Illegal characters in .mailcap file

[Angela Norton]

The default .mailcap file installed with Ubuntu has a spurious "-e" on the first line. This causes a java NullPointerException on my machine when running certain applications that send SMTP email.

Output of lsb_release -rd:
Description: Ubuntu 8.04.1
Release: 8.04

[Angela Norton (angela-norton)]

Related link:
http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=5164454&tstart=30

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Which particular line contained the spurious '-e' in it? Thanks in advance.

[Angela Norton (angela-norton)]

Brian,
The very first line contained '-e' by itself. Deleting that fixed the problem.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

I believe the mailcap file is modified by packages as they are installed, so it would be helpful to know the lines around the '-e' or perhaps have a list of packages that you have installed so we can track this down.

[Angela Norton (angela-norton)]

Here's how my .mailcap file looked originally, before I modified it:
----------------------------
-e
# Java Web Start
application/x-java-jnlp-file; /home/anorton/downloads/jdk1.5.0_12/jre/bin/javaws %s
------------------------------

I've attached the output of dpkg -l | grep '^i'.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

I've examined the source package for sun-java5-1.5.0-15-0ubuntu1 and the entry added is the following:

application/x-java-jnlp-file; /@basedir@/jre/javaws/javaws %s

However, your .mailcap file shows a different entry. Did you download the jdk from somwhere else?

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

We are closing this bug report as it lacks the information, described in the previous comments, we need to investigate the problem further. However, please reopen it if you can give us the missing information and feel free to submit bug reports in the future.