Exchange 2k 8 bit mime issues

[allanh1]

Hi,

We have an exchange 2k email system in palce and are having issues send ing emails to specific external companies. The emails to certain placces are fine but if we send them to people using Exchange 5.5 or Groupwise the emails either dont get there or they appear corrupt when arriving at the user, This happens whether there is an attachment or not? other times the email will arrive with the subject but no body to the email. The default setting in outlook is to use Rich text format, But this is changed to plain text at the Server side for external communications.

Is this an issue wit the 8 bitmime encoding in windows 2k?

Has any one seen this before??
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[xmsre]

Exchange negociates to select the proper mime version. Some versions of sendmail improperly advertize support for 8 bit mime, but this is rare. A more common occurance is when it's downgraded to 7 bit mime when UTF-7 or ISO-2022-jp character set is used. There's a fix for that.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;830409

 

[allanh1]

thanks for that, the character set is all ok, we have disabled the 8 bit mime in windows 2000 smtp service as well as an attempt to fix this, microsoft have been looking at it for four weeks and cant come up with an answer.........

its a really strange occurance, the email is sent from exchange, goes through the smtp server, through mailsweeper, through the send mail server through message labs into the big wide world. We also have a lotus notes server (were moving away from it!!!) and the emails from that go through the mail sweeper, through the send mail and then through the message labs to the big wide world but they seem to turn out ok.

The only other thing i can think of is that by group policy Rich text format is turned on in Outlook 2002, but the servers are configured to send MIME as plain text only, and teh Exchange rich text formats are set to never use??? would this make a difference??

Thanks fr the help!!!!

 

[xmsre]

Anything going through gnoats is suspect.

Anyway, If I have this straight, it goes from Exchange to Windows 2000 smtp [where conversion to 7 bit mime is forced], through mailsweeper [where it may or may not get converted back], through sendmail [which has known issues with 8 bit mime], through messagelabs, then out.

First, turn the 8 bit mime back on the smtp server. Next, check your version of sendmail. Some versions of sendmail improperly advertise support for 8 bit mime. 8.8 or so. If you're running this version, you'll want to update; it's also a big gaping security hole [buffer overun]. In 8.12.1, you have issues like you are experiencing if you have EightBitMode=strict set in sendmail.cf. I'd bet it's a sendmail configuration issue, which is why MS can't figure it out.

 

[allanh1]

thanks thats a great help, as i dont know alot about send mail, the eighbitmode=strict what should that be set to to allow it to send less than 8 bit, or to stop the error from occouring??

 

[allanh1]

right i have looked into this a bit more, I have a copy of the sendmail.cf file and have looked for the eightbitmode= function, this is # out at the beginning which i assume means that it is not running 8 bit support, therefore we need to turn that on by removing the hash and then set eightbitmode=mimefy ??

can anyone confirm that for me??

 

[allanh1]

Hello,

I dont know if any one can help, We have tried all of the above and are still getting problems when we send emails outside of our company.

Email goes from Outlook XP - Exchange 2000 servers - Exchagne SMTP Servers - Sendmail Servers - Mail sweeper Servers - Message Labs

When the user at the other end (typically a 5.5 or groupwise user) recieves the email the body text is in an attachment beginning A(something) usually. if the user then clicks reply to the email the text will then appear. Its all to do with RTF formats but we seem to be going in circles trying to find the answer. Outlook XP is set to send in RTF format, The exchange server is set for mime to provide message body as plain text, With Apply COntent to Non-mapi clients ticked, and the never use option set for the Exchange Rich Text Format selected.

Any ideas??? Any help would be greatly appreciated