vowe dot net :: Malformed message headers block my message queue

Malformed message headers block my message queue

by Volker Weber

Since Domino is unable to collect mail from POP3 mailboxes, I am retrieving my mail from a number of mailboxes and deliver them to the SMTP router with NT Pullmail. This has worked very well for years. In an effort to fight the ever increasing amount of spam I have included SpamPal into this loop, which does a good job of marking spam messages so they can be sorted out by Domino.

However, I am seeing an increasing number of malformed spam messages that look like this:

The FROM address is malformed. It should be "David Young" <HJYXke715DpAIKe@alpha4.ct.astro.it>. NT Pullmail has trouble understanding the header and aborts with this error:

501 Syntax error, parameters in command "MAIL FROM: <"David>" unrecognized or missing

The message is not retrieved and is stuck in the queue. Every subsequent fetch will hit the same roadblock.

Does anybody have a suggestion? Either a more robust POP retriever or a Spam Filter that will remove the spam on the server?

2004-07-01 :: email :: bookmark :: digg

Comments

Don't know if it solves this particular problem, but have you looked into Key Solution's POP3Fido? It's a Domino server add-in that collects mail from POP3 mailboxes.

http://www.keysolutions.com/webhome/pop3fido.html

-rich

Richard Schwartz, 2004-07-01 20:58

By having ecactly the same problem I currently think about continuing development on a JAVAMail enabled agent for Domino again...

Michael Gollmick, 2004-07-01 21:42

This looks like a good candidate for a Java package: http://mailfetcher.sourceforge.net/>

Volker Weber, 2004-07-01 22:25

Maybe this would be something for users who don't want a Java based solution: http://www.chimera.co.nz/efsmain.htm. Haven't tested it, though, for I'm quite happy with fetchd ;-)

Stefan Rubner, 2004-07-01 22:44

I am testing IGetMail. It has a very interesting option that will discard a message after it failed to download it three times. That is exactly what I was missing with PullMail.

Volker Weber, 2004-07-01 23:03

Nice! I am having the exact same problems with PullMail :(

Colin Williams, 2004-07-02 00:02

We had similar problems at a client's site, but with addresses that contained ä ü or ö in the Name. Pullmail failed to get any messages until the problem message has been deleted from the POP3 box with another client.

We didn't test another retriever but changed the MX for that domain. :-/

And when you mean Domino with "the server" asking for a Spam filter I'd recommend kSpam from OpenNTF. Together with some minor modifications to the mail template (like these) it's a great tool.

Oliver Regelmann, 2004-07-02 00:32

No, "the server" should read "the POP3 server".

The problem that NT Pullmail is running into would be trivial to fix. Unfortunately the company which developed the tool did not publish the source code when it abandoned the product.

So, while IGetMail looks as if it solves the problem, I will switch to open source when possible. There is actually a Windows port of Fetchmail but it requires Cygwin.

Volker Weber, 2004-07-02 00:46

If you want to run a local mail server, it might make sense to route all incoming SMTP to an external mail relay on qmail, while pulling the stored mail queues with serialmail over ssh to your local mail server.
From there you can POP or IMAP them as you wish. This would also provide two points for hooking up a maildrop or procmail/formail filter which corrects malformed stuff and/or filters it out.
Sending outgoing SMTP mail can be implemented using the same route in reverse, or another, depending on your needs.

YMMV, depending on the number of mails you get via the number of accounts; you got to decide if it is worth the work and time.

Regards,
/k

Karsten W. Rohrbach, 2004-07-02 11:01

I had the same problem with pullmail. I tried the EFS and ERC utils from Chimera Computing web site as posted above (http://www.chimera.co.nz/), works a treat - and it's free!

Tim Curtsey, 2005-04-07 03:39