Re: "but" Re: [PCTECH] Need firewall protection,

[Ken Sims <mdrg4136@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Tom -

> As for whether the client is busted, the strict definition of SMTP headers 
> has <CRLF> as the delimiter, so <tabNL> _should_ be okay... I think. 
> Technically, if the RFC indicates that <NL> alone is sufficient, then YOUR 
> client may be busted, but I highly doubt that. I didn't see that 
> possibility last time I scanned through it.

Well, the LF without the CR in my mailbox file could be the result of my 
server software storing it that way, since it is a Linux-based server.  I 
would have to capture and examine the actual packets to find out for sure, 
and I'm not going to bother to do that.

The SMTP RFC requiring CRLF only applies to the transmission of the 
message.  The local message store can be whatever the software wants to do.

> Sure, I understand the Windows connection to <CRLF>; but if that were the 
> cause, it would seem a LOT of e-mail would get screwed up, i.e., the 
> behavior would be seen all over the world. In this case, I'm simply using 
> Netscape Mail 7.1.

I think it's a matter of the CRLFtab appearing in the *subject* and your 
client software not expecting that and not handling it properly.  You could 
use an editor to add a CRLFtab sequence in the middle of the subject of a 
normal message and see if it then looks strange.

I'm using a Windoze-based client.  I just checked and the local message 
store for the client does have the LFs converted to CRLFs (since that's the 
standard for Windoze).  My client software (Eudora) has no trouble with 
headers that wrap with CRLFtab or CRLFspaces, even in the subject.

--
Ken
http://www.ke9nr.net/
Opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of 
my employer or anyone in their right mind.