bradber
asked on
Exchange 2003 sending messages with BAD HEADER and MIME ERRORs
Hi,
I am really hoping someone can help me track down the cause of email messages arriving without anything in the message body. The subject lines are filled in but the message body is blank. We have a handful of users who are intermittently experiencing the problem. Most of the time things work fine but occasionally they send something and it arrives with blank messages.
We are running Exchange 2003, SP2 on Windows 2003 SP1. The clients are MS OUtlook 2003 SP2. We recently went to the Office Updates website and ran all updates on the client but the problem persists.
Our network engineers have looked into it and they say "something between your clients and your mail server is mishandling or even truncating messages."
Here is an example of errors found by using GREP:
Feb 26 08:42:08 sr-6-int amavis[20187]: (20187-19) BAD HEADER from <mary@place.net>: MIME error: error: part did not end with expected boundary
The engineers mentioned that BAD HEADERS can happen if the system is trying to squeeze 8 bits into a 7 bit format. I found the following info on Google:
"Email, however, is a 7-bit (or text) medium, preventing the transfer of 8-bit data. UUencoding compensates for this restriction by converting 8-bit data to 7-bit data. UUencode accomplishes this by joining all of the file's bits together into a single stream, and then dividing the stream into 7-bit chunks. ..."
Although we may be closing in on the cause of the problem, I still don't know how to fix it. This is an urgent issue because our director is the one who is experiencing the most frequent problems with this and it has been going on for a few weeks. Any help in tracking this down and fixing this would be greatly appreciated!
bb
I am really hoping someone can help me track down the cause of email messages arriving without anything in the message body. The subject lines are filled in but the message body is blank. We have a handful of users who are intermittently experiencing the problem. Most of the time things work fine but occasionally they send something and it arrives with blank messages.
We are running Exchange 2003, SP2 on Windows 2003 SP1. The clients are MS OUtlook 2003 SP2. We recently went to the Office Updates website and ran all updates on the client but the problem persists.
Our network engineers have looked into it and they say "something between your clients and your mail server is mishandling or even truncating messages."
Here is an example of errors found by using GREP:
Feb 26 08:42:08 sr-6-int amavis[20187]: (20187-19) BAD HEADER from <mary@place.net>: MIME error: error: part did not end with expected boundary
The engineers mentioned that BAD HEADERS can happen if the system is trying to squeeze 8 bits into a 7 bit format. I found the following info on Google:
"Email, however, is a 7-bit (or text) medium, preventing the transfer of 8-bit data. UUencoding compensates for this restriction by converting 8-bit data to 7-bit data. UUencode accomplishes this by joining all of the file's bits together into a single stream, and then dividing the stream into 7-bit chunks. ..."
Although we may be closing in on the cause of the problem, I still don't know how to fix it. This is an urgent issue because our director is the one who is experiencing the most frequent problems with this and it has been going on for a few weeks. Any help in tracking this down and fixing this would be greatly appreciated!
bb
Last Comment
ASKER
We are running Symantec Mail Security for Exchange. Have you heard of any similar issues with that?
bb
bb
Symantec you say?
There is only one thing I do with Symantec products. Start, Control Panel, Add Remove Programs. Choose the Symantec AV and select remove and then yes to all prompts. I find the servers work much better that way.
The most problematic AV software for Exchange is Symantec's. If you cannot replace it with something else, then you may find that removing it, rebooting the machine and then reinstalling it will fix the problem. Disabling it is not enough due tot he way it hooks in to the application.
Simon.
There is only one thing I do with Symantec products. Start, Control Panel, Add Remove Programs. Choose the Symantec AV and select remove and then yes to all prompts. I find the servers work much better that way.
The most problematic AV software for Exchange is Symantec's. If you cannot replace it with something else, then you may find that removing it, rebooting the machine and then reinstalling it will fix the problem. Disabling it is not enough due tot he way it hooks in to the application.
Simon.
ASKER
Hi Simon,
Thanks for your comments. I have experienced problems with Symantec products , especially the older ones, but removing the Symantec product is not an option, unless there is a way to verify that this is actually the root of the problem. Do you know of any way to conclusively demonstrate that Symantec is causing this?
Brad
Thanks for your comments. I have experienced problems with Symantec products , especially the older ones, but removing the Symantec product is not an option, unless there is a way to verify that this is actually the root of the problem. Do you know of any way to conclusively demonstrate that Symantec is causing this?
Brad
The only way to prove it is to remove it. Due to the way that they integrate with Exchange disabling the product doesn't prove anything - you have to remove it and reboot so that the hooks are removed.
Simon.
Simon.
ASKER
It turns out that the problem was caused by the disclaimer software we were running on the Exchange server.
ASKER
That sounds good. Please do close it. Thanks for your assistance with this. It looked to me like the only way to close it was to award the points but the answer was not correct. I would like to split hte points 50/50 with the two respondents to the other version of the duplicate question.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
THIS SOLUTION IS ONLY AVAILABLE TO MEMBERS.
View this solution by signing up for a free trial.
Members can start a 7-Day free trial and enjoy unlimited access to the platform.
Exchange
Exchange is the server side of a collaborative application product that is part of the Microsoft Server infrastructure. Exchange's major features include email, calendaring, contacts and tasks, support for mobile and web-based access to information, and support for data storage.
213K
Questions
--
Followers
--
Top Experts
Get a personalized solution from industry experts
TRUSTED BY
Simon.