Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!rutgers!pyrnj!romain
From: romain@pyrnj.uucp (Romain Kang)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: Survey on damage by mailers.
Message-ID: <741@pyrnj.uucp>
Date: 30 Dec 87 14:38:28 GMT
References: <408@minya.UUCP> <77@sickkids.UUCP>
Reply-To: romain@pyrnj.UUCP (Romain Kang)
Organization: Pyramid Technology Corp, Woodbridge, NJ
Lines: 36

In article <77@sickkids.UUCP> mark@sickkids.UUCP (Mark Bartelt) writes:
| In article <408@minya.UUCP> jc@minya.UUCP (John Chambers) writes:
| > 	2. If the string "\n.\n" occurs, the tail end of the file (starting
| > 		at the '.') is discarded.
|
| [...]  The /bin/mail that comes with 4.3bsd
| contains different, but equivalent, code.  Are there *really* UNIX mailers
| that exhibit that bug when passing mail between systems, or have you merely
| inferred this because of the fact that a '.' bracketed by pair of newlines
| can be used as a message terminator from a terminal?

BSD mail maintainers take note:

There are a great many 4.2-based /bin/rmail's still out there (including
Pyramid's, *blush*) that invoke sendmail without the -i option; this means
that sendmail will use "\n.\n" as a message terminator and flush anything
else that rmail feeds it.

Thus if I run the following shell script, John's bug surfaces:

#! /bin/sh
/bin/rmail $USER << EoF
From adm Tue Dec 29 04:00 EST 1987 remote from test

IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOLLOWS:
.
.
.
***UPDATE /usr/lib/acct/holidays WITH NEW HOLIDAYS***
EoF

--
Romain Kang		{allegra,cmcl2,mirror,pyramid,rutgers}!pyrnj!romain
Pyramid Technology Corp. / 10 Woodbridge Center. Dr / Woodbridge, NJ  07095

"Eggheads unite! You have nothing to lose but your yolks!" -Adlai Stevenson