Strange Attachments in Outlook Express 6

[straylight23]

Hi all,

i am currently running Scalix 10 CE on RedHat Linux and one of the users called me that her recipients receive strange attachments from her. With some testing i could reproduce this on Outlook Express 6. She is sending from Apple Mail 2.624. The email i was testing with contained two regular attachments (one zip and one pdf) and some content with plain text alternative. The "strange" attachement displayed by OE was namend "ATT00012.txt" and contained the plain text alternative of the content.
The following is a slightly modified excerpt of the mail source:

Code: Select all

x-scalix-Hops: 1
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.624)
Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v624)
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
   boundary="Apple-Mail-4-647694458"

--Apple-Mail-4-647694458
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
   boundary="Apple-Mail-5-647694459"

--Apple-Mail-5-647694459
Content-Type: text/plain;
   charset="ISO-8859-1";
   format="flowed"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Disposition: inline

blablabla


--Apple-Mail-5-647694459
Content-Type: text/plain;
   charset="ISO-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Disposition: inline

blablabla

--Apple-Mail-5-647694459--

--Apple-Mail-4-647694458
Content-Type: application/zip;
   x-unix-mode="0644";
   name="file.zip"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment;
   filename="file.zip"
   
UEsDBBQACAAIAHNwRzYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaABAAQmFua3N5X2NjdHZfbG9va2luZ19hdC5q
cGdVWAwAqR7bRSnOyUX1AfUBrLoHXNNNsz/6oyNVhIAURSmioUTpKBAVadKkhC5RIPQiTYpA
bIAEAQEhNOGhQ0KR3kHBgDSR3hQkNBGQJhFISG7wec973nPuOf977rl3+GQz2d3fZnZmduc7
EyiTlG/AydtauloADS0NoEP9AygbJ4rvuHj7e/u5eD84JydzGVC+qWtAtwEc08njGQANQPtv
78dj9Ox/xuipr6A/c3f/fGYG/kF/5rD8YWn+/iRx8s8nluPPf+jPOnR7f3gdAOLkRB3xoLaM
/3jq756ctPR/9sj+aa2p7b/1KPxppf+958+a+3/4B9R9/ZdE9/14+P//sT97Zv6Hzv7sm/b6
369/jPH8U2d/65Dtj8r4/p57LC+gS2XvAAD8MwAwEYHTAA3lv7IWGbig5eqBOBfo6+rvj/A6
Zx987oajtz3i3D9tWHxOQeYy5SfA8acfcHx8/B2UGeA5wMbM.....


Neither Outlook 2003, 2007 and Thunderbird 1.5 on Windows XP and Windows Vista, nor Thunderbird 2.0b on Macintosh or the webmail client display this attachment.
Any ideas what to change (in OE or AppleMail) to stop this behaviour?

TIA,
Tom

[straylight23]

Some updates:

When i send an email via Apple Mail with an configured scalix-imap-account the recipients do not get this attachment. The version of Apple Mail is a little newer and the headers look different as well.

Code: Select all

x-scalix-Hops: 1
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.752.2)
Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.2)
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
   boundary="Apple-Mail-5-650374242"

--Apple-Mail-5-650374242
Content-Type: text/plain;
   charset="US-ASCII";
   format="flowed"
Content-Disposition: inline

blubber
--Apple-Mail-5-650374242
Content-Type: application/zip;
   x-mac-type="5A495020";
   x-unix-mode="0644";
   x-mac-creator="53495478";
   name="7.7.1-Upgrade.zip"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment;
   filename="7.7.1-Upgrade.zip"
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Any hints?

Regards,
Tom

[straylight23]

--push--
any hints?

I think this is an issue on the client side. But what could help here?

TIA,
Tom

[bbryan]

Hi Tom,
Do you think yours is the same issue as I posted here?

viewtopic.php?t=9707

Ben

[ltward]

In the first example, you have multipart-mixed, which simply means "different pieces of the message follow". Inside the multipart mixed you have:
1. A multipart alternative, which means "one piece follows, but in different formats". There are two versions; they are both plain text but one is "format='flowed'" while the other is not.
2. A zip file

The RFC says that a client should display the most complex version of the multipart-alternative it is able to display, and discard the other versions. Thus, if you can display the RTF or HTML, you do that, but if you can't, you display the plain text (for example).

Apparently Outlook Express is ignoring the RFC which dictates how multipart-alternative should be handled, and displaying both versions.



The second example you show has a multipart mixed, which means "different pieces follow" and in that multipart mixed there is only one plain text part and one zip file. No confusion for Outlook Express over how to handle two different versions of the plain text file.