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uuencode not sending attachments in right format anymore

 
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KPS
Super Advisor

uuencode not sending attachments in right format anymore

Hi,

We have been using uuencode to send attachments for reports to person's email boxes in Exchange/Outlook from HP-UX 11.11 OS for years.

Suddenly within the last week this started to not work properly. The recipients get the email and attachment, but the attachment is illegible and has control characters and incorrect format strings. Any ideas?

Our original syntax is:

uuencode report.txt report.txt|mailx -m -s "report.txt "

I've also tried: (Per another forum thread's recommendation)

ux2dos report.txt | uuencode report.txt report.txt|mailx -m -s "report.txt "

Would anyone have any other ideas on what could be suddenly causing this?????


16 REPLIES 16
Peter Godron
Honored Contributor

Re: uuencode not sending attachments in right format anymore

Hi,
looking at man uudecode:
"If an encoded file has the same name as the destination name specified in it, uudecode starts overwriting the encoded file before decoding is completed."

Start with changing the filenames. [Unlikely]

Ask the receiever to 'stitch' the attachments together and then do a uudecode.
[Proof format problem, not mailreader application]

Has anything changed in the transmission path ? Additional mail gateways/firewalls ?
KPS
Super Advisor

Re: uuencode not sending attachments in right format anymore

Changing filenames didn't change the symptom. There are no firewall changes between my HP-UX server and the Exchange environment through/from which the email comes from.
Yang Qin_1
Honored Contributor

Re: uuencode not sending attachments in right format anymore

Can you send the same attachment from "elm" to exchange and see if the attachment displayed correctly? If it is correct, then ux2dos will not help.

Can you post email header here (attachment related info but not those relay address)? so we can understand more on how exchange treat the attachment sent from your Unix server.
KPS
Super Advisor

Re: uuencode not sending attachments in right format anymore

elm is not setup on my system and to do so will cause me to submit change records to get this setup. I'd rather not go down the path of elm if I can help it.

Please indicate what you mean by email header?
spex
Honored Contributor

Re: uuencode not sending attachments in right format anymore

Hi,

I realize this may not suit your requirements, but if report.txt is ASCII data, you can simply make it the body of your message:

# mailx -m -s "report.txt appears in body" your@email.addr < report.txt

I suspect something has changed on your relay. Has new software (e.g. anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall) been installed on the Windows server? Has the OS been updated recently?

Has anything changed on the client PCs?

PCS
KPS
Super Advisor

Re: uuencode not sending attachments in right format anymore

Thanks for the recommendations for putting in the body of the email. I think we would feel more comfortable knowing why this has changed however.

(Realizing this is the more difficult road to take)

I talked to our Exchange folks and they're saying they have not done any changes since August. This issue started only a week or so ago.
Yang Qin_1
Honored Contributor

Re: uuencode not sending attachments in right format anymore

If you use Outlook to read emails sent to exchange, then from view/option you will find a field "Internet header" like this one:

.............
Message-Id: <451a1835.86@happydays.be>
From: XXXX
To: xxxxxx
Subject: xxxxxxx
Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2006 08:20:37 +0200
Reply-To: No Reply
X-MA-Reference: 5v7y12hn55Y5FI0_anz555W
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NexPart_000"
X-UIDL: 00000000001f871d.0000075f
X-MSP-STORE: Wed, 27 Sep 2006 08:20:50 +0200
Status:

Steven E. Protter
Exalted Contributor

Re: uuencode not sending attachments in right format anymore

Shalom,

If it was working and you changed nothing and suddenly it does not work:

Its probably a change somewehre else. smtp gateway upgrades or changes can introduce bugs that make file attachments fail.

You script may not however be adequate to the new situation.

Here is a production script that works well. Do change the default email addresses in it if any are still hard coded.

http://www.hpux.ws/mailfile2

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Steven E Protter
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KPS
Super Advisor

Re: uuencode not sending attachments in right format anymore

Attached is the email header you were wanting to look at.