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comp.mail.mime meta-FAQ: Help for MIME problems

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MIME FAQ maintainer

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Aug 8, 1997, 3:00:00 AM8/8/97

Archive-Name: mail/mime-faq/mime0
Version: $Id: mime0,v 1.10 1997/02/08 00:32:20 jsweet Rel $
Posting-Frequency: monthly
X-Comment: since this is a meta-FAQ, and not part of the FAQ,
the archive-name is in a separate name space (mime0 instead of
part0).

--
=======================
comp.mail.mime meta-FAQ
=======================
Help for MIME problems
~~~~~~
--

Contents
~~~~~~~~
1) Explanation
2) About the MIME FAQ
3) Conventions
4) Sample Problem Scenarios
5) Where else to find the MIME FAQ

1) Explanation
--------------
This is the comp.mail.mime meta-FAQ. It's for those who have
unusually bad problems in dealing with MIME, and thus are unable to
read the comp.mail.mime FAQ articles, even though they're essentially
plain text.

This meta-FAQ also offers some general help for those who have
various kinds of problems reading MIME messages.

Please note:

Questions about mail systems, how to decode MIME parts on your
computer, and other such issues, if not already answered in the
FAQ, should be posted to comp.mail.mime or to the info-mime mailing
list.

Correspondence sent to the MIME FAQ maintainer primarily should
address information in the MIME FAQ---corrections, additions, or
suggestions for improvement.

Also: neither the MIME meta-FAQ nor the MIME FAQ are intended to solve
every possible problem that you might have with your mail system. If
you have general difficulties with your mail system, difficulties that
are _not_ specific to MIME, you should consider the possibility that a
more correct forum for your questions lies elsewhere, such as any of
these newsgroups:

comp.mail.elm comp.mail.pine
comp.mail.eudora.mac comp.mail.sendmail
comp.mail.eudora.ms-windows comp.mail.zmail
comp.mail.mh
comp.mail.misc
comp.mail.mush

2) About the MIME FAQ
---------------------
The comp.mail.mime FAQ itself, aka the MIME FAQ, attempts to answer
frequently asked questions about MIME, the multipurpose and
multi-media standard for Internet mail.

The MIME FAQ is divided into nine parts, using the MIME type
"message/partial". That usually means nothing to MIME-challenged news
readers and mail user agents, which is usually just fine. The MIME
FAQ is really just like an ordinary multipart FAQ---it uses plain
US-ASCII text and can be read like any other ordinary USENET article.

So ordinarily, the MIME FAQ is rendered as ordinary plain-text news or
mail, which is fine. However, with mis-installed, incomplete, or
broken software, there are sometimes special problems encountered with
MIME messages. While this meta-FAQ can't deal with all possible
problems, this meta-FAQ does enumerate some general scenarios that may
help you to understand whatever difficulties you're having.

Once again, for emphasis: the MIME FAQ is really just plain US-ASCII
text. You should be able to read it one way or another. The best
way, of course, is to get yourself some _working_ MIME-capable
software. The MIME FAQ is a good source of information for finding
such software---assuming that you're able to read the MIME FAQ!

If not, read on...
--

3) Conventions
--------------
In this note, pointers to resources available via the Internet, such
as references to FTPable goodies, appear in WWW URL format. URLs
beginning with "ftp:" refer to FTP sites. For example:

ftp://domain.name/path/to/package

Those with FTP access, but without WWW access, may treat such
references as follows:

1. Log into host domain.name using anonymous FTP
2. Look for /path/to/package

An FTP reference usually lists only the distribution site; please
try your nearest FTP archive first. Archie may be of some help
here.

URLs beginning with "http:" refer to WWW servers. URLs beginning
with "gopher:" refer to gopher servers.

Internet browsing tools, such as Mosaic, know about URLs.
--

4) Sample Problem Scenarios
---------------------------
If you have problems reading a message in MIME format, it might be for
any of the reasons presented in the scenarios below. In the case of
the MIME FAQ in particular, Scenario 7 may be especially meaningful.

Scenario 1:

You have mis-installed, incomplete, or broken software, and it
absolutely refuses to deal properly with a MIME message of any sort.

You're not necessarily entirely out of luck. Your choices are to fix
or to replace your software. There are many options available for
doing this, some of which are covered in the scenarios that follow.

To overcome the immediate problem, you might try to bypass your
software entirely, and look at the message in its "raw" state.

To read a raw message, save the message to a text file any way you
can, and use your favorite text editor (emacs, vi, or whatever) to
read the text file.

Scenario 2:

Your mail system outsmarted itself--it can handle some MIME stuff,
but not whatever it is you received.

For this, you'll either need a smarter mail system, or you'll need to
tell the mail system how to handle whatever's in the message, or
you'll need to defeat the mail system entirely, and look at the
message in its "raw" state, as described in Scenario 1. Scenario 4,
below, may offer some help too.

Scenario 3:

You received a "MIME-like" message that's almost, but not quite,
entirely unlike a real MIME message. It looks similar enough to a
real MIME message that it breaks your mail software. The SunOS
"mailtool" is notorious for sending such MIME-like messages. Early
versions of Netscape (1.0? --aka "Mozilla") are also thought to be
guilty of this.

Conversion tools do exist for certain situations, e.g. sun2mime or
sun-to-mime. Some work, some don't. Whatever you find, it's probably
worth a try. Otherwise, you'll either have to read the message with
the same mail program that generated such a thing, or content yourself
with the raw message.

[ Steinar Bang <s...@metis.no> 2-Feb-1996 ]

Q: How to make the Solaris [>=2.4?] OW Mailtool send attachments
using MIME?

A: Set "send rfc" in your .mailrc.

Scenario 4:

Your mail system doesn't understand MIME stuff at all.

For this, you must either content yourself with the "raw" message, or
you can try to track down some tools to help you. From John Gardiner
Myers <jg...@CMU.EDU>, we have this advice:

A minimalist MIME-reading program, munpack, is available from
this URL:

ftp://ftp.andrew.cmu.edu/pub/mpack/

(i.e. use anonymous FTP to site ftp.andrew.cmu.edu, and look
in the directory /pub/mpack.)

The munpack program reads MIME messages and writes the decoded
parts out to files. Versions are available for Unix, MS-DOS,
Macintosh, and Amiga platforms.

In short, munpack is the MIME equivalent of uudecode/binhex.

{ See appendix B.3 of the MIME FAQ for additional information
about the mpack tool suite. }

To decode a MIME message, first save it to a text file. If
possible, save it with all headers included. Munpack can decode
some MIME files when the headers are missing or incomplete, other
files it cannot decode without having the information in the
headers. In general, messages which have a statement at the
beginning that they are in MIME format can be decoded without the
headers. Messages which have been split into multiple parts
generally require all headers in order to be reassembled and
decoded.

Some LAN-based mail systems and some mail providers (including
America Online, as of the writing of this document) place the mail
headers at the bottom of the message, instead of at the top of the
message. If you are having problems decoding a MIME message on
such a system, you need to convert the mail back into the standard
format by removing the system's nonstandard headers and moving the
standard Internet headers to the top of the message (separated
from the message body with a blank line).

There must be exactly one message per file. Munpack cannot deal
with multiple messages in a single file, to decode things
correctly it must know when one message ends and the next one
begins.