Discussion:
Alpine and Save
Riku Virtanen
2008-03-05 20:13:25 UTC
Permalink
Hi all,

I installed Alpine into a XP system.
However, both Pine and Alpine says error with attachment saving process.
Pine says "Formatting error: Internal base64 decode error: error writing
attachment to

Alpine says:
Formatting error: partial fetch failed! Error writing attachment to
c:\file.doc

Please, can anyone advise how I could solve the problem?

Best wishes,
Riku
Mark Crispin
2008-03-05 20:24:57 UTC
Permalink
Those errors indicate a badly-formed MIME message and/or an IMAP server
bug.

What IMAP server implementation are you using?
Post by Riku Virtanen
Hi all,
I installed Alpine into a XP system.
However, both Pine and Alpine says error with attachment saving process.
Pine says "Formatting error: Internal base64 decode error: error writing
attachment to
Formatting error: partial fetch failed! Error writing attachment to
c:\file.doc
Please, can anyone advise how I could solve the problem?
Best wishes,
Riku
_______________________________________________
Pine-info mailing list
http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/pine-info
-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
Riku Virtanen
2008-03-07 05:34:39 UTC
Permalink
Hi,

How can I see what IMAP implementation is?
Other programs, for example Mozilla, transfer attachments properly.
This bug has been a big problem some years. My friends in Finland were not
able to solve it.
Riku

On Wed, 5 Mar 2008, Mark Crispin wrote:

Those errors indicate a badly-formed MIME message and/or an IMAP server bug.

What IMAP server implementation are you using?
Post by Riku Virtanen
Hi all,
I installed Alpine into a XP system.
However, both Pine and Alpine says error with attachment saving process.
Pine says "Formatting error: Internal base64 decode error: error writing
attachment to
Formatting error: partial fetch failed! Error writing attachment to
c:\file.doc
Please, can anyone advise how I could solve the problem?
Best wishes,
Riku
_______________________________________________
Pine-info mailing list
http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/pine-info
-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
Mark Crispin
2008-03-07 07:55:23 UTC
Permalink
Post by Riku Virtanen
How can I see what IMAP implementation is?
What is the host name of your IMAP server? I may be able to find out from
the startup banner.
Post by Riku Virtanen
Other programs, for example Mozilla, transfer attachments properly.
This bug has been a big problem some years. My friends in Finland were not
able to solve it.
There are two possibilities:

(1) The message is corrupt.

The most common problem is BASE64 or QUOTED-PRINTABLE content that is sent
without a MULTIPART wrapping it. The problem is that many mail gateways
(such as Yahoo) add little advertising messages at the bottom of the
message, and there is nothing to prevent those messages from being misread
as part of the BASE64 or QUOTED-PRINTABLE encoded content.

Mozilla does not care if there are data errors or not. It just ignores
them, and hopes that something useful results.

(2) The IMAP server does not do partial fetching properly.

Pine and Alpine use IMAP commands to retrieve part of a message. This
depends upon correct implementation of that facility by the IMAP server.
Some poorly-written IMAP servers do not implement it correct. Of course,
there is no problem with good-quality IMAP servers, such as UW, Cyrus, and
Dovecot.

Mozilla does not do partial fetching. It just downloads the entire
message, unconditionally, and then works on the local disk copy. So if
someone sends you a 100MB spam, you have to wait while it s-l-o-w-l-y
downloads it to your hard drive.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
Riku Virtanen
2008-03-07 10:05:46 UTC
Permalink
The inbox-path is
{imap.saunalahti.fi/user=rvi-1}inbox
I tried to save about my another account, Gmail-account which is also
connected to my Pc-Pine, and it works properly.
The problem relates to imap.saunalahti.fi / pop.saunalahti.fi server.
Best wishes
Riku
Post by Riku Virtanen
How can I see what IMAP implementation is?
What is the host name of your IMAP server? I may be able to find out from the
startup banner.
Post by Riku Virtanen
Other programs, for example Mozilla, transfer attachments properly.
This bug has been a big problem some years. My friends in Finland were not
able to solve it.
There are two possibilities:

(1) The message is corrupt.

The most common problem is BASE64 or QUOTED-PRINTABLE content that is sent
without a MULTIPART wrapping it. The problem is that many mail gateways (such
as Yahoo) add little advertising messages at the bottom of the message, and
there is nothing to prevent those messages from being misread as part of the
BASE64 or QUOTED-PRINTABLE encoded content.

Mozilla does not care if there are data errors or not. It just ignores them,
and hopes that something useful results.

(2) The IMAP server does not do partial fetching properly.

Pine and Alpine use IMAP commands to retrieve part of a message. This depends
upon correct implementation of that facility by the IMAP server. Some
poorly-written IMAP servers do not implement it correct. Of course, there is no
problem with good-quality IMAP servers, such as UW, Cyrus, and Dovecot.

Mozilla does not do partial fetching. It just downloads the entire message,
unconditionally, and then works on the local disk copy. So if someone sends you
a 100MB spam, you have to wait while it s-l-o-w-l-y downloads it to your hard
drive.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
Steve Hubert
2008-03-07 18:35:01 UTC
Permalink
Post by Mark Crispin
(1) The message is corrupt.
The next release of alpine will ask if you want to keep saving even though
there were errors in some cases. I don't know if that will help with this
problem.
Post by Mark Crispin
(2) The IMAP server does not do partial fetching properly.
Alpine has an option called "Prevent Partial Fetching" that you could try
to work around partial fetching problems.

Steve

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