Exchange 2003 attachment problem 1

[rhmoore]

An application needs to email csv files to users as attachments. These files are generated by an oracle application, about which I know nothing. When we receive the mail, the attachment has been embeded in the message, rather than being included as an attachment.

The mail, correctly, arrives as though it has been sent from an internal email address.

To protect the guilty, email addresses have been changed.

------ message received by me -----

Date: 06 Nov 08 10:42:29
From: UAT.Corona@ourcompany.com
Subject: Jobs where POs required
To: rmoore@ourcompany.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="DMW.Boundary.605592468"

This is a Mime message, which your current mail reader may not understand. Parts of the message will appear as text. If the remainder appears as random characters in the message body, instead of as attachments, then you'll have to extract these parts and decode them manually.


--DMW.Boundary.605592468
Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name="PO-REQUIRED-200811061042.CSV"
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="PO-REQUIRED-200811061042.CSV"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Date until PO Due,LOR Job Number,Cluster,Work Stream,Checklist flag,Job Type,Street,Postcode,Borough,Job Status,DJ

----- bulk of csv data removed by me -----

"ACTIVE - IN PROGRESS","N","20081024170023","","","DESC","05-NOV-2008","08-NOV-2008"

--DMW.Boundary.605592468--

From: UAT.Corona@ourcompany.com
Bcc:
Return-Path: UAT.Corona@ourcompany.com
Message-ID: <oursmtp01UtI9dm5UxP00000cc2@oursmtp01.ourcompany.com>
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 06 Nov 2008 10:42:30.0193 (UTC) FILETIME=[5E39E210:01C93FFC]

----- end of message received by me -----

When the application sends the same message to external email addresses, the data is correctly treated as an attachment.

This makes me think there is something wrong with our exchange set up.

Does anyone have any clues as to what is going on here ?

Our email server is Exchange 2003 SP2, mail client is outlook 2003 SP3

 

[danielwestendorf]

What does the email look like when you view it in OWA? Does it show it as an attachment or as content of the email?

It may be that Outlook is trying to display the attachment inline instead of just an attachment?

dw

 

[rhmoore]

in OWA it looks exactly the same as in outlook 2003. The attachment is included in the message body.

 

[danielwestendorf]

Can you attach the CVS file manually to an email from an email app like Outlook or OWA and send it to yourself? Does it look the same or different?

If attaches the file correctly I would point blame at the application sending the emails to Exchange, not on Exchange itself. From the looks of your first post it looks like the developer of the application knows that some email clients won't understand the attachment the way they encoded it.

 

[rhmoore]

Everything else about our email system functions correctly. ( so far as I can tell ). The system has been in and working for several years.

I to think it is related to the new application, because it is the only thing that has changed.

What confuses me massivley is that when our mail servers forward the messages to external email systems, even exchange 2003, the messages are fine.

 

[rhmoore]

Having delved into the depths of packet capture on the inbound and outbound interfaces of the mail servers, it seems that the problem is carriage returns or rather the lack of them.

The inbound traffic from the application only has linefeed at the end of each line. Traffic to exrernal mailboxes has carriage returns all over the place as well. Evidently, our exchange server changes the message before forwarding it on to external systems.

I got the application developers to send me the source code and found some similar PL/SQL examples on Google.

Voila ! the example code always has crlf at the end of the lines being written to the mail server. The application code only has lf.

The developers are changing their code as we speak. I am waiting for the test emails to arrive even now.

 

[danielwestendorf]

Great to hear that the problem isn't with Exchange as we thought. Too bad you had to do all the leg work for the developers though

I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.

 

[rhmoore]

Carriage returns it was !!

I am a network jockey in real life so it was quite fun getting a difficult application problem, even if it was not of our making.

Thanks for you help and ideas.