Re: [fetchmail-devel] RFC: Workaround for comcast bug - 6.3.X or 6.4.X stuff?

[Rob M. <rob...@gm...>]

On 04/01/06, Matthias Andree <mat...@gm...> wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> I prepared this patch in response to the many comcast ("Maillennium")
> problem reports all across the net, which blacklists the POP3 TOP
> command on servers that greet us with "Maillennium POP3/PROXY server".
>
> I'm asking for comments: do others think avoiding the truncation of
> messages after approx. 82 kB justifies this incompatible bug fix (it is
> incompatible because it marks messages read on the server)?

I think that, assuming the warning is logged every time fetchmail
starts up (ie once in daemon mode, every time when run by hand), then
this isn't a bad thing.

I'm in favour of fetchmail being as flexible as it can when dealing
with remote POP/IMAP/whatever servers.  If it becomes necessary to
build a table of cludges to cope with badly broken servers, just so
that fetchmail isn't labelled as being incompatible (and the usual
"well it works under Windows, so it must be a Linux thing"), I think
it's a small price to pay.

Of course, I'm not the one doing the coding, so I don't have to suffer
the mess that'll result :)

> Should we apply this patch on the 6.3.X branch or should it wait for
> 6.4.X?

I'd probably go with 6.3.X - it could be argued that this is a bug
fix.  I suppose it depends on when 6.4.0 is likely.  If it's going to
be a long time off then it's probably worth adding the patch now.  If
however 6.4.0 is likely in the next 6 months or so, then I'd say
waiting to 6.4.0 shouldn't be too much of a pain.

> I also found out that many people try to ask on random forums,
> vendor-forums such as SUSE, independent forums, rather than asking on
> the official fetchmail support lists, and apparently without checking
> the FAQ first.  How do users procure information where to post their
> question?

I think they pull them from their <censored>.  Sadly fetchmail is far
from unique here, I've seen behaviour like this many times.

> (I'd like to post a prominent notice referring them to our FAQ and lists.)

How about including the URLs of the FAQ and the lists in the output of
the help output, and the FAQ URL above the output of "fetchmail -v -v"
and above?

Probably wouldn't hurt to include the URL for the FAQ in the man page,
at the top (yes, the fetchmail page URL is at the bottom, but who
reads that far?).  Also at the bottom of the list footer?  Ram it in
their faces :-)

Finally, I think that as long as ESRs page exists and makes no
reference to the new project, there are going to be problems.

--
                 Please keep list traffic on the list.
Rob MacGregor
      Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he
        doesn't become a monster.                  Friedrich Nietzsche