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

[Christoph Anton Mitterer]

reassign 691469 postfix
retitle 691469 postifx apprently uses mboxo format, which irrecoverably corrupts mail
notforwarded 691469
stop


Hi.

Just found out[0] by help[1] of guys a the fetchmail-users list, that
it's not fetchmail, who is the bad guy, but rather postfix (to which
fetchmail hands the mail over locally).
I checked the whole problem then with just postfix, submitting the
testmail locally with a local recipient, and the mail was stored
corrupted in /var/spool/mail/<user>

So I guess it's the local(8) delivery daemon, that's the evil friend
here and writes mail in the broken mboxo format.

Apart from that, all what I wrote in the initial upstream bug[2],
applies now to postfix.

As well as what I suggest (message #5 in this Debian bug report) we in
Debian could/should do, until upstream takes any action (or not).
I wouldn't expect that something happens before wheezy there (if at
all),... so I think handling this bug for now, is to put appropriate
warnings in place, as well as warn users that all their old mail
delivered with local(8) to mbox, may be corrupted.


Nico has set this issue to critical, I fully agree with, even though
many people attach a separate MDA to postfix, it's valid to use it's own
LDA, and when that writes out in the broken mboxo format (which
irrecoverably corrupts mail), we have some severe problem.


Cheers,
Chris.


[0] https://lists.berlios.de/pipermail/fetchmail-users/2012-October/003263.html
[1] https://lists.berlios.de/pipermail/fetchmail-users/2012-October/003262.html
[2] https://lists.berlios.de/pipermail/fetchmail-users/2012-October/003258.html
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