Subject: Invalid char error

From: Joel Boonstra <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 12:08:21 -0400 (EDT)

Howdy,

I have a problem that I can only reproduce in 4.40 -- trying the same
thing in 4.33 doesn't generate an error.  All versions are being used
under RedHat 7.1, and others in my office have reported similar problems,
while using 4.40.

I get a fair amount of spam, and dutifully report as much as I can to
spamcop.  However, some of the spam is not only annoying, but it causes
pine to becom unusable. Specifically, I get some that contain subject
lines similar to the below:

  Subject: (±¤°í) [Èñ¼Ò½Ä] ¹ßÀÌ ºÒÆíÇÏ°Å³ª ÀÚÁÖ º×°í ½¬ ÇÇ·ÎÇÑ ºÐ

Of course, that's a lot of characters that I can't read. The body of the
message has a lot more text using characters like that. If I receive a
message like this in 4.40, or go to a folder that contains a message like
this, pine immediately starts generating errors like this:

  [Invalid CHAR in quoted string: ffffffb1]

at the bottom of my pine session. The last bit ('ffffffb1') keeps changing
to other hex sequences, which means that this error continues to be
generated repeatedly. A glance at the journal confirms this. This is a
problem because the constant generation of error messages doesn't let me
execute any commands. I think there's so much output that the terminal
can't keep up, and input is hampered. Eventually, the errors stop (I would
imagine that it's reporting an error for each invalid character that it
encounters), but until then, I can't use pine. Sometimes it's a few
minutes before this stops.

I've done the exact same thing in 4.33, using the same .pinerc, and I
don't get the error message.  My character-set is set to ISO-8859-1.  I
have tried it in US-ASCII, but I can't imagine that would help.  I can try
others, but I'm not sure what others will help debug this.

If anyone needs more/better description of the problem, please let me
know.  I also have a copy of one of the offending emails, but I'd rather
not send it along unless someone asks for it.

Thanks in advance for any help/advice/smack on the head for not finding an
FAQ about this.

Joel

-- 
[ joel boonstra | [email-masked] ]

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From: Joel Boonstra <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 14:54:29 -0400 (EDT)

To follow up on this email, here are some more tests that I've done:

* downloaded a pre-compiled binary (pine-bin.linux) from the ftp site.  I
tried that with my existing .pinerc, and I still got the error.

* bounced the message to another account that I use Pine with to check
mail.  I got the same error, so bouncing the message preserves whatever it
is that causes the error.

* Built a clean build (no patches) from source, ran it with my existing
.pinerc, still received the error.

* Tried the standard .pinerc that pine generates, only modified the
'inbox-path' and 'folder-collections' variables, and still received the
error.

* Just to be sure this isn't a terminal problem (I'm using xterm), I tried
rxvt, and a Linux virtual terminal.  Same problem.

So to sum up, to replicate the error, I can download a binary from the
pine site, start pine up, let it generate a .pinerc, and point it to my
inbox and folder collection.  I then go the folder that contains the
message, and I get the error message.  So I can be reasonably assured that
none of my own settings are causing this error.

Finally, I grabbed a clean 4.33 binary from the ftp site, and tried the
same steps in the previous paragraph.  No error message.

For those interested, here is a cut-and-paste of a few lines from the
journal:

Invalid CHAR in quoted string: ffffffbc
Invalid CHAR in quoted string: ffffffd2
Invalid CHAR in quoted string: ffffffbd
Invalid CHAR in quoted string: ffffffc4
Invalid CHAR in quoted string: ffffffb9
Invalid CHAR in quoted string: ffffffdf
Invalid CHAR in quoted string: ffffffc0
Invalid CHAR in quoted string: ffffffcc

There are many more.  I can detect no pattern, but I don't read hex that
often, either.

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From: Erik <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 12:40:20 -0700 (PDT)

I've been looking around, and I'm trying address a common problem with my
users, complaining about Mutt users who send them PGP messages, and the
messages always coming across as application/OCTET-STREAM .

This has been a problem with pgp4pine, pgpenvelope, and pinepg.

We use pinepg with gpg.

I read through dozens of posts to various mailing lists (including this
one), and while I see lots of people having the actual problem, I'm having
a hard time finding a valid solution, other than the popular ending I see
to most of them "Try to convert everyone using mutt to pine".

Has this been addressed in a faq file anywhere? I don't want to drag up a
huge conversation if there is already an answer, I just can't seem to find
it out there.

---
Erik Parker
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From: Joel Boonstra <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 16:32:42 -0400 (EDT)

Erik,

> messages always coming across as application/OCTET-STREAM .
<snip>
> huge conversation if there is already an answer, I just can't seem to find

I sent the following message to the pine-info list in May, but I can't
seem to find it archived online.  So here goes:

==== original message ====
> I have a coworker who uses mutt, and sends PGP (or gpg, I suppose)
> encrypted messages on a regular basis.  To get pine to handle them, I
> added this to my .procmailrc:
>
> ## to handle mutt PGP messages
> :0 fw
> * ^Content-Type: multipart/encrypted
> | formail -i "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII"
> ##
>
> This seems to work fine for using pgp4pine to decrypt his messages -
> previously, they came as attachments and I had to save them and invoke gpg
> from the command line to read them.
>
> Since I didn't come up with the above snippet, I don't know if it'll work
> for everyone.  I'm using 4.33 on a RedHat box, so YMMV...
==== end original message ====

HTH!

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From: Erik <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 16:32:24 -0700 (PDT)

Thanks Joel, this worked perfectly.. mixing this with:

display-filters=_BEGINNING("-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----")_ /usr/local/pinepg/decrypt _RESULTFILE_ _DATAFILE_ _PREPENDKEY_, _LEADING("-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----")_ /usr/local/pinepg/verify _TMPFILE_ _RESULTFILE_

Which is slightly different than what pinepg recommends, they recommend
using "display-filters=_LEADING", however that doesn't work with the
procmail change.

---
Erik Parker
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