Re: some attachments disappearing

[Rejo Zenger]

++ 26/12/15 15:20 -0500 - Fred Smith:
>
>This problem has been going on for some time, but it has lately become an 
>irritant:
>
>some emails in which photos or other images are sent arrive here with no
>such item, neither attached, nor inline.

For all of those e-mails, what MUA is used on the sending end? I have 
seen these behaviour before, but only with some versions of Apple's 
Mail.app. 

If there is an attachment, it should be visible when looking at the 
plain text of the actual message. You could do this by finding the 
message on your file system or possibly from within the pager by hitting 
the "e" key.


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Re: some attachments disappearing

[Cameron Simpson]

On 26Dec2015 15:20, Fred Smith  wrote:

This problem has been going on for some time, but it has lately become an
irritant:
some emails in which photos or other images are sent arrive here with no
such item, neither attached, nor inline.

I haven't been able to reproduce it by sending myself emails from my office,
or gmail, etc, so I don't know what is funny about those emails.

If I ask the sender to resend that mail to my gmail (or office) account, the
image is there.


Is this reliable? You can get the sender to send the message to gmail and it is 
intact, and you can ask them to send it again to your mutt address and it is 
always lacking the attachments? I mean here that the behaviour is always the 
same for a given message - good at gmail and bad on initial receipt in mutt and 
also bad again on a resend to your mutt address.



I am using milter to run clamav on incoming and outgoing emails but that is a
rather recent addition (loast 6 months, more or less) and the problem has
long-preceded that change.


Can you outline your mail receipt process? (Eg fetchmail -> procmail -> folder 
or suchlike?)



I'm using Mutt 1.5.21 on Centos-7.


One way to eliminate (or confirm) mutt might be to inspect the actual message 
file with "less" or something - is it bad in the mail folder, before mutt goes 
anywhere near it?


Have you inspected the message headers of a bad message? If the attachments are 
being stripped by something this action is often noted with a header line.


Final thought: might these messages simply have an href to some _external_ 
image, by URL? Then it wouldn't be an attachement, and gmail might still show 
it inline.


Have you an example message you're prepared to share with the list?

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson 

Re: some attachments disappearing

[Fred Smith]

On Sun, Dec 27, 2015 at 10:28:50AM +1100, Cameron Simpson wrote:
> On 26Dec2015 15:20, Fred Smith  wrote:
> >This problem has been going on for some time, but it has lately become an
> >irritant:
> >some emails in which photos or other images are sent arrive here with no
> >such item, neither attached, nor inline.
> >
> >I haven't been able to reproduce it by sending myself emails from my office,
> >or gmail, etc, so I don't know what is funny about those emails.
> >
> >If I ask the sender to resend that mail to my gmail (or office) account, the
> >image is there.
> 
> Is this reliable? You can get the sender to send the message to
> gmail and it is intact, and you can ask them to send it again to
> your mutt address and it is always lacking the attachments? I mean
> here that the behaviour is always the same for a given message -
> good at gmail and bad on initial receipt in mutt and also bad again
> on a resend to your mutt address.

Next time I see it, I'll ask the sender to resend to both addresses 
in a single session and see what happens.

> 
> >I am using milter to run clamav on incoming and outgoing emails but that is a
> >rather recent addition (loast 6 months, more or less) and the problem has
> >long-preceded that change.
> 
> Can you outline your mail receipt process? (Eg fetchmail -> procmail
> -> folder or suchlike?)

sendmail ==> procmail ==> spambayes
and if it passes spambayes,
procmail ==> mail folder.

and as I said earlier, sendmail-milter runs clamav on it too.

> 
> >I'm using Mutt 1.5.21 on Centos-7.
> 
> One way to eliminate (or confirm) mutt might be to inspect the
> actual message file with "less" or something - is it bad in the mail
> folder, before mutt goes anywhere near it?

doesn't look like a bad email, though I don't know what it would
have looked like if the image had come through.

> 
> Have you inspected the message headers of a bad message? If the
> attachments are being stripped by something this action is often
> noted with a header line.

I've not noted anything funky in the headers.

> 
> Final thought: might these messages simply have an href to some
> _external_ image, by URL? Then it wouldn't be an attachement, and
> gmail might still show it inline.

hmm. dunno.

I recall one from Dec 5 that was resent to my gmail address. 
I could see nothing in it that looked like the image he was trying
to send, at the time. Just went and looked at it tonight and the
image is attached and I can view it (by viewing attachments and
highlighting the image file and hitting return).

So, either I'm losing my mind, or, well, maybe I'm losing my mind.
I'll keep my eyes open for another instance and try to gather better
information, then I'll post something here.
> 
> Have you an example message you're prepared to share with the list?

apparently not. thought I did, but as stated above it looks fine today.
go figger.


-- 
 Fred Smith -- fre...@fcshome.stoneham.ma.us -
   Show me your ways, O LORD, teach me your paths;
 Guide me in your truth and teach me,
 for you are God my Savior,
And my hope is in you all day long.
-- Psalm 25:4-5 (NIV)