Subject: pine splitting BOUNCE messages

From: [email-masked] (Ken Hancock)
Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 13:05:48 GMT

Our mail administrator has recently moved mail machines as well as installing
new versions (3.96) of pine.  Previously, BOUNCE messages from majordomo
were received correctly as the BOUNCE headers plus original headers and
message content.  Now pine is seeing them as two messages: (1) BOUNCE
headers and (2) original mail message.  (Other mailers receive the single
message correctly)

The approve script expects the bounce headers for proper processing.  Anyone
have any ideas on where pine broke?  Is it a MIME configuration issue?

Thanks in advance,

Ken

-- 
Ken Hancock             | Disclaimer: My opinions are mine,
                        | your opinions are yours.  Simple, isn't it?

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From: Chip Old <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 10:15:07 -0400 (EDT)

> have any ideas on where pine broke?  Is it a MIME configuration issue?
 
This isn't a Pine issue, a MIME issue, or even a Majordomo issue.  Your
mail administrator needs to make a minor change in your MTA's
configuration. 
 
When Majordomo bounces a message to you, the message text includes the
full header of the original message - including the envelope sender line
(From user@domain date).  Virtually all UNIX mail user agents require that
every message in a mail spool file be delimited by a blank line followed
by a line beginning with "From" (not "From:").  In the case of a message
bounced by Majordomo, there are two such lines - the one generated by
Majordomo and the one from the original message.  This causes your MUA
(Pine) to see two distinct messages.

The solution is for your mail administrator to instruct the MTA to mask
the envelope sender line from the original message by prepending a ">" to
the line.  I don't know how that is done in smail (your message header
looks like smail is your local MTA), but in Sendmail you add an "F=E" flag
to the "Mlocal" line in sendmail.cf.  This tells Sendmail to convert
"From"  to ">From" if it finds it at the beginning of a line following a
blank line in the message text.
 
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Chip Old (Francis E. Old)                  [email-masked]
Administrator, Internetworking Services    Voice:      410-887-6180
Baltimore County Public Library            FAX:        410-887-2091
320 York Road                              ICBM:     39.39910 North
Towson, Maryland 21204 U.S.A.                        76.60300 West