[Mailman-Users] archiving on mailman

[Tokio Kikuchi]

Ako Ito wrote:

> hello sir,
> whenever I access it through the archives it gets relinked to certain
> location where the extension is either .obj or .bin ..problem is whenever a
> user is accessing it.. he is asked on what application to open it with.. can
> this prevented... that is still retains its attachments original extension
> files. ex. .xls .doc? thanks for the prompt response...

Mailman archiver is designed to attain safety against malicious files
like viruses. Typical virus mail has an attachment like this:

> ------=_NextPart_000_001B_01C0CA80.6B015D10
> Content-Type: audio/x-wav;
>         name="message.scr"
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
> Content-ID: <031401Mfdab4$3f3dL780$73387018 at 57W81fa70Re>
> 
> TVqQAAMAAAAEAAAA//8AALgAAAAAAAAAQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Windows will execute this code if the extension is kept as .scr
which is not an audio/x-wav file extension.

Some mailers are not compliant with the IANA registered mime extension
and put application/octet-stream content-type for excel or msword.
In this case, mailman is very cautious not to trust the original
extention and change it to .bin. If these files are sent by a compliant
mailer like netscape, the content-type will be application/msword or
application/vnd.ms-excel and the extension will become .doc or .xls.

So, if you really don't care the safety, you must hack the code at your
own risk.

Oh, there is an option to use an external archiver...
http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq04.003.htp

-- 
Tokio Kikuchi, tkikuchi@ is.kochi-u.ac.jp
http://weather.is.kochi-u.ac.jp/