[Mailman-Users] Attachment delivery to different mail clients

[Mark Sapiro]

Dave Anderson wrote:
>
>We recently migrated our mailman server from a server with Version 2.1.1 to a new server with Version 2.1.9. One of our mailing lists distributes a PDF file attachment. However, when I switch to the new server the PDF would be delivered to some MUAs fine, but other MUAs would receive the message below:
>
>Excerpt for Groupwise MUA:
>Test PDF function
>begin 644 btest.pdf
>M)5!$1BTQ+C0*)<?LCZ(*-2 P(&]B:@H\/"],96YG=&@@-B P(%(O1FEL=&5R
>M("]&;&%T941E8V]D93X^"G-T<F5A;0IXG.W634L#,1 &8/RL1M&_D)N)L&-F
[...]
>
>It works fine on the old server, but we need to retire it soon. I have compared the list configuration and they are identical. I setup a test list on the new server and I get the same results.
>
>The message is sent to the list via the following script:
>
>( cat to.txt ; uuencode test.pdf test.pdf ) | mailx -s "Check" list at example.com 
>
>Note: I get the same results with .doc as well.
>
>Is this a bug? 
>Is there another config file I should check?


This has nothing to do with Mailman. You are sending a simple
text/plain message, Part of that plain text message body is a
uuencoded file. Some receiving MUAs will render that embedded
uuencoded file as an "attachment" and some will render it as you show
above.

I can't see that the Mailman version would have anything to do with
this, unless the list adds msg_header or msg_footer and perhaps the
way in which that part is being added is different between the two
mailman versions. There were some changes between 2.1.1 and 2.1.9 in
this area.

If you are adding msg_header and/or msg_footer, check to see if in one
case, the message from Mailman is a simple text/plain message and in
the other, it is multipart/mixed with the header/footer in separate
parts.

While this may affect some MUAs decoding and "attaching" of the
uuencoded file, there are MUAs that will not decode the uuencoded file
in any case.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan