Logcheck devel - Aug 2009 - Bug#542781: MAILARGS -a breaks mailing with mailx or mutt

Package: logcheck
Version: 1.3.3
Severity: important

Hello!

The latest version of logchecks no longer sent mails for me, gave
an error instead:
> Auto-Submitted: auto-generated: No such file or directory
This is due to 
> MAILARGS="-a 'Auto-Submitted: auto-generated'"
in /usr/sbin/logcheck. 

Option -a wants to attach a file to the mail with at least the
MUAs mutt and mailx from package heirloom-mailx. 


Hotfix: I have added the following to logcheck.conf:
> # Override buggy MAILARGS in /usr/sbin/logcheck
> MAILARGS=""

A real fix might be to use the sendmail binary to send mails. The
following works:
> echo -e "Subject: sub\nX-Test: myheader\n\nmail body\n" |
sendmail butch
I always use sendmail to send emails from scripts or cron jobs. 
Giving mail headers on STDIN works for ../bin/sendmail provided
by Sendmail and Exim packages at least. 

You'd might have to check for other MTAs, but that should be less work
than checking all MUAs. And in my opinion MTAs try to be command line 
compatible to sendmail - at least more than user tools.


 Regards
  Florian



-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.30-1-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages logcheck depends on:
ii  adduser            3.110                 add and remove users and groups
ii  bsd-mailx [mailx]  8.1.2-0.20081101cvs-2 A simple mail user agent
ii  cron               3.0pl1-106            process scheduling daemon
ii  exim4              4.69-11               metapackage to ease Exim MTA (v4) 
ii  exim4-daemon-heavy 4.69-11+b1            Exim MTA (v4) daemon with extended
ii  heirloom-mailx [ma 12.4-1.1+b1           feature-rich BSD mail(1)
ii  lockfile-progs     0.1.13                Programs for locking and unlocking
ii  logtail            1.3.3                 Print log file lines that have not
ii  mailx              1:20081101-2          Transitional package for mailx ren
ii  sysklogd [system-l 1.5-5                 System Logging Daemon

Versions of packages logcheck recommends:
ii  logcheck-database             1.3.3      database of system log rules for t

Versions of packages logcheck suggests:
ii  syslog-summary                1.13-1     summarize the contents of a syslog

-- debconf information excluded


-- 
  Florian Hinzmann                         private: f.hinzmann at hamburg.de
                                            Debian: fh at debian.org
PGP Key / ID: 1024D/B4071A65
Fingerprint : F9AB 00C1 3E3A 8125 DD3F  DF1C DF79 A374 B407 1A65

On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 12:03:20PM +0200, Florian Hinzmann
wrote:
> This is due to 
> > MAILARGS="-a 'Auto-Submitted: auto-generated'"
> in /usr/sbin/logcheck. 
Damned if you do, damned it you don't, right Martin?  :)
> Option -a wants to attach a file to the mail with at least the
> MUAs mutt and mailx from package heirloom-mailx. 
mutt doesn't provide /usr/bin/mail, so it's irrelevant.  But yeah,
heirloom-mailx is a bother.  (You would've thought that all mailxes
would have the same command-line interface, no?)
> A real fix might be to use the sendmail binary to send mails. The
> following works:
> > echo -e "Subject: sub\nX-Test: myheader\n\nmail body\n" |
sendmail butch
Note to self: echo -e is a bashism, so you might want to use /bin/echo
instead.

Another option would be to strictly depend on, say, bsd-mailx.  It's a
crappy solution, but it is an easy one.


-- 
/*
 *     Please skip to the bottom of this file if you ate lunch recently
 *                             -- Alan
 */
		-- from Linux kernel pre-2.1.91-1

Your message dated Wed, 27 Jan 2010 10:07:21 +0000
with message-id <E1Na4nx-0007vF-9L at ries.debian.org>
and subject line Bug#542781: fixed in logcheck 1.3.6
has caused the Debian Bug report #542781,
regarding MAILARGS -a breaks mailing with mailx or mutt
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

(NB: If you are a system administrator and have no idea what this
message is talking about, this may indicate a serious mail system
misconfiguration somewhere. Please contact owner at bugs.debian.org
immediately.)


-- 
542781: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=542781
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact owner at bugs.debian.org with problems
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