183169 - POP connection closed on empty-body messages

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(MailNews Core :: Networking: POP, defect)

Description

[Alexios Zavras]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.2) Gecko/20021126
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.2) Gecko/20021126

Mail messages with empty bodies (completely empty, not even a single empty line)
can not be retrieved from some POP servers (at least one: popa3d).
It seems that Mozilla doesn't like non-existant bodies, and wants
at least an empty line between the last header and the "." line of end-of-POP
message, in order to understand "end-of-headers".
Unfortunately, this server does not provide it (it's unclear whether it should).

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. send an e-mail to your account with empty body
   e.g., on a Unix host: mail -s "empty body" ACCOUNT < /dev/null
2. have the host run a POP server (popa3d)
3. try to retrieve the message through Mozilla via POP 

Actual Results:  
Mozilla displays "retrieving 1..." (the LIST and UIDL commands succeed)
but the message never arrives (the RETR command starts but it's abruptly
finished).  If more messages await in the mbox, they never come.

Expected Results:  
Get the empty message, and proceed to get the rest.

I watched the connection via a "socket spy" utility, so I witnessed
the exact message exchange.  After login (USER and PASS), Mozilla
asks for the message list (LIST) and checks for new (UIDL), then
proceeds to retrieve them (RETR).  This particular server sends the empty
message as "HEADER1: foo\nHEADER2: bar\n.\n", i.e. without an empty line
after the headers.  Mozilla doesn't like it and closes the connection.
From the POP RFC it is not clear whether there should be an empty line
to denote end-of-headers before ".".  Anyway, in the spirit of "be liberal
on what you accept" (RFC822), I think Mozzila should accept such messages.

Comment 1

[R.K.Aa.]

similar: bug 179408

Comment 2

[Henrik Lynggaard Hansen]

Mozilla 1.2 is getting quite old, 

Reporter could you please retest with a newer version, either the latest
milestone or a recent nightly ?

Comment 3

[Cosimo Simeone]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Mozilla 1.2 is getting quite old, 
> 
> Reporter could you please retest with a newer version, either the latest
> milestone or a recent nightly ?

Hi!
I've got the same problem, using Mozilla 1.6 ...

Hope this help

Comment 4

[Cosimo Simeone]

Attachment: message from web-mail

Comment 5

[Cosimo Simeone]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Mozilla 1.2 is getting quite old, 
> 
> Reporter could you please retest with a newer version, either the latest
> milestone or a recent nightly ?

Still present in Thunderbird 0.7 (20040616)... :-(((

Comment 6

[Cosimo Simeone]

Still there EVEN IN thunderbird 0.8... :-(

(In reply to comment #2)
> Mozilla 1.2 is getting quite old, 
> 
> Reporter could you please retest with a newer version, either the latest
> milestone or a recent nightly ?

Comment 7

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

this would have expired if not for a cc: change.
=> incomplete