Re: More POP madness

[Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE]

Stainless Steel Rat <ratinox@peorth.gweep.net> writes:

  > * Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE  on Fri, 09 Apr 1999
  > | Hm.  So the ouput of fetchmail doesn't seem to be in mbox format.
  > 
  > Kai, you just got through telling me that what a POP3 retrieval program
  > spits out does not need to be in mbox format.  In fact, you pointed out
  > that strictly by RFCs, what a POP3 server spits out cannot be in mbox
  > format because the SMTP envelope is not part of an RFC 822 message.
  > 
  > Which is it?

Er, hm.  I was tired when I wrote that.  Of course, the POP3 server
spits out RFC 822, which is not in mbox format.  But Gnus expects mbox
format.  So, one of the programs involved (fetchmail or procmail, I
gather) should transform the output of the POP3 server to mbox format.

Right?

  > | Hm.  I'm not sure which program should add the From_ line, but either
  > | fetchmail or procmail should do that.
  > 
  > Nope.  What *should* generate that line is the SMTP agent on the sending
  > end.  The retrieval mechanism should not need to generate the envelope
  > again.
  > 
  > Which is why I maintain that POP servers that strip that information are
  > broken.

Are you saying that the POP3 RFC is broken because it specifies that
the output of a RETR command must be an RFC 822 message (which does
not contain an envelope)?

  > Sorry for being particularly bitchy this evening, but I spent 8 friggin'
  > hours fixing my company's mail system and worrying if any of the almost
  > 1300 messages in the queue were lost.

No problem.  What does friggin' mean?  I mean, I can sort of glork the
meaning from context, but one never knows...

Losing mail is awful.  Good luck.

kai
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