Bug#691469: fetchmail apprently uses mboxo format, which irrecoverably corrupts mail
On 26/10/2012 02:24, Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote: This is basically the same as Debian bugs #690741 and #633799. I used severity critical, as the mboxo format causes irrecoverable mail corruption, which is unknown to most users. I don't think the severity of critical is justified. This is an artefact of the way email has been stored for decades. Just because Christoph was not previously aware of it does not suddenly make it a critical bug. This is also the way mail is handled by the default MTA in a standard Debian installation. Not that I'm saying it shouldn't be improved, just that it hasn't yet caused the world to end. Roger (Just a Fetchmail user. Not speaking for Debian or Fetchmail) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#691469: fetchmail apprently uses mboxo format, which irrecoverably corrupts mail
On Fri, 2012-10-26 at 09:22 +0100, Roger Lynn wrote: I don't think the severity of critical is justified. Well that's always something one can argue about... and the maintainers are free to decrease it...it's just what I'd have set it to, which I reasoned why. This is an artefact of the way email has been stored for decades. No, not really... the mboxo format is long ago deprecated.. and most MUAs/servers/clients do it right (by using another format). mutt, Kmail, dovecote... just to name some examples. Just because Christoph was not previously aware of it does not suddenly make it a critical bug. Well I think this is less about me, especially as I don't use fetchmail... I asked around several people at the local computing centre (which is the biggest research computing centre in Europe), all studied computer scientists... all decent sysadmins. Most of them were not even aware, that there are different mbox formats, or some of them broken. That's also what seems to apply to the Evolution/getmail people (of course with exceptions), when I reported the issue there earlier. This is also the way mail is handled by the default MTA in a standard Debian installation. If that's true... it would put a new light on whether Debian should use exim as Default ;) just that it hasn't yet caused the world to end. Admittedly, most people see it like that... but I disagree. Not only would it break signatures (crypto)... but storing mail is just one of THE core businesses of fetchmail... and if it does this wrong, than IMHO that's critical. Cheers, Chris. smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
Bug#691469: fetchmail apprently uses mboxo format, which irrecoverably corrupts mail
Package: fetchmail Version: 6.3.22-1 Severity: critical Tags: upstream Justification: causes serious data loss Hi. This is basically the same as Debian bugs #690741 and #633799. I used severity critical, as the mboxo format causes irrecoverable mail corruption, which is unknown to most users. The details of the problem, what happens and how it can be easily solved are to be found in the upstream bug report. From the Debian side I would recommned the following (analogously to #690741 and #633799): If ustream _shouldn't_ want to fix this (i.e. by moving to a non-corrupting mbox format) or if it cannot be done in time for wheezy (which is likely), we should appropriately warn our users, e.g. via: - NEWS entry - package description - a debconf warning dialogoue with priority high (but Osamu Aoki has indicated that this may violate the Debian policy). But even when it's fixed, I think we should use appropriate ways (NEWS file) to warn our users that ever since, this issue has existed and their mails are likely affected. To get some numbers,... in my own mail archive (about 3,4 million mails) ~17000 mails are corrupted from this issue. Best wishes, Chris. -- System Information: Debian Release: wheezy/sid APT prefers unstable APT policy: (500, 'unstable') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 3.5-trunk-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
