening to this message. Normally, if a message with structure
multipart/alternative text/plain text/html
is sent to a list and content filtering doesn't remove eather alternative or collapse alternatives, the msg_footer will be added as a separate part and the final message will look like
multipart/mixed multipart/alternative text/plain text/html text/plain
I.e. it will be converted to a multipart mixed message with two parts - part 1 being the original message parts and part 2 being the footer. In your case, it appears that the final message structure is
multipart/mixed text/plain text/html text/plain
instead.
What Mailman version is this?
What are the list's content filtering settings?
What is the raw message with all headers? In Tbird, select the message and then File->Save As->File or just ctrl-S, and give it a name with a .txt extension. Then you can attach that .txt file to a list post.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
Mark Sapiro wrote:
Darren G Pifer wrote:
I have attached the files you requested, as sent to me by the list administrator.
It appears to me what is happening is the list server is sending the email with 3 attachments but displays as 4 parts: there is the message header, the text version of the email, then an HTML version of the email, followed by the message footer. I see like a line separator between each part. (I use the Thunderbird mail client). This does not seem like normal behavior. If anything, there should be a minimum of 3 parts, not 4.
Let me know if there is any else you need from me.
The actual attachments didn't get to the list, but they are as Darren describes.
It appears that the original message to the list is multipart/alternative with test/plain and text/html alternative parts. The three message parts in addition to the headers are the text/plain part, the text/html part and the msg_footer.
Something is wrong with what is happening to this message. Normally, if a message with structure
multipart/alternative text/plain text/html
is sent to a list and content filtering doesn't remove eather alternative or collapse alternatives, the msg_footer will be added as a separate part and the final message will look like
multipart/mixed multipart/alternative text/plain text/html text/plain
I.e. it will be converted to a multipart mixed message with two parts - part 1 being the original message parts and part 2 being the footer. In your case, it appears that the final message structure is
multipart/mixed text/plain text/html text/plain
instead.
What Mailman version is this?
2.1.9
What are the list's content filtering settings?
Should Mailman filter the content of list traffic according to the settings below? No Remove message attachments that don't have a matching content type. Leave this field blank to skip this filter test.
multipart/mixed multipart/alternative text/plain
Should Mailman collapse multipart/alternative to its first part content? Yes
Should Mailman convert text/html parts to plain text? This conversion happens after MIME attachments have been stripped. Yes
Action to take when a message matches the content filtering rules.
Discard
The Content Filtering settings are the same across all 3 lists the admin owns but only this one is it working incorrectly.
What is the raw message with all headers? In Tbird, select the message and then File->Save As->File or just ctrl-S, and give it a name with a .txt extension. Then you can attach that .txt file to a list post.
I see that my attachments did not come across so I have attached the raw message removing only some private information. The owner forwarded to me a copy of the email sent to the list.
Regards, Darren ODU
Darren G Pifer wrote:
Mark Sapiro wrote:
What Mailman version is this?
2.1.9
OK.
What are the list's content filtering settings?
Should Mailman filter the content of list traffic according to the settings below? No
So content filtering is off and not involved. <snip>
The Content Filtering settings are the same across all 3 lists the admin owns but only this one is it working incorrectly.
OK.
What is the raw message with all headers? In Tbird, select the message and then File->Save As->File or just ctrl-S, and give it a name with a .txt extension. Then you can attach that .txt file to a list post.
I see that my attachments did not come across so I have attached the raw message removing only some private information. The owner forwarded to me a copy of the email sent to the list.
Thanks, but the forwarded message doesn't help much. It appears to be a forward from MS Outlook of the received message. What I would need to see is the raw message. I don't know how to get that from Outlook. In Outlook Express, you can right-click the message in the message list pane and then select Properties->Details->Message Source and then select and copy the entire message source and paste it into notepad, but I have no idea if this would work in Outlook.
What I can see is the part that says "Womens_Center" looks like msg_header so that both msg_header and msg_footer are added and the result should look like
multipart/mixed text/plain multipart/alternative text/plain text/html text/plain
It is possible that this is in fact the structure of the message and Outlook thinks that the first text/plain part is the message body and everything else is an attachment, in which case, it's realy an Outlook issue, but that wouldn't explain why the other lists are OK unless they don't have msg_header.
I do have another idea. You said the difference here is the message is held for moderation and approved. Does this Mailman instance have some kind of patch that enables editing held messages before approval? If so, I think that's where the problem lies.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
Darren G Pifer wrote:
What is the raw message with all headers? In Tbird, select the message and then File->Save As->File or just ctrl-S, and give it a name with a .txt extension. Then you can attach that .txt file to a list post.
I see that my attachments did not come across so I have attached the raw message removing only some private information. The owner forwarded to me a copy of the email sent to the list.
I asked our Exchange administrator to get the message headers. Here is
Mark Sapiro wrote: that information:
Received: from malden.server1.odu.edu (128.82.96.118) by PARAKEET.ts.odu.edu
(192.168.96.22) with Microsoft SMTP Server id 8.1.311.2; Thu, 15 Jan 2009
11:50:12 -0500
Received: from malden.server1.odu.edu (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by
malden.server1.odu.edu (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id n0FGo1O1020182
(version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NOT) for
<gedwards@odu.edu>; Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:50:12 -0500
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by malden.server1.odu.edu (envelope-sender<womenscenter-bounces@list.odu.edu>) (MIMEDefang) with ESMTP id
n0FGmOCp019564; Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:48:30 -0500 (EST)
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([192.168.96.21]) with mapi; Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:41:27 -0500To: "'womenscenter@list.odu.edu'" <womenscenter@list.odu.edu>
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:41:26 -0500
Thread-Topic: MPOWER Peer Education Training
Thread-Index: Acl3MBuMFudt3DTYR1OHocyl2DC6Og==
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From: <womenscenter@list.odu.edu>
Subject: [ODU Women's Center] MPOWER Peer Education Training
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Thanks, but the forwarded message doesn't help much. It appears to be a forward from MS Outlook of the received message. What I would need to see is the raw message. I don't know how to get that from Outlook. In Outlook Express, you can right-click the message in the message list pane and then select Properties->Details->Message Source and then select and copy the entire message source and paste it into notepad, but I have no idea if this would work in Outlook.
What I can see is the part that says "Womens_Center" looks like msg_header so that both msg_header and msg_footer are added and the result should look like
multipart/mixed text/plain multipart/alternative text/plain text/html text/plain
It is possible that this is in fact the structure of the message and Outlook thinks that the first text/plain part is the message body and everything else is an attachment, in which case, it's realy an Outlook issue, but that wouldn't explain why the other lists are OK unless they don't have msg_header.
The other 2 lists do not have message headers. The issue appears to be an issue with Outlook, in combination with the message header from the list. The Exchange administrator showed me what it looks like in Outlook and it was as I suspected: the message header "womens_center" is the message body and everything else are attachments. I am going to suggest to the administrator of this list to remove the message header. I think this will resolve this issue.
I do have another idea. You said the difference here is the message is held for moderation and approved. Does this Mailman instance have some kind of patch that enables editing held messages before approval? If so, I think that's where the problem lies I have not added any patches to Mailman since it was installed.
Darren
Darren G Pifer wrote:
I asked our Exchange administrator to get the message headers. Here is that information:
Thanks, but that by itself doesn't tell me much. It does tell me that Mailman recast the message as multipart mixed, but I already knew that. I need to see the MIME structure of the entire message including all the sub-part headers, but even in the absence of that, focus on the following:
Is the non-working list the only one with a msg_header as well as a msg_footer? If that is the case, try removing the msg_header completely and see if that helps.
If that is not the case, does this Mailman instance have any modifications to allow editing a post from the admindb interface prior to approval?
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
Hi Mark,
Mark Sapiro wrote:
Darren G Pifer wrote:
I asked our Exchange administrator to get the message headers. Here is that information:
Thanks, but that by itself doesn't tell me much. It does tell me that Mailman recast the message as multipart mixed, but I already knew that. I need to see the MIME structure of the entire message including all the sub-part headers, but even in the absence of that, focus on the following:
I think I finally attached the raw message for you. Hopefully you can glean the information you need from it.
Is the non-working list the only one with a msg_header as well as a msg_footer? If that is the case, try removing the msg_header completely and see if that helps.
Did that. This apparently resolved the issue as the admin owner is happy. However, I am not totally convinced that it is a mail client issue. I am seeing 4 parts in my Thunderbird mail client:
plain text (header) plain text (body) html (body) plain text (footer)
Why would mailman be sending plain text and html attachments? When the header is removed, my Thunderbird mail client shows the email message as plain text and one attachment, the footer.
Darren ODU
Darren G Pifer wrote:
Mark Sapiro wrote:
Thanks, but that by itself doesn't tell me much. It does tell me that Mailman recast the message as multipart mixed, but I already knew that. I need to see the MIME structure of the entire message including all the sub-part headers, but even in the absence of that, focus on the following:
I think I finally attached the raw message for you. Hopefully you can glean the information you need from it.
My comments about this are below. Note to list - the attached message was removed by content filtering, but I received it in my direct copy. I have summarized the saliant points in my reply.
Is the non-working list the only one with a msg_header as well as a msg_footer? If that is the case, try removing the msg_header completely and see if that helps.
Did that. This apparently resolved the issue as the admin owner is happy. However, I am not totally convinced that it is a mail client issue. I am seeing 4 parts in my Thunderbird mail client:
plain text (header) plain text (body) html (body) plain text (footer)
What you are seeing is consistent with the attached message.
Why would mailman be sending plain text and html attachments? When the header is removed, my Thunderbird mail client shows the email message as plain text and one attachment, the footer.
Did the message below come directly to you from the list or was it forwarded to you. If it came directly from the list, I don't understand it. Note that the second through fourth parts all have headers of the form
Content-Type: text/plain; name="ATT00001.c" Content-Description: ATT00001.c Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="ATT00001.c"; size=1175; creation-date="Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:50:12 GMT"; modification-date="Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:50:12 GMT"
Mailman did not create these headers. What appears to be going on is that this message is received from the list and opened in an MUA that identifies the first part as the message body and the remaining 3 parts as attachments. The message is then forwarded from that MUA resulting in the message you attached.
In particular, the last part is the list's msg_footer, and it has part headers:
Content-Type: text/plain; name="ATT00003.c" Content-Description: ATT00003.c Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="ATT00003.c"; size=218; creation-date="Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:50:12 GMT"; modification-date="Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:50:12 GMT" Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Mailman would have created that "attachment" with only the headers
Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: xxx
with the possible addition of a charset parameter on the Content-Type: header, and most likely 7bit or 8bit Content-Transfer-Encoding:.
All the other headers and the name= parameter were added after the message left Mailman.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
participants (3)
-
Brad Knowles -
Darren G Pifer -
Mark Sapiro