Attention: Admins [locked]

2005-01-27 04:05:07 pm

soaking through

What the hell does this mean?

CORRUPTED MESSAGE

This is the Courier Mail Server 0.47 on metroid2002.com.

I received the following message for delivery to your address. This message
contains several internal formatting errors. This is often caused by
viruses that attempt to infect remote systems. Instead of blocking
this message, it has been converted as a safe, text-only attachment that
can be safely read with a text editor.

This sometimes also happens when the sender's mail software has a bug
that creates improperly-formatted messages. Although these kinds of
formatting errors may often be ignored by other mail servers, this
server detects and intercepts improperly-coded messages in order to
prevent viruses from taking advantage of bugs in E-mail programs:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The headers in this message contain improperly-formatted binary content.

See <URL:ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2047.txt> for more information.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

That's an e-mail I keep getting, and I don't exactly understand it. Please explain or help or something.

Thread title:

What the hell does this mean?

CORRUPTED MESSAGE

This is the Courier Mail Server 0.47 on metroid2002.com.

I received the following message for delivery to your address.  This message 
contains several internal formatting errors.  This is often caused by 
viruses that attempt to infect remote systems.  Instead of blocking 
this message, it has been converted as a safe, text-only attachment that 
can be safely read with a text editor.

This sometimes also happens when the sender's mail software has a bug 
that creates improperly-formatted messages.  Although these kinds of 
formatting errors may often be ignored by other mail servers, this 
server detects and intercepts improperly-coded messages in order to 
prevent viruses from taking advantage of bugs in E-mail programs:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
The headers in this message contain improperly-formatted binary content.

See <URL:ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2047.txt> for more information. 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

That's an e-mail I keep getting, and I don't exactly understand it.  Please explain or help or something.

trh

2005-01-27 04:12:05 pm

Yeah.. I got it as well, and I have absolutely no idea what it means.

You left out the mail subject though: "Notification de riponse au sujet - New languages!". Might have something to do with selecting the French board language..?

Izo

2005-01-27 04:14:28 pm

soaking through

Stupid hotmail cut off the end of the subject line. I should probably switch my address to my Gmail. Bah.

trh

2005-01-27 04:16:34 pm

Quote from Izo:

Stupid hotmail cut off the end of the subject line. I should probably switch my address to my Gmail. Bah.

Give me your hotmail and I'll hook you up ;)

I have 10 invites if anyone else is interested...

nate

2005-01-27 04:35:06 pm

yeah, and i have eight. that happens when courier (our mail server) receives what it considers a malformed message it's then instructed to deliver. unfortunately, not all programs *AHEM COUGH PHPBB COUGH* agh, sorry about that guys, still getting over the flu.

anyway, as i was saying, not all programs are as good at writing emails as you or i. it's safe to disregard the message ... maybe they'll clean up their email syntax in phpbb 3.0. though i'm getting pretty tired of saying "maybe x will happen in phpbb 3.0". personally, i doubt it will even be out by the end of the year ...

Radix

2005-01-27 04:43:38 pm

From courier's FAQ: I wonder how many people will understand the answer?

Q: Courier delivers ESMTP mail with a strange error message:
Mail received by the received is replaced by the following text, with the original message attached.

I received the following message for delivery to your address. Unfortunately, the sender's mail software did not properly format the following message properly, in accordance with Internet mail formatting protocols, and I can only deliver mail which has been properly formatted according to Internet standards. Instead of returning the following message as undeliverable, it is saved, in its original form, in the following attachment, which you can open with any editor or word processor.

[PP] [Sam] Cause: Various bugs in poorly written software that generates invalid MIME-formatted messages. Previous versions of Courier used to automatically return mis-formatted mail as undeliverable. Starting with version 0.36.1, mis-formatted mail is replaced by this canned message text, and the original message is attached as plain text.

Solution: for now, manually edit SubmitFile::MessageEnd() in courier/submit2.C, and remove the code that reports both 8-bit related errors, RFC2045_ERR8BITHEADER and RFC2045_ERR8BITCONTENT (the first and the third error message).

This will suppress the error and accept the garbage mail, but expect random mail access problems. Certain versions of Outlook have known bugs handling misformatted mail, so you're on your own.

NOTE: Do not remove the code that reports RFC2045_ERR2COMPLEX, this error indicates a denial-of-service attack.

NOTE: Removing the check for RFC2045_ERRBADBOUNDARY suppresses the second error message, however think long and hard before you do this. You are virtually guaranteed to end up with corrupted MIME mail if this check is removed!

From courier's FAQ: I wonder how many people will understand the answer?

Q: Courier delivers ESMTP mail with a strange error message:
Mail received by the received is replaced by the following text, with the original message attached.

I received the following message for delivery to your address. Unfortunately, the sender's mail software did not properly format the following message properly, in accordance with Internet mail formatting protocols, and I can only deliver mail which has been properly formatted according to Internet standards. Instead of returning the following message as undeliverable, it is saved, in its original form, in the following attachment, which you can open with any editor or word processor.

[PP] [Sam] Cause: Various bugs in poorly written software that generates invalid MIME-formatted messages. Previous versions of Courier used to automatically return mis-formatted mail as undeliverable. Starting with version 0.36.1, mis-formatted mail is replaced by this canned message text, and the original message is attached as plain text.

Solution: for now, manually edit SubmitFile::MessageEnd() in courier/submit2.C, and remove the code that reports both 8-bit related errors, RFC2045_ERR8BITHEADER and RFC2045_ERR8BITCONTENT (the first and the third error message).

This will suppress the error and accept the garbage mail, but expect random mail access problems. Certain versions of Outlook have known bugs handling misformatted mail, so you're on your own.

NOTE: Do not remove the code that reports RFC2045_ERR2COMPLEX, this error indicates a denial-of-service attack.

NOTE: Removing the check for RFC2045_ERRBADBOUNDARY suppresses the second error message, however think long and hard before you do this. You are virtually guaranteed to end up with corrupted MIME mail if this check is removed!

nate

2005-01-27 04:46:19 pm

key words being "the sender's mail software did not properly format the following message properly," "bugs in poorly written software" e.g. phpbb

Izo

2005-01-27 04:56:01 pm

soaking through

Quote from TRH:

Quote from Izo:

Stupid hotmail cut off the end of the subject line. I should probably switch my address to my Gmail. Bah.

Give me your hotmail and I'll hook you up ;)

I have 10 invites if anyone else is interested...

Yeah, and I have 6.

Btw, I understood pretty much nothing of that pile of computer stuff. Back to quantum mechanics for me, thanks.

trh

2005-01-27 05:02:16 pm

Quote from Izo:

Quote from TRH:

Quote from Izo:

Stupid hotmail cut off the end of the subject line. I should probably switch my address to my Gmail. Bah.

Give me your hotmail and I'll hook you up ;)

I have 10 invites if anyone else is interested...

Yeah, and I have 6.

Btw, I understood pretty much nothing of that pile of computer stuff. Back to quantum mechanics for me, thanks.

Oh wait, didn't notice the "my" :-p

Yoshi348

2005-01-27 05:35:41 pm

PAGE BREAKER

Ready and willing.

Oh great, it seems like were going to convert to that pile of shit, invision. *sigh*

EDIT: Okay, maybe I should explain.... I think invision's much better than any other pre-fab boards other than phpBB, and it's actually pretty okay... actually, I'm not even sure why I hate it. Actually, I know why, and it's because I'm a vengeful bastard. Er... I had a very bad experience with a forum that just happened to use Invision. And the only bad thing I can think about Invision itself is that there's too many "features" that encourage pointless spam and idiocy... but I don't know how much of that is built in.

EDIT 2: Wow, I'm an idiot.

nate

2005-01-27 07:58:03 pm

don't worry about it ... i don't see that happening anytime soon. remember my most recent quote in your sig? :P

Yoshi348

2005-01-27 09:10:22 pm

PAGE BREAKER

Ready and willing.

Quote from njahnke:

don't worry about it ... i don't see that happening anytime soon. remember my most recent quote in your sig? :P

Um... if it's the one I'm thinking of, you apparently haven't noticed what I have in my sig right now.

KennyMan666

2005-01-28 01:49:11 am

Viking

Precursor

Quote from Izo:

Quote from TRH:

Quote from Izo:

Stupid hotmail cut off the end of the subject line. I should probably switch my address to my Gmail. Bah.

Give me your hotmail and I'll hook you up ;)

I have 10 invites if anyone else is interested...

Yeah, and I have 6.

I have five.