Unreadable multipart MIME messages

Stephen Lee splee at PLEXIO.COM
Thu Jan 10 18:12:04 GMT 2002


Hi,

I am running MailScanner 3.02-1 and F-prot on a Trustix 1.5 / Exim 3.34
/ Perl 5.61 system (Trustix is hardened and leaner version of RedHat). I
have 2 issues:

1. Whenever check_mailscanner restarts via cron, it puts out the
following messages:

Commercial virus checker failed with real error: Can't run commercial
checker: Permission denied at /usr/local/MailScanner/bin/sweep.pl line
302.
Commercial virus checker failed with real error: Can't run commercial
disinfector: Permission denied at /usr/local/MailScanner/bin/sweep.pl
line 743.
Commercial virus checker failed with real error: Can't run commercial
checker: Permission denied at /usr/local/MailScanner/bin/sweep.pl line
302.
Undefined subroutine &main::DieLog called at
/usr/local/MailScanner/bin/mailscanner line 288.

It seems that check_mailscanner, or some code it is calling, is looking
for other AV scanners. This is a snippet of my mailscanner.conf:

Virus Scanner      = f-prot
Sweep              = /usr/local/MailScanner/bin/f-protwrapper
Minimum Code Status = beta

Is there switch I missed during configuration?

2. My second issue concerns unparsible messages. I have received a
couple of messages looking somthing like this:

The following e-mail messages were found to have viruses in them:

   Sender: <user at abc.com>
Recipient: userx at efg.com
  Subject:
MessageID: 16Oaa0-0003o3-00
   Report: Could not parse message 16Oaa0-0003o3-00
--
MailScanner
Email Virus Scanner

They are multipart MIME messages containing text, html and a word
document and is generated in Outlook Express. The mail are coming from
legit senders. From the report sent by MailScanner to the postmaster, I
am guessing it can't parse and disect the multipart MIME components. If
there was a virus in the Word document, wouldn't that generate a
different message?

I would appreciate any comments or suggestions on fixing the 2 problems,
especially the second one.

Thanks,
Stephen



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