Hi folks!
While trying to understand a problem I was having with retrieving mail from my
ISP, I came across another mystery and was wondering how serious it is. At my
end, I am using fetchmail to retrieve stuff, which then passes it to qmail for
delivery. At their end, they are using <ugh> Microsoft Exchange server
(v.5.5.2611.0).
The POP3 server reports how many lines it is sending and it *always* give sthe
wrong number. This wrong number is not even consistently out by some constant
-- it's all over the place. Fetchmail does not have a problem with this (it's
pretty Microsoft-proof). When run in verbose mode, it reports the error, but
retrieves the full message anyway.
My question: will this false number ever be a problem that people know about?
The RFC's that I've read don't seem to say what happens if the POP server just
makes up a random length number :-) It could possibly cause buffer overflows
or prematurely terminated messages in poorly written retrieval programs, but
most people would program against this. My only reason for asking is that
I spend a bit of time helping others install linux, or advocating linux setups
to any poor sod who will listen, so I'd like to know if there's a pitfall to
watch out for in this case.
In case anybody cares (the problem I was first investigating): There is
another problem with the MicroSilly server ... it doesn't implement the DELETE
command correctly. Fetchmail sends a DELETE command after every message is
retrieved, the server responds with an OK and then does *not* delete the
message until all messages have been retrieved. This is a slight downer when
you have, say, a couple of hundred messages to retrieve and the connection
craps out after 150 messages. You end up having to retrieve the first 150
messages again(!) the second time, even though they're meant to have been
deleted. I've been afraid to try the -f option with fetchmail, since I don't
really want to lose any of my new messages.
Sorry, I've been babbling. :-(
Cheers,
Malcolm Tredinnick
--
SLUG - Sydney Linux Users Group Mailing List - http://www.slug.org.au
To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with
unsubscribe in the text
