[imp] Urgent: Embedded Images in HTML messages

[Gottschalk, David]

Thanks to everyone for their assistance with this issue. I've found the problem.

The problem was related to the address book. We had setup in the past a LDAP personal address book for our users to use. This queried a LDAP server that contained a directory of email addresses, names, etc. Sometime in the middle of last week, the connection between the web server that hosts the IMP client, and the ldap server started having problems. Now a connection isn't available at all.

Users than experienced messages with images inline the body, taking 3+ minutes to load. This happened because IMP checks the senders from address when images are present to determine whether it should display them immediately or not without asking the user.

Apparently, because the LDAP connection was broken, it was waiting to timeout until it displayed the message.

David Gottschalk
UTS Infrastructure Technology Services
david.gottschalk at emory.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: Otto Stolz [mailto:Otto.Stolz at uni-konstanz.de]
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 4:41 AM
To: Gottschalk, David
Cc: imp at lists.horde.org
Subject: Re: Urgent: Embedded Images in HTML messages

Hello David Gottschalk,

you have asked:
> It appears that anytime you attempt to load a email message in IMP
> that contains a embedded HTML image, it takes 3+ mins to load the
> email. It's interesting cause it never times out, but takes forever.
> I know it has to be something with IMP. Reason being if I do a
> manual IMAP session from the IMP server to the backend IMAP server
> the same message will download immediately.
...
> These are not images that are linked.
> They are images that are insert directly into the email body.
> Not images that are attached either.

I cannot understand this claim, at all, because an e-mail
message body can only contain one type of data: either plain
text (which is normally the case), or HTML text, or perhaps
even an image (which I have never seen), but not both.
So, if you have an HTML text message, any images to be displayed
with it must be either attached to the message or referred to
via their respective URL.

I guess that your problem occurs only with a particular,
possibly malformed, message. Hence, you will have to
provide a complete example (with all header lines,
cf. <http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/19.html>)
of a message that causes that infinite loop.

Meanwhile, I'll sent to you, privately, two examples from
<http://www.systems.uni-konstanz.de/Otto/Vortrag/E-Mail/Kopfzeilen.html#M-Multi>
(Subject: Unbeschreiblich wichtiger Termin), so you can test
whether standard-conforming messages are displayed alright,
with your Imp implementation.

Good luck,
   Otto Stolz



This e-mail message (including any attachments) is for the sole use of
the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged
information.  If the reader of this message is not the intended
recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution
or copying of this message (including any attachments) is strictly
prohibited.

If you have received this message in error, please contact
the sender by reply e-mail message and destroy all copies of the
original message (including attachments).