[Mailman-Users] Duplicate Emails - but only if first email has HTMLor stationary

[Mark Sapiro]

Lisa Phillips wrote:
>
>Thank you for responding.  I can provide the messages sent to the list, but
>not the one as sent to the list.  I am also going to see if the first one
>caused some bounces from some of the members (they usually always do), and
>I'll send that in a separate email.  Please let me know if you have any
>suggestions.


I see from the messages, that this is a cPanel Mailman (2.1.9-cp1). I
don't think this duplication is a cPanel issue per se (see below).
Also see
<http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq06.011.htp>.

There was a somewhat different cPanel issue I worked on a while back
that caused duplication of images within an email as opposed to
duplicate messages, and that cPanel bug was triggered by the addition
of msg_footer to the message. See
<http://forums.cpanel.net/showthread.php?t=61603> (requires
registration) for my (unanswered) report of this, but I don't think
that that is this issue.

Thank you for including the two messages. That is very helpful.

The MIME structure of the first message is

multipart/mixed
    multipart/alternative
        text/plain
        text/html
    image/gif
    image/jpeg
    text/plain

This structure is not really correct, but it may have been munged by
Mailman's content filtering in some way. Given what this actually is
with the gif and jpeg images referenced by the html via Content-ID:, I
think the actual message structure should be

multipart/mixed
    multipart/alternative
        text/plain
        multipart/related
            text/html
            image/gif
            image/jpeg
    text/plain

I don't think this is related to the duplication however.

The second message appears to be a newly created message based on the
first message. While many of the headers of the first message are
copied verbatim in the second message, and the content of most of the
elemental parts is the same, several things stand out.

The Message-ID: is different. The From: header has had the real name
removed from the email address as you noted originally. The MIME
boundary is different. Parts are added. The MIME structure is
different. It is

multipart/mixed
    text/plain
    text/html
    image/gif
    image/jpeg
    application/octet-stream
    text/plain
    text/plain

The application/octet-stream part appears to be the msg_footer from the
first message, then there is an added text/plain part with
filename="GWAVADAT.TXT" and contents

AdmID:71370CBC7758B07A9A4CF8C0F77AE198

followed by the new msg_footer.

The message contains an

X-Mailer: GWAVA Archive Mailer

header. The Received: headers indicate it came back to the list via

Received: from [199.227.27.194] (port=47532
 helo=FSBMAIL.FIRSTSOUTHERNBANK.COM)
 by enzo.elinuxservers.com with esmtp (Exim 4.63)
 (envelope-from <KSmith-Bonilla at hialeahfl.gov>) id 1Hiwns-0008Aw-Ij
 for fisaalerts at fisanet.com; Tue, 01 May 2007 11:10:21 -0700
Received: from D9YTRC51 ([10.85.56.72])
 by FSBMAIL.FIRSTSOUTHERNBANK.COM with ESMTP;
 Tue, 01 May 2007 14:09:57 -0400

GWAVA is GroupWise anti-virus, anti-spam, archiving, etc.

Thus, I think what's happening is that one of the list members
addresses goes to GroupWise at FIRSTSOUTHERNBANK.COM and this
GroupWise is munging the message a bit and resending it back to the
list where it is resent to the members. Why this only seems to happen
with some list mail, I don't know.


>It seems like there should be some setting that would prevent users from
>receiving html formatted emails, which I think is what happening for the
>first email.  Let me know what you think, and thanks a million for your
>help.


There is no list member setting to prevent receiving HTML email. The
list has content filtering options that can be used to remove HTML and
images from all posts so no one receives any HTML.

For example, if you set filter_content On and put

multipart
message/rfc822
text/plain

in pass_mime_types, only text/plain parts will be passed through to the
list.


>Oh, one more question.. should I just reply to you on this, or the
>entire list?


Replying to the list or copying the list in a reply-all is normally the
way to reply.

The exceptions to this (this might have been one of them) are when the
reply contains emails or whatever with personal or domain information
that you don't want in a public archive and when the detailed
information in the reply (such as copies of emails) is very large.

In this case, your copy to the list was held I think because it
exceeded the maximum post size. It may yet be approved unless you
delete it first (instructions were in the 'held' notice you should
have received).

-- 
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan