Get RT to send mail 7-bit encoded?

Hi,

Last week I had to debug an ugly scenario where one person received mangled
emails from RT (truncated text, botched 8-bit characters (Umlauts)).

It turned out that this only affected mail to a certain ISP, and only when
the mail contained larger attachments as well (and not just text).
This is definitly not an RT bug, the mail was sent ok. My current hypothesis
is that whenever the mail is routed through a virus filter at that ISP it
mangles the 8bit data.

So far, this is not RT’s fault. The only thing where my side could take the
blame is the fact that my MTA (exim) does not do 8bit → 7bit conversion when
the peer MTA does not advertize 8BITMIME capability. (which in this case the
ISP doesn’t.)

This leaves me with three possibilities to fix this on my side:

  1. Junk exim and use a MTA which can do 8bit->7bit conversion
    (e.g. sendmail or postfix)

  2. Route outgoing email via a sendmail or postfix box.

  3. Convince RT to generate 7bit emails.

Looking through the code of RT 3.4 I don’t see how I could do 3).

Did I miss anything here?

/ol
/ Otmar Lendl lendl@nic.at, T: +43 1 5056416 - 33, F: - 933
| nic.at Internet Verwaltungs- und Betriebsgesellschaft m.b.H |
\ http://www.nic.at/ LG Salzburg, FN 172568b, Sitz: Salzburg /

Don’t know about the feasibility of (3) but speaking as a past-life
sitewide postmaster and email admin I’d suggest going with (1) or
possibly (2). An MTA that doesn’t check on what the receiving MTA will
accept is not an animal for which I’d be willing to take on the care and
feeding.

Cheers,
	OleOn Mon, 2007-10-01 at 13:28 +0200, Otmar Lendl wrote:
  1. Junk exim and use a MTA which can do 8bit->7bit conversion
    (e.g. sendmail or postfix)

  2. Route outgoing email via a sendmail or postfix box.
    /Ole Craig
    Security Engineer
    Team lead, customer support

ocraig@stillsecure.com
303-381-3802 main support line
303-381-3824 my voicemail
303-381-3880 fax

www.stillsecure.com