email sent via dma is received in plain text without attachments

[Dale Scott]

Hi all, I'm hosting webERP, a PHP business web app, on FreeBSD 14.2 using PHP 8.2. webERP uses phpMail to send HTML-format emails with PDF attachments. The server uses dma to send email to the SMTP2GO smarthost for delivery. The trouble is that received email is text format instead of HTML and missing the expected PDF attachment.

Any idea what could be causing this or what to do about it?

Another developer on the webERP project is using a Linux shared hosting service and any sent emails are received in HTML format with expected PDF attachments. This seems to show webERP is doing the right thing although I expect there are still lots of differences in our environments, and things work on a Linux server in spite of issues while FreeBSD may be more pedantic about correctness.

Cheers,
Dale

--

Dale Scott

Engineering Manager | SME Business Software Support
Principal Consultant, dalescott.net

LinkedIn Profile, Dale Scott, P.Eng.

[Marco Moock]

Am 21.08.2025 um 22:08:13 Uhr schrieb Dale Scott:

> Hi all, I'm hosting webERP, a PHP business web app, on FreeBSD 14.2
> using PHP 8.2. webERP uses phpMail to send HTML-format emails with
> PDF attachments. The server uses dma to send email to the SMTP2GO
> smarthost for delivery. The trouble is that received email is text
> format instead of HTML and missing the expected PDF attachment.

Can you check if the mail is being sent TO dma with the attachment and
HTML part?

Maybe dma provides a hidden BCC option to send it to a local test
mailbox to verify.

--
Gruß
Marco

Send unsolicited bulk mail to 1755806...@cartoonies.org

[John Levine]

According to Dale Scott <da...@dalescott.net>:
>-=-=-=-=-=-

>
>Hi all, I'm hosting webERP, a PHP business web app, on FreeBSD 14.2
>using PHP 8.2. webERP uses phpMail to send HTML-format emails with PDF
>attachments. The server uses dma to send email to the SMTP2GO smarthost
>for delivery. The trouble is that received email is text format instead
>of HTML and missing the expected PDF attachment.
>
>Any idea what could be causing this or what to do about it?

DMA does not do anything clever to the mail it handles. If you're not
getting the HTML and attachments, that's because the PHP script isn't
adding them. I suppose it's theoretically possible that SMTP2GO is
stripping them but that seems rather unlikely.

When you say phpMail, do you mean the PHPMailer library, the built in
PHP mail() function, or something else?

[Dale Scott]

On 2025-08-22 09:48, John Levine wrote:

> According to Dale Scott <da...@dalescott.net>:
>
>> -=-=-=-=-=-
>>
>> Hi all, I'm hosting webERP, a PHP business web app, on FreeBSD 14.2
>> using PHP 8.2. webERP uses phpMail to send HTML-format emails with PDF
>> attachments. The server uses dma to send email to the SMTP2GO
>> smarthost
>> for delivery. The trouble is that received email is text format
>> instead
>> of HTML and missing the expected PDF attachment.
>>
>> Any idea what could be causing this or what to do about it?
>
> DMA does not do anything clever to the mail it handles. If you're not
> getting the HTML and attachments, that's because the PHP script isn't
> adding them. I suppose it's theoretically possible that SMTP2GO is
> stripping them but that seems rather unlikely.
>

Thanks for your help John.

> When you say phpMail, do you mean the PHPMailer library, the built in
> PHP mail() function, or something else?

webERP uses PHPMailer which in the absence of a config flat specifiying
an SMTP server (aka smarthost), the php mail() function will be used,
passing the mail to the local MTA, which in my case is dma. The other
developer does not know the details of what is hosting services provider
is doing, only that mail is delivered and he is not specifying an SMTP
server in webERP.

Since the other developer can receive email with attachments, I think I
can assume webERP is correctly generating the mail. It seems possible
dma is removing the multi-part content due to some error that is ignored
on Linux.

My thinking is that I need to:

Check dma log (if one exists)
Check SMTP2GO logs
Run dma so that it generates logging (if possible)

Cheers,
Dale

Fyi, here is "show original" for a recent email, which should have been
in HTML and should have had an attached PDF. It seems to my naieve eye
that there is no HTML or attachment, and since this works for the other
developer, I should be able to assume webERP is correctly generating the
mail. It seems possible dma is removing the multi-part content due to
some error that is ignored on Linux.


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[Dale Scott]

On 2025-08-21 23:42, Marco Moock wrote:

> Am 21.08.2025 um 22:08:13 Uhr schrieb Dale Scott:
>
>> Hi all, I'm hosting webERP, a PHP business web app, on FreeBSD 14.2
>> using PHP 8.2. webERP uses phpMail to send HTML-format emails with
>> PDF attachments. The server uses dma to send email to the SMTP2GO
>> smarthost for delivery. The trouble is that received email is text
>> format instead of HTML and missing the expected PDF attachment.
>
> Can you check if the mail is being sent TO dma with the attachment and
> HTML part?
>
> Maybe dma provides a hidden BCC option to send it to a local test
> mailbox to verify.

Thanks Marco. I agree, the first step is to confirm what dma gets and
what is done with it.

[fatty.merc...@aceecat.org]

On Fri, Aug 22, 2025 at 12:26:04PM -0600, Dale Scott wrote:

> webERP uses PHPMailer which in the absence of a config flat
> specifiying an SMTP server (aka smarthost), the php mail() function
> will be used, passing the mail to the local MTA, which in my case is
> dma.

This can mean one of two different things:

- run a SMTP dialog on 127.0.0.1:25 , OR

- fork & exec off the MTA (maybe directly as dma, maybe as /usr/sbin/sendmail)
and pipe the contents of the message to it.

I suspect this *could* make a difference, because there are grotty
details to get right regarding how to mark the end of the message, and
even LF vs CRLF line endings. You can blame this on "be liberal in
accepting".

Also various anti-spam techs come into mind; the header you quote
shows the message has failed DMARC, I suppose this could cause
a paranoid mainstream provider to drop all attachments.

--
Ian

[John R. Levine]

On Fri, 22 Aug 2025, Dale Scott wrote:
>> DMA does not do anything clever to the mail it handles. ..

> Since the other developer can receive email with attachments, I think I can
> assume webERP is correctly generating the mail.

I would wager money that's it isn't.

> It seems possible dma is
> removing the multi-part content due to some error that is ignored on Linux.

DMA is a very small program. I have read all the source code. It does
not look inside the messages and it most definitely does not take messages
apart or remove parts of them.

If I were you, I would look at your PHP setup to figure out what's wrong.
I'd look for mistakes in configuration files, or perhaps corrupted or
missing template files. Since it's a Unix system, you always need to look
at file ownership and permissions -- it might be files or directories that
exist but that the PHP user (probably www) can't read.

A good start would be to edit your php.ini to use the development
settings so PHP tells you when something goes wrong.

Regards,
John Levine, jo...@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly