[Gllug] Unix Mailbox format / Exchange POP3 connector etc.

[Jake Jellinek]

Hi,

Can anyone help me find some sort of definition of the accepted/standard 
format of a Unix Mailbox? I've been through RFCs, FYIs, STDs, BCPs and 
various other IETF drafts etc as well as google searches, and so far not 
been very successful

Of course, I know what the format is (a number of man pages describe it for 
various mail software), but I was hoping to find it clearly defined 
somewhere because we have a customer who is telling us that Qmail is not 
rfc2822 compliant. (yeah right, Qmail not RFC complaint..)

The basic story is they are using something like Microsoft Exchange POP3 
Connector to pick up their POP3 e-mail (already delivered of course in 
Mailbox format) and then presumably resend/deliver it again within their 
own network.

It appears that it throws a wobbly because the first line of the delivered 
e-mail contains a from header without a colon. This of course is what we'd 
expect to see in a Mailbox format, afterall the mail has already been 
delivered so I would assume doesn't need to comply to rfc2822 anymore 
anyway.

I would think that this POP3 connector should strip off the first from 
line, but it doesn't and seems to get into a tiz.

Microsoft are telling him though that Qmail isn't being rfc2822 compliant 
and that the header should have a colon in it.

I have a hunch I could probably "fix" something at our end to strip the 
from line anyway, since we're using Maildirs and not Mailboxes anyway so 
the lines seems redundant, but I'd still like to make my point to the 
customer that this is a standard Unix format for e-mail and that POP3 
connector is a completely non-standard way of dealing with e-mail anyway.

I'm surprised though how hard it is to find a definitive source for the 
definition of a unix Mailbox.

Thanks for any help,

Jake.


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