[Evolution] Evolution + GPG + MailScanner = Bad Juju...

[Julian Field]

I have posted this problem to the maintainer of the MIME-tools module, 
which MailScanner uses to manage the MIME attachments in messages. It 
appears that it output \n instead or \r\n which it should, according to 
RFC2822.

I will let you know what I hear from him. Hopefully he comes back with 
something useful :-)

Michael H. Warfield wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-01-26 at 15:44 -0500, Jeffrey Stedfast wrote:
>   
>> On Thu, 2006-01-26 at 15:00 -0500, Michael H. Warfield wrote:
>>     
>>> Ok all,
>>>
>>> 	I'm cross posting this to both Evolution and MailScanner because I can
>>> already predict the finger pointing that's naturally going to result.
>>>
>>> 	A few months ago, someone brought it to my attention that my GPG
>>> signatures (messages signed only, not encrypted) where suddenly turning
>>> up "bad".  The signature on this message will probably be "bad".  It
>>> took some major head scratching to figure out what changed, what the
>>> parameters where, and what the hell was happening but I think I've got
>>> in narrowed down to some poor behavior on the part of BOTH Evolution AND
>>> MailScanner (or a component of MailScanner - not sure).
>>>
>>> 	It seems to have initially broken with an upgrade to MailScanner.  I
>>> think upgrading to 4.47.4-2 or there abouts might have been the
>>> triggering event, but I don't remember what I was running on that server
>>> prior to that.  Before then, all my signatures GPG signatures were good.
>>> After, they were bad.  If I turn off MailScanner on my server, the
>>> signatures are good.  I have accounts on several servers and the
>>> signatures are bad if I forward mail through one running a recent
>>> version of MailScanner.  I just upgraded one of my servers to 4.50.5-12
>>> and now I've got bad signatures through that server as well (I wasn't
>>> running MailScanner on that one before).
>>>
>>> 	But, that doesn't get Evolution off the hook.  It's only happening for
>>> messages that I'm composing in Evolution!  If I compose them in Mutt or
>>> vi a text file and send it, everything is fine.  Also, my saved copies
>>> in the Evolution sent box is fine.
>>>
>>> 	Sooo...  I compare what was saved in the "sent" box with what was
>>> received with a bad signature...  What was the difference?  Carriage
>>> Returns!  Evolution is terminating lines with CR-LF when composing a
>>> message.  MailScanner is removing the CR and leaving the LF.
>>> Apparently, Evolution called gpg in binary mode to create the signature.
>>> Modifying even the line termination then breaks the signature.
>>>
>>> 	No other mailer I use generates the DOS/Windows line termination, they
>>> all end lines with *NIX convention of LF only (no I haven't tried
>>> ThunderBird or KMail or other GUI client as yet).
>>>
>>> 	1) Why must we be adding extraneous CR on text messages?  Is this
>>> REALLY necessary?
>>>       
>> Yes. From rfc3156:
>>
>>    When the OpenPGP digital signature is generated:
>>
>>    (1)   The data to be signed MUST first be converted to its content-
>>          type specific canonical form.  For text/plain, this means
>>          conversion to an appropriate character set and conversion of
>>          line endings to the canonical <CR><LF> sequence.
>>     
>
>   
>> This is what Evolution does.
>>     
>
> 	Ok...  I'll concede that point.  Then what about the signing mode, text
> vs binary.  We're still broken here.
>
>   
>> -- 
>> Jeffrey Stedfast
>> Evolution Hacker - Novell, Inc.
>> fejj at ximian.com  - www.novell.com
>>     
>
> 	Mike
>   

-- 
Julian Field
www.MailScanner.info
Buy the MailScanner book at www.MailScanner.info/store
Professional Support Services at www.MailScanner.biz
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