MIME mangled digests

[Brendan O'Dea]

I have noticed that every so often the headers of this list end up
inheriting MIME cruft from one of the digest messages.

For example ``SAMBA digest 1438'' had headers of:

  Content-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.91.971001132840.4617H at cb1-gw.cb1.com>
  Content-Type: MULTIPART/MIXED; BOUNDARY="0-525257425-875708609=:4617"

with two boundaries, the first after the headers of the last message
and the other (closing) following that message.

The effect for MIME-aware MUAs is of a multipart message containing
one part (the last message) as all twelve preceeding messages are
treated as preamble to be ignored.

The Mailing list management software FAQ <ftp://ftp.uu.net/usenet/
news.answers/mail/list-admin/software-faq> notes that

  ``ListProc 6.0c has a problem with MIME no matter how it's
    configured:  it passes only the first line of a "MIME-Version:"
    header, thus trashing complex MIME documents.  CREN ListProc fixes
    this.''

While I'm not sure exactly what circumstances trigger this behaviour,
it is probably not a good idea to post MIME multipart messages to the
list (although I realise that this is often done unwittingly).

Regards,
-- 
Brendan O'Dea                                        bod at compusol.com.au
Compusol Pty. Limited                  (NSW, Australia)  +61 2 9809 0133