[pkg-fetchmail-maint] Bug#691469: fetchmail apprently uses mboxo format, which irrecoverably corrupts mail

[Christoph Anton Mitterer]

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