538122 - File links doesn't works in e-mails

Status: REOPENED

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[zoyi81]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; hu; rv:1.9.1.6) Gecko/20091201 Firefox/3.5.6 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Thunderbird 3.0

Our mail server cut the mail attachments and insert a file link to the mail. The inserted link is correct but if i wnat to open the link the link doesn't works. In the status bar i see bore slashes. file:\\mail\attach\...in link status bar can see: file:///attach/.. Why happened this. This problem is olso in thunderbird 2.0.0.23. The last correct file link handling was in 2.0.0.17. 

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[zoyi81]

Attachment: error screen

Comment 2

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Exchange ?

So it worked in 2.0.0.17 but hasn't been working since ?

Comment 3

[zoyi81]

Yes, since 2.0.0.17 doesn't works file links.

Comment 4

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Is your mail server an exchange server ? looking at http://www.rumblingedge.com/2008/09/26/thunderbird-20017-released/ I don't see where this could come from.

I supose you could trey 3.0 and let us know if it works better with 3.0 ?

Comment 5

[zoyi81]

You need to check what has changed after 2.0.0.17 in 2.0.0.23 file, link or directory handling.

 We use debian linux mail server. Our server cuts the attachment and takes an link to the e-mail. Do you know any extension witch can we open the file links? We can't open the file links form thunderbird, we must use Launchy extension to open the links from e-mails. The tunderbird don't use correctly the file links. This problem is still actual on Thunderbird 3.0. The 3.0 is looks very good :) and we still wait for the solution.

Comment 6

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

(In reply to comment #5)
> You need to check what has changed after 2.0.0.17 in 2.0.0.23 file, link or
> directory handling.

Oups ... Thanks for noticing. Issue is bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=458883 which is a security fix.
 
>  We use debian linux mail server. Our server cuts the attachment and takes an
> link to the e-mail. Do you know any extension witch can we open the file links?
> We can't open the file links form thunderbird, we must use Launchy extension 

Not form the top of my head.

Comment 7

[zoyi81]

There will be a solution?

Comment 8

[zoyi81]

I can't find the solution...

Comment 9

[zoyi81]

The realy problem is that the server put the links to a txtfile, and the thunderbird opens the file and can be show end of the mail and there is the problem..the link is displayed not correctly

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

zoyi,
do you see this in version 6 or newer?

if you no longer see problem on newer release, please change resolution to WORKSFORME.
if you do see the problem on newer release, please update the bug with details.

Comment 11

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

RESOLVED INCOMPLETE due to lack of response to previous question. If you feel this change was made in error, please respond to this bug with your reasons why.

Comment 12

[zoyi81]

The problem is the same no changes:(

Comment 13

[zoyi81]

The problem is the same no changes:(

Comment 14

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Gee! Fuzzy summary, no steps to reproduce, no explicit actual/expected results and fuzzy extra information somewhere in comment 9 - this is going nowhere.

[e-mail], please follow the prescribed format for bugs:

STR (steps to reproduce)
1) do this
2) do that
3) ...

Actual result
- this is what happens

Expected result
- this is what should happen

Furthermore, please provide the source of a testcase.eml msg with "add an attachment" at top of this bug, after removing private data as required with text editor. thank you.

Comment 15

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Ludo,
a) are links to local files (file:\\...) allowed (to work) in received emails by design? (e.g., you mentioned bug 458883 in comment 6)
b) if yes, *do* they work?

Comment 16

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

(In reply to Thomas D. from comment #15)
> Ludo,
> a) are links to local files (file:\\...) allowed (to work) in received
> emails by design? (e.g., you mentioned bug 458883 in comment 6)

That's link so, yes they should - But I'm not sure how we convert these (it should work fro smb shares)

> b) if yes, *do* they work?

No idea ... as I don't have smb shares around and no easy way to test besides sending to myself ...

Comment 17

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Is comment 0 + 1 a sufficient testcase? And should it even work?

Comment 18

[ISHIKAWA, Chiaki]

I think a local file reference can work IFF both the sender and the receiver shares the SAME remote file system from their PCs, for example.
So let assume the sender and the receiver are in the SAME office and both of them use a shared file system (assuming CIFS/SAMBA for windows users, or NFS and others including CIFS/SAMBA share under linux, say.).

In such a setting, the file link can and should work.
We often share the link to Google drive and other shared file service URIs in short messages, etc.

HOWEVER, I noticed in the comment 0, the URI in question looks to be in the form in the main text body,

file:////mail/attachment/filepathname

but it is shown as file:////attach/... in the link status bar.

The poster asked: "In the status bar i see bore slashes. file:\mail\attach...in link status bar can see: file:///attach/.. Why happened this. "

Indeed why.
I am not sure if the "file:///attach/..." shown as the real link which it seems that the mail server the poster uses
replaced in place of the attachment is correct URI or not for the poster's environment.

It seems more likely to be the e-mail server issue than TB itself.
Either the server at the time had an incorrect configuration that replaced the URL in an incorrect way, OR
the server produces new MIME constructs for attachment that either triggered the error in TB's mime handling OR actually the earlier MIME construct got accepted incorrectly by TB.

In either way, I think this is "WORKSFORME".
This is because

• the replacement of attachment with a link to a copy of the attachment under a directory
  accessible by the e-mail server (and presumably is accessible by the clients in an office setting)
  is done by e-mail server if I understand this correctly,
• the report is 7-8 years old, and
• I can use firefox to access the file c:/temp/t.lst by putting file:///c:/temp/t.lst in a mail myself.
  So I have no question as to if a proper CIFS/SAMBA URI in the mail text allows us to access a shared file on a remote
  server in a shared environment. (They may look like file://IP-address-or-host-name/.... and the details depend on the share protocol.)

TIA
PS: I had a local virtualbox linux image trashed by an operator mistake, so to speak,
when the root partition was enlarged to allow additional kernel image to be bootable. It would take a day or two before I can access my local TB source tree... Oops.

Why I think so?
I mean I can certainly send a message that contains the following myself,
and instructs firefox to open it for me (under Windows).

file:///c:/temp/t.lst

And firefox dutifully opened it for me when I clicked on the instruction.

In the case of the original poster, unless mail/attachment is in the default server and is accessible under default drive (presumably C: under windows? I am not sure what happens here under linux.), the file is not accessible after all.
But I suspect that this mail/attachment is a directory accessible by the e-mail server.
E-mail server strips an attachment and stores it under mail/attachment directory on a file system that could be accessed remotely by the client, and puts in the link to this attachment file instead.

So my guess is that it is an issue of the particular office setting.
file:

Comment 19

[B.J. Herbison]

I just send a message to myself with a file link. The link is from the system I'm using to read the e-mail. I can't open the link.

The error console:
Security Error: Content at mailbox:///...../Inbox?number=9999 may not load or link to file:///...../foo.txt.

The file and the mailbox are on the same file system. The file isn't in the Thunderbird profile. Owned by user running Thunderbird.

Using Ubuntu.