I have never encountered anything like this before, so thought I'd post here and see if anyone can help. We have a java application that sends out notification emails to end-users. The body of the email is some boilerplate text and HTML that is pulled from a database. When the emails are received there are random instances of " !" (that's a space and a bang symbol) inserted into the email in various locations. For example a sentence that is supposed to read like this: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. ends up looking like this: The quick b !rown fox jumped over the laz !y dog. We combed through the source text and didn't find any unusual characters in the body of the text. Somehow these bang symbols are being inserted after the mail is handed off to sendmail. Does anyone have an idea how I can troubleshoot this further? Or maybe you've seen something similar in your environment? thanks Sean -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20080918/edf5c7fd/attachment-0001.html>
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces at centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On Behalf Of Sean Carolan Sent: Donnerstag, 18. September 2008 18:30 To: CentOS mailing list Subject: [CentOS] Strange ! characters inserted into emails .... The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. ends up looking like this: The quick b !rown fox jumped over the laz !y dog. ... ----------------------------------------------- Are the e-mails corrupted the exact same way each time? IOW, does the above example always arrive as " The quick b !rown fox jumped over the laz !y dog." even if you send it 10 times? You might want to save the e-mail to disk and use a hex editor to see if there are unprintable characters in there. -geoff
on 9-18-2008 9:29 AM Sean Carolan spake the following:> I have never encountered anything like this before, so thought I'd post > here and see if anyone can help. > > We have a java application that sends out notification emails to > end-users. The body of the email is some boilerplate text and HTML that > is pulled from a database. When the emails are received there are > random instances of " !" (that's a space and a bang symbol) inserted > into the email in various locations. For example a sentence that is > supposed to read like this: > > The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. > > ends up looking like this: > > The quick b !rown fox jumped over the laz !y dog. > > We combed through the source text and didn't find any unusual characters > in the body of the text. Somehow these bang symbols are being inserted > after the mail is handed off to sendmail. Does anyone have an idea how > I can troubleshoot this further? Or maybe you've seen something similar > in your environment? > > thanks > > SeanIs it text based mail, or HTML? I have seen things like this during base64 or quoted printable encoding on some HTML mails from Outlook. If it is encoding, the bangs should repeat in a fairly repeatable pattern. -- MailScanner is like deodorant... You hope everybody uses it, and you notice quickly if they don't!!!! -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 250 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20080918/4dc4f9af/attachment-0001.sig>
On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 11:29 AM, Sean Carolan <scarolan at gmail.com> wrote:> I have never encountered anything like this before, so thought I'd post > here and see if anyone can help. > > We have a java application that sends out notification emails to > end-users. The body of the email is some boilerplate text and HTML that is > pulled from a database. When the emails are received there are random > instances of " !" (that's a space and a bang symbol) inserted into the email > in various locations. For example a sentence that is supposed to read like > this: > > The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. > > ends up looking like this: > > The quick b !rown fox jumped over the laz !y dog. > > We combed through the source text and didn't find any unusual characters in > the body of the text. Somehow these bang symbols are being inserted after > the mail is handed off to sendmail. Does anyone have an idea how I can > troubleshoot this further? Or maybe you've seen something similar in your > environment? > > thanks > > Sean > > I have seen this before when the email was generated by a program and beingsent through sendmail as the MTA. As I remember, there is a line length limit in an SMTP stream. And if sendmail sees a line longer than a certain number of characters it will insert a "!\n" sequence in the stream. I forget whether a receiving sendmail would remove that sequence, but I think not. What it means is that the application is most likely not encoding the email message properly. If there is going to be a long line, the message would need to be encoded in base64 or quoted-printable. Those will allow the message to be transmitted without those extra exclamation marks. Do a google search for "sendmail exclamation mark" and you'll find several posts about it. DavidE -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20080918/77685c1e/attachment-0001.html>
Sean Carolan wrote:> I have never encountered anything like this before, so thought I'd post > here and see if anyone can help. > > We have a java application that sends out notification emails to > end-users. The body of the email is some boilerplate text and HTML that > is pulled from a database. When the emails are received there are > random instances of " !" (that's a space and a bang symbol) inserted > into the email in various locations. For example a sentence that is > supposed to read like this: > > The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. > > ends up looking like this: > > The quick b !rown fox jumped over the laz !y dog. > > We combed through the source text and didn't find any unusual characters > in the body of the text. Somehow these bang symbols are being inserted > after the mail is handed off to sendmail. Does anyone have an idea how > I can troubleshoot this further? Or maybe you've seen something similar > in your environment?I can save you a lot of trouble, you are sending more than 2040+ characters (almost 2048) without a newline. I resolved this in my send2blogger program (it's perl). See: http://www.linuxha.com/other/send2blogger/index.html It Perl but I think I did a good job of explaining it in the code. I hope this helps. Oh, it's GPL I should put that up there. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry at linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies