pipermail's "From_" lines and RFC 976 (PR#194)

[Bug Importer]

Jitterbug-Id: 194
Submitted-By: [e-mail]
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 06:37:46 -0500 (EST)
Version:
OS:

I noticed that I'm not able to read the Python.org SIG archives with mutt
(pine
or procmail also doesn't work): mutt just doesn't find any mails in the
mbox.
/bin/mail does work, though. I realize that these archives were generated
with
pipermail (which is included with Mailman), but I don't know which version
they
use.

The problem is that mutt et al don't recognize the From_ lines written by
pipermail, since pipermail uses an other date format:

> Thomas Wouters <email address hidden>:
> > "Hadn't noticed it before, but now that you mention it....
;) It's a
> > problem in both mutt and pine, by the way, and it looks like it's
a problem
> > in pipermail itself. The problem is the From line, which marks
the start of
> > a message in a mailbox-format file. To be more specific, the
problem is the
> > date on that line. The dates by pipermail look like this :
> >
> > >From foobar Sun, 02 Jan 2000 11:52:52 +1100
> >
> > Whereas those stored by procmail, pine, mutt et al look like
this:
> >
> > >From foobar Sun Jan 2 11:52:52 2000
> >
> > Manually fixing the dates in the from-lines makes the archive
perfectly
> > readable.
> >
> > I couldn't find a specification for the From line (though it's
probably
> > located somewhere in the sendmail source, if not the docs) but I
suspect
> > the date on the From line does not follow the RFC822 date
specification. At
> > least, mutt and pine refuse to read a RFC822-valid date on the
From line.
> > And, now that I check it, so does mailbox.py; mailbox.py uses the
following
> > regexp to check the From line:
> >
> > >From
\s*[^\s]+\s+\w\w\w\s+\w\w\w\s+\d?\d\s+\d?\d:\d\d(:\d\d)?(\s+[^\s]+)?\s+\d\d
\d\d\s*$
> >
> > So I guess pipermail should be fixed, and possibly a
'fixfromline' script
> > added to the distribution to convert old archives to the new From
line
> > format ;)"

I asked mutt's author (Thomas Roessler <email address hidden>) about this
and he
replied:

  "Mutt explicitly verifies the format of the From_ line. I don't
have
   that text at hand right now, but you may wish to have a look at RFC
   976 where that format should be specified."

In RFC 976, "2.4 Envelope", I read:

  "If the
   receiving system stores the message in a local mailbox, it is
   recommended that a single "From_" line be generated at the
front of
   the message, keeping the date (in the same format, since certain mail
   reading programs are sensitive to this format), and not using the
   "remote from system" syntax."

Perhaps somebody could look into this problem ? I'm not sure if Python.org
perhaps uses an old pipermail version and this problem is fixed in recent
versions.

Thanks,
    Gregor <[e-mail]>

====================================================================
Audit trail:
None

[http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=214159&group_id=103&atid=100103]

[Barry Warsaw (barry)]

I suspect this is no longer a problem in Mailman 2.0. I sucked down all
the 2.0 generated Pipermail archive files I could find and verified that
mail, VM/XEmacs, and mutt all read them just fine. Pine seems to have
problems with them, but I chalk that up to Pine bugs.