Possible bug in mailutils

[Randy Scott]

Hi, I'd like to report what I believe is bug in mailutils.

For some time I've had a camera system that emails me an image file. The basic setup is a script that calls something like:

echo Motion detected - see http://cam1.example.com/camera | mail -s Test -A image.jpg -r "address@hidden" address@hidden

This sends an image from the camera along with a brief message which includes a link to the camera. This used to work fine; recently, however, after upgrading Linux versions the text of the message doesn't show up in the email.

What used to happen: when I view the raw text of an old message from back when it used to work correctly, the message looks something like this:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--2006454085-1551307724=:11737
Content-ID: <20190227164844.11737@cam1>
Content-Type: text/plain

Motion detected - see http://cam1.example.com/camera

--2006454085-1551307724=:11737
Content-ID: <20190227164844.11737.1@cam1>
Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name=image.jpg
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=image.jpg

/9j/4QDeRXhpZgAATU0AKgAAAAgACAEAAAQAAAABAAAEAAEBAAQAAAABAAACQAEQAAIAAAAJAAAA
bgEaAAUAAAABAAAAeAEbAAUAAAABAAAAgAEoAAMAAAABAAIAAAITAAMAAAABAAEAAIdpAAQAAAAB
AAAAiAAAAABCcm9hZGNvbQAA ...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What happens now: when I view the raw text of the message, I see something like this:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--2027169656-1581016592=:11969
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Disposition: attachment
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Content-ID: <20200206131632.11969.1@cam1>

Motion detected - see http://cam1.example.com/camera

--2027169656-1581016592=:11969
Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name="image.jpg"
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="/var/www/html/image.jpg"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-ID: <20200206131632.11969.1@cam1>

/9j/4QDeRXhpZgAATU0AKgAAAAgACAEAAAQAAAABAAAEAAEBAAQAAAABAAADAAEQAAIAAAAJAAAA
bgEaAAUAAAABAAAAeAEbAAUAAAABAAAAgAEoAAMAAAABAAIAAAITAAMAAAABAAEAAIdpAAQAAAAB
AAAAiAAAAABCcm9hZGNvbQA ...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think the line that I've highlighted in red above (3rd line - "Content-Disposition: attachment") is the problem. when I manually remove that line from the stored email on my server, everything appears correctly.

When this started: I think this may have changed in MailUtils 3.3. It was definitely working in Mailutils 3.1.1, but it does not work in the version that's in the current Raspbian Buster repository (which is Mailutils 3.5). I downloaded and compiled Mailutils 3.8, and it doesn't work right there either. I also tried 3.4 and 3.3 (didn't work) as well as 3.2 (did work).

I'm using Thunderbird as my mail reader. Other readers may handle this differently (in particular, Gmail seems to work around the problem).

Thanks - let me know if I'm doing something wrong or if I can provide more information.

ras