[Mimedefang] problems processing mails with many attachements

[David F. Skoll]

On Sun, 6 Oct 2002, Dirk Mueller wrote:

> I keep receiving a looping bounce on my mimedefang-enabled mail gate which
> has meanwhile about 1200 mail parts. its about 2.5MB in size.

This mail will never make it through.  MIME::Tools, which decodes the
MIME messages, cannot handle a message with that many parts.

I suggest you use the -R and -M options to mimedefang-multiplexor to limit
the memory which the filter processes can use.  While this will not help
with this particular mail, it will at least prevent your machine from
being killed.

Using "-R 30000 -M 30000" should prevent the machine from dying while still
allowing plenty of room for legitimate messages.

> Can I simply not decode mails with 
> so many attachements?

Not without changing the MIMEDefang code itself.  It always tries to decode
messages.

> can I make sendmail reject mails which timeout in the 
> milter with a 5xx code so it doesn't come back?

I will consider this option for the next release.

Regards,

David.