210056 - corrupt pdf attachments

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 142517

(MailNews Core :: Attachments, defect)

Description

[How]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030613
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030613

attach pdf with mozilla 1.4 and send away. can't open the same pdf. 


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. attach pdf with mozilla mail 1.4
2. send away
3. open same pdf

Actual Results:  
pdf cannot be opened by acrobat reader or xpdf or any other pdf reader

Expected Results:  
the pdf can be opened.

Comment 1

[Robert O'Callahan (:roc) (email my personal email if necessary)]

This is not security sensitive.

Comment 2

[Elder Costa]

If the attachment doesn't have .pdf extension, it works fine.

Comment 3

[How]

you are right. if there is no .pdf extension the file is fine.  That means
having the extension mozilla will corrupt the attachment.

Comment 4

[Philip White]

Is it possible that your Mozilla is configured to do something exotic with files
having the .pdf extension and/or the appropriate MIME-type?  Maybe the
application that is configured to launch files of that type is corrupting them?

Comment 5

[How]

Definitely mozilla mail corrupted the pdf. works fine with other documents.
other mail program worked fine too.  Netscape 7 is fine too.
It is not possible at all to configure mozilla to corrupt files unless there are
bugs.

Comment 6

[Elder Costa]

I have disabled acrobat plugin just in case.
Same problem. Version 1.3.1 I have home (Debian unstable package)
works fine. Here (1.4 rc2) 

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030617

Comment 7

[Philip White]

I think you misunderstood what I was suggesting.  As you may know, it's possible
to define a handler for a file extension or MIME-type, so that when Mozilla
encounters it, it can automatically launch any program you want to handle it.

This behavior is defined in Preferences -> Navigator -> Helper Applications.  My
point was that perhaps Mozilla is configured, probably by mistake, to use a
handler for PDF files that does not actually support PDF files and may be
corrupting them instead.  It's not very likely, but that's the only reason I see
that Mozilla would corrupt /only/ PDF files.

So, my suggestion: move or delete your existing profile so that you could start
Mozilla with a clean slate, and see if this behavior repeats.

Comment 8

[How]

Philip White

Actually you are right. I deleted my .mozilla and start off new. And it works.
Now I realised when I upgrade from 1.2.1 to 1.4 I did not remove the .mozilla
which probably thats what happens.

Comment 9

[Philip White]

Excellent.
I am resolving this to WORKSFORME.

Comment 10

[Elder Costa]

I think the bug is still there and the fact you move status wherever you do
won't change that. I also renamed .mozilla and let it to create another
directory, set up mail account and then moved my email data to the newly created
.mozilla tree. And the problem is still there. The system is RedHat 7.2 and
mozilla data is:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 

Comment 11

[Philip White]

Reopening it, then.

Comment 12

[How]

The thing is though, you should not have to move .mozilla around or delete it to
upgrade to newer versions of mozilla for everything to work.

Comment 13

[Philip White]

You are right, it is a problem when you cannot reliably upgrade without messing
with your configuration data.  However, Mozilla is not an end-user product and
as such, is not fully backwards-compatible; certain changes in newer versions
necessitate a change in configuration data and old data sometimes is no longer
recognizable.

I am not sure, but I think that the release notes even say that if there are
problems you should wipe your profile and start with a new one.  At least, I
know that that's the "proper" solution for a multitude of bugs and problems.

If after creating a new profile you are no longer experiencing this problem,
then we should consider this bug resolved because a user with a "fresh" install
of Mozilla would not experience it.

Comment 14

[Elder Costa]

Hi. An update on my own experience with Mozilla. 

Today, before downgrading to 1.3.1 (that works fine with installed JDK) I tested
a last time and the damn lizard worked fine whereas last Friday it exhibited
that weird behaviour (that is, pdf corruption) after I have wiped out the
.mozilla and created a new one (remember I just copied email contents to the
fresh directory). Before somebody thinks "the stupid guy forgot to quit and
restart Mozilla", I did it. I'm positive. So much so the first thing I noticed
was several spams where getting thru as I started with the default database.
I must confess I'm completely astonished (and somewhat embarassed) with this.
Maybe I've done something wrong but certainly it wasn't not restarting mozilla.
Of course I powered off the station for the weekend.

Regards.

Comment 15

[Philip White]

Is this still a problem with Mozilla 1.4 or 1.5 alpha, provided that you
installed one of these versions correctly (having uninstalled the previous one,
etc.)?

Comment 16

[Volker Hirsinger]

There is definitely a problem in sending PDF's if you have an explicit helper
application for type pdf.

I was having the problem of sent PDF's getting corrupted - even on round trips
to myself - with Moz 1.0.1 and now 1.4 on Red Hat 8.3, and after reading this
report I went to the Navigator Helper Applications tab, removed type PDF which
was set to xpdf, and reverted to open 'using default application (which happens
to be xpdf)', and the problem was fixed. The Helper/Applications has now become
application/pdf.

Now when I send PDF's they are received fine both by Mozilla and Eudora / Acrobat.

Interesting as I thought that the Navigator browser helper's would not affect
sending!

Comment 17

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 142517 ***