Bug 151121

Summary: Evolution invalidly uses underscore in HELO
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: David Woodhouse <dwmw2>
Component: evolutionAssignee: Dave Malcolm <dmalcolm>
Status: CLOSED RAWHIDE QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: rawhideCC: tmraz
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2006-01-09 19:01:49 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:    
Bug Blocks: 150221    
Attachments:
Description Flags
patch to validate HELO args and fall back to bare IP address if necessary none

Description David Woodhouse 2005-03-15 01:26:09 UTC
When sitting in the airport on a wireless connection which seems to work for
free, I unfortunately have an IP address where the reverse DNS is operated by
idiots and contains underscores: 61_219_103_66-WIFI_HOTSPOTS.eng.telusmobility.com

Two problems result from this.

Firstly, Evolution violates RFC2821 by using that name in the EHLO greeting when
sending mail, and is rightly told to sod off by my mail server:

sending : EHLO 61_219_103_66-WIFI_HOTSPOTS.eng.telusmobility.com
received: 250-pentafluge.infradead.org Hello
61_219_103_66-WIFI_HOTSPOTS.eng.telusmobility.com [66.103.219.61]
received: 250-SIZE 52428800
received: 250-8BITMIME
This server supports 8bit MIME
received: 250-ETRN
received: 250-EXPN
received: 250-STARTTLS
This server supports STARTTLS
received: 250 HELP
sending : STARTTLS
received: 220 TLS go ahead
sending : EHLO 61_219_103_66-WIFI_HOTSPOTS.eng.telusmobility.com
received: 250-pentafluge.infradead.org Hello
61_219_103_66-WIFI_HOTSPOTS.eng.telusmobility.com [66.103.219.61]
received: 250-SIZE 52428800
received: 250-8BITMIME
This server supports 8bit MIME
received: 250-ETRN
received: 250-EXPN
received: 250-AUTH LOGIN PLAIN CRAM-MD5
received: 250 HELP
<...>
received: 235 Authentication succeeded
sending : MAIL FROM:<dwmw2>
received: 250 OK
sending : RCPT TO:<Massimo.Gaetani>
received: 550-Mail rejected. Underscores in HELO are not permitted by RFC2821.

The second problem is that Evolution misreports the error message, so I have to
either run with CAMEL_VERBOSE_DEBUG=1 or log in to the mail server and look at
the logs in order to see what _actually_ happened. Instead of reporting the
above error message, Evolution makes something up -- it says "Requested action
not taken: mailbox unavailable".

Comment 1 Dave Malcolm 2005-03-15 01:36:54 UTC
Please file this upstream: http://bugzilla.ximian.com

Comment 2 David Woodhouse 2005-03-15 02:10:36 UTC
Sorry, I cannot. Ximian bugzilla does not let me log in -- a login attempt
appears successful, but then an immediately subsequent attempt to _do_ anything
fails, and prompts me to log in again... ad infinitum. 

Comment 5 Dave Malcolm 2005-03-15 02:53:52 UTC
In response to the second part of the bug, it sounds like what you really what
is a "Show Details" button than shows the exact error from the server (aimed at
techies), and for the main error message to say something more user-friendly
(aimed at non-techies) - "Requested action not taken" isn't a great error message.  

However I'm not sure exactly what the wording should be here, and if enough
information is available to choose a good error message without major retooling,
alas.

Comment 7 David Woodhouse 2005-03-15 15:36:36 UTC
I don't think we should display a made-up error message by default, and display
the actual error only if the user presses a 'Details' button. 

Display nothing but "Sending mail failed", with a 'Details' button if you really
must -- but don't give a bogus error message.

Comment 8 Tomas Mraz 2005-04-21 17:23:22 UTC
Not that I like the Evo's made-up error message but the reason why it's so
misleading is because the server reports error only after the RCPT TO: not
immediately.


Comment 9 David Woodhouse 2005-04-21 23:26:49 UTC
Created attachment 113495 [details]
patch to validate HELO args and fall back to bare IP address if necessary

Comment 10 David Woodhouse 2005-08-06 10:12:56 UTC
Fixing summary. The misleading error message is filed separately as bug #165271.

Comment 11 Dave Malcolm 2006-01-05 22:31:07 UTC
Patch added to evolution-data-server-1.5.4-2