brian m. carlson writes: > > cron sends 8-bit messages that are lacking a MIME-Version header. This > is in violation of RFC 5321 =C2=A7 2.3.1:
It is impossible for cron to violate the SMTP specification, because cron doesn't use SMTP. In the simplest configuration, mail from cron can be delivered without ever going over the network at all. Cron submits mail via popen of /usr/sbin/sendmail. The protocol for doing this correctly is not well documented, and that's sad, but it's not a good idea... or at least not *obviously* a good idea... to pretend that the pipe is an SMTP connection. You don't send HELO, MAIL FROM, RCPT TO, and friends on the pipe, so why treat the body as if it's inside an SMTP DATA? The pipe accepts a message in unix style, without carriage returns. That alone should be sufficient evidence that the rules of SMTP don't apply. Carriage returns will be added later by the MTA, *if* the message is routed through SMTP. [...] > Because I have configured Postfix to reject invalid 8-bit data, certain Where is the specification that says 8-bit data is invalid when sent on the pipe-to-/usr/sbin/sendmail interface? (It won't be an RFC. IETF doesn't have authority over pipes!) Ideally, Debian policy would say how /usr/sbin/sendmail is supposed to work as part of the definition of the mail-transport-agent virtual package. But I can't find anything. > cron mails are not delivered. If cron is going to send 8-bit data, it > must do so only as part of a valid MIME message meeting the requirements > of the 8BITMIME specification. Also, the Content-Type header included > is completely meaningless outside the context of MIME. Cron can't make use of 8BITMIME even if it wanted to. 8BITMIME is negotiated by SMTP commands that do not exist in the pipe-based mail submission interface used by cron. And it's not necessary there anyway. Cron is submitting a message in unix format (not Internet format), over a pipe (not an SMTP connection). Pipes are always 8-bit clean, no negotiation required. If the MTA, during an SMTP transaction occurring some time after cron has submitted the message, decides to convert the message to MIME and makes a mess of it, don't blame cron. -- Alan Curry -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
