Re: Bcc not working?

["Frank Crawford" <frank crawford emu id au>]

From: "Brian Stafford" <brian@stafford.uklinux.net>
To: "Frank Crawford" <frank@crawford.emu.id.au>
Cc: "Pawel Salek" <pawsa@theochem.kth.se>; "Thomas Maeder"
<maeder+balsa@glue.ch>; <balsa-list@gnome.org>
Sent: Monday, February 18, 2002 9:21 PM
Subject: Re: Bcc not working?


> On Mon, 18 February 09:01 Frank Crawford wrote:
>
> > I've seen the same problem.  It was fine with Balsa-1.2.3 and
libesmtp-0.8.4
> > (i.e. RedHat 7.2 standard) but appeared when I upgraded to Balsa-1.2.4
and
> > libesmtp-0.8.9 from the web site.  I don't know which part causes it.
>
> Seems the protocol traces would be useful then.  Does Bcc work correctly
when
> latest libesmtp (0.8.10p1) is used with Balsa-1.2.3 ?
>
> > Looking at libesmtp's web site, it seems to now be up to 0.8.10p1, but I
> > can't see any mention of any Bcc related problems.
>
> libESMTP does not implement the bcc behaviour.  That is part of balsa.

I can believe that, maybe I should have expanded my statement above to make
it clear that I suspect Balsa and not libESMTP, as I would expect any Bcc
problems to be found fairly quickly by basic testing of the library.

On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if it was missed in testing
Balsa, as it has a lot more function and feature that would need testing,
and may well suffer from an assumption that, if mailing works, then all
related functions should work.

> > > > Thanks. I tried this (with the libesmtp downloadable from
> > > > http://www.balsa.net), but it didn't help.
> > > >
> > > > How can I see the messages exchanged by Balsa and the SMTP server?
> > >
> > > Compile libbalsa/send.c with DEBUG defined. (CFLAGS=-DDEBUG
./configure
> > > <options> is sure-shot but probably overdoing).
> > >
> > > Basically, when Bcc is set, the message is being sent twice, first to
the
> > > primary recipients, and secondly to the Bcc recipients.
> >
> > What!  This is just plan wrong.
>
> So Where do you get your information?  Balsa's behaviour regarding Bcc: is
> correct.  Go and read the standard (RFC 2821).

You are correct that I am wrong, but it is not as clear cut as you imply.
The actual statement is that:

"bcc" use MAY
 find it helpful to send each blind copy as a separate message
 transaction containing only a single RCPT command.

Hence it is optional, and Balsa is the first MUA that I have seen implement
it this way.  In previous RFCs I don't believe it was explicitly stated, and
common usage put them all together, as I stated.

> >  I don't know what libesmtp does, but it
> > should just include the addresses in the envelop and not in the headers
of
> > the message.  Sending twice is a sure recipe for disaster, from crashes
> > cause only one and not the other going, through to different message ids
on
> > the two messages.
>
> Read the balsa-list archives.  This topic was discussed at length.
Frankly
> this sort of suggestion that either balsa or libesmtp fails to work
correctly
> when in fact they diligently implement the relevent standards is deeply
> offensive.

Firstly, given the reasons given in the RFC, it make sense to split the two
and I'm not going to try and go through the discussion again, however, IT IS
NOT WORKING in at least two cases reported.  So while the design may attempt
to implement the standard, there appears to be an error in the code to
implement it.  The problem is that in Balsa-1.2.4 it does not seem to send
mail to Bcc addresses at all.

As an aside, until you pointed out the clarification in the recent RFC I
would have found this implementation strange and if attempting to trace it
though MTA logs, would have been confused and listed it as a bug in Balsa.
All I'd propose to is an additional item in the FAQ mentioning the fact that
it implements Bcc in this fashion.

Frank