[imp] IMP can't read attachments that are not MIME

[Markus Gaugusch]

On May 2, Eric Rostetter <eric.rostetter at physics.utexas.edu> wrote:
> I think the CVS HEAD version has uuencode support, added about a month
> or so ago?  But nothing in the release tree, and I really doubt it will
> be backported.
Thanks, I'll have a look at this. Do I need the CVS version of horde or of
IMP? I don't know where the functionality is implemented.

> BTW, doing anything (client end) with these will be a huge performance hit.
Why? If the mail contains MIME (can be distinguished very fast, I guess),
there is no need to look for uuencode attachments.
If the mail is not MIME, its content would be loaded completely anyway,
which is much worse than 'just' parsing it on the server.
Of course, the "show attachments in mailbox index" should be turned off :)

> Some mail gateway products (e.g. PMDF) have conversion support which will
> (again, a performance hit, but it is at the receiving server end, rather than
> the client end, so it isn't as bad) scan incoming mail for these and convert
> the message to a MIME attachment.  I recommend you put a good gateway
> product in front of any PC/Windows mail server that is more than 5 years
> old (including older Exchange servers, but not newer ones since say Exchange
> 2000).
We are using postfix, and I don't think that ANY windows product should be
connected directly to the net ...

> You must have some local email system that is incorrectly sending mail
> in this acient and mostly discarded format?  If so, my advice is to find
> that mail server and fix it.
> It is common, for example in GroupWise systems, but it is simply a
> configuration issue to switch most such systems (e.g. GroupWise 5 or
> newer) to using MIME instead.
Guess what, our main communication partner is using GroupWise! It also
doesn't happen with all mails, it seems to be the case for only some
messages from some people. Can you tell me the switch that is responsible
for this?

> Not really, but I can inform you a bit about it.  Or maybe if you can
> run CVS HEAD of IMP it may (IIRC) handle these now?
Thank you very much, your answer helped me a lot!
Go and get yourself a free copy of http://fou4s.gaugusch.at, if you are
using SuSE ;-)

Markus
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