I'm just forwarding this verbatim from somebody who works here.
Comments ?
mm
----- Forwarded message from Dave Chamberlain <davec at mv.mv.com> -----
> Subject: possible dovecot problem
> From: "Dave Chamberlain" <davec at mv.mv.com>
> Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 21:29:48 -0400 (EDT)
> To: mem at mv.mv.com (Mark E. Mallett)
>
> Ok, I'm kind of confused at what dovecot's imap implementation is
doing.
>
> I seem to be spending more time than I need to correctly decipher the
headers of
> email messages.
>
> I have included here the text from 7.4.2 as it explains the response from a
> fetch of an ENVELOPE. The last paragraph specifies that the FROM, SENDER
> and REPLYTO fields cannot be nil because some of them must be present per
> RFC822 and the IMAP spec will default values. I have many examples where
> this is not the case, where the fetch of the envelope is returning NIL for
> some of these values.
>
> In the example below, the message shows that the from, replyto and sender
> are all set to jaentc at aukware.com (ok, a spelling error, but that was
her
> typing it in wrong). The next field after those three is NIL, that is the
> TO line (more of my text after the IMAP conversation)
>
> a uid fetch 902 ENVELOPE
> * 113 EXISTS
> * 1 RECENT
> * 104 FETCH (UID 902 ENVELOPE ("Tue, 20 May 2003 16:05:04
-0500" "From A Friend:
> 'TheWMURChannel.com - News - Law Raises Age Children Must Be In Seat
Restraints'"
> (("Janet" NIL "jaentc" "aukware.com"))
> (("Janet" NIL "jaentc" "aukware.com"))
> (("Janet" NIL "jaentc" "aukware.com")) NIL
NIL NIL NIL
> "<200305202105.h4KL5xo20860 at qbert.ibsys.com>"))
>
> Following is the complete header from the message. There is a valid To
address
> supplied, and it is in one of the allowed formats. I would have thought
that
> possibly it was the format that was causing the problem. I first theorized
that
> it didn't understand the emailaddress (personalname) format. However,
the
> From field is in that format, and was correctly picked up (notice that
"Janet"
> exists above as the Personal name, so it did understand that format).
>
> I have found multple cases where the FROM was NIL, the SUBJECT was NIL and
> the TO is NIL, yet when looking at the header they are visible.
>
> This is causing problems with more than just my things, OE is having a
problem
> with it as well.
>
>
>
>
> >From jaentc at aukware.com Tue May 20 21:26:43 2003 UTC
> Received: (qmail 24772 invoked from network); 20 May 2003 17:52:17 -0400
> Received: from iridium.mv.net (HELO mv.mv.com) (qmailr at 199.125.85.17)
> by mercury.mv.net with SMTP; 20 May 2003 17:52:17 -0400
> X-Peer-Info: remote-ip 199.125.85.17 local-ip 199.125.85.40
> local-name mercury.mv.net
> Received: (qmail 21564 invoked by uid 134); 20 May 2003 17:26:53 -0400
> Delivered-To: davec at mv.com
> Received: (qmail 3533 invoked from network); 20 May 2003 17:06:26 -0400
> Received: from qbert.ibsys.com (66.187.197.24)
> by iridium.mv.net with SMTP; 20 May 2003 17:06:26 -0400
> X-Peer-Info: remote-ip 66.187.197.24 local-ip 199.125.85.17
> local-name iridium.mv.net
> Received: from 10.0.0.24 (cfusion3.ibsys.com [10.3.0.53])
> by qbert.ibsys.com (Switch-2.1.0/Switch-2.1.0) with ESMTP id h4KL5xo20860
> for <davec at mv.com (Dave)> Tue, 20 May 2003 16:05:59 -0500 (CDT)
> Message-Id: <200305202105.h4KL5xo20860 at qbert.ibsys.com>
> Content-type: text/plain
> Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 16:05:04 -0500
> From: jaentc at aukware.com (Janet)
> Subject: From A Friend: 'TheWMURChannel.com - News - Law Raises Age
Children Must Be
> In Seat Restraints'
> To: davec at mv.com (Dave)
>
>
> Section 7.4.2
>
> ENVELOPE
> A parenthesized list that describes the envelope structure of a
> message. This is computed by the server by parsing the
> [RFC-2822] header into the component parts, defaulting various
> fields as necessary.
>
> The fields of the envelope structure are in the following
> order: date, subject, from, sender, reply-to, to, cc, bcc,
> in-reply-to, and message-id. The date, subject, in-reply-to,
> and message-id fields are strings. The from, sender, reply-to,
> to, cc, and bcc fields are parenthesized lists of address
> structures.
>
> An address structure is a parenthesized list that describes an
> electronic mail address. The fields of an address structure
> are in the following order: personal name, [SMTP]
> at-domain-list (source route), mailbox name, and host name.
>
> [RFC-2822] group syntax is indicated by a special form of
> address structure in which the host name field is NIL. If the
> mailbox name field is also NIL, this is an end of group marker
> (semi-colon in RFC 822 syntax). If the mailbox name field is
> non-NIL, this is a start of group marker, and the mailbox name
> field holds the group name phrase.
>
> If the Date, Subject, In-Reply-To, and Message-ID header lines
> are absent in the [RFC-2822] header, the corresponding member
> of the envelope is NIL; if these header lines are present but
> empty the corresponding member of the envelope is the empty
> string.
>
> Note: some servers may return a NIL envelope member in the
> "present but empty" case. Clients SHOULD treat NIL
and
> empty string as identical.
>
> Note: [RFC-2822] requires that all messages have a valid
> Date header. Therefore, the date member in the envelope can
> not be NIL or the empty string.
>
> Note: [RFC-2822] requires that the In-Reply-To and
> Message-ID headers, if present, have non-empty content.
> Therefore, the in-reply-to and message-id members in the
> envelope can not be the empty string.
>
> If the From, To, cc, and bcc header lines are absent in the
> [RFC-2822] header, or are present but empty, the corresponding
> member of the envelope is NIL.
>
> If the Sender or Reply-To lines are absent in the [RFC-2822]
> header, or are present but empty, the server sets the
> corresponding member of the envelope to be the same value as
> the from member (the client is not expected to know to do
> this).
>
> Note: [RFC-2822] requires that all messages have a valid
> From header. Therefore, the from, sender, and reply-to
> members in the envelope can not be NIL.
----- End forwarded message -----