inews post failure

[Michael Stassen]

Bill,

I assume you are using mailpost.  If not, ignore me.

I had this same problem (with  INN 2.2.3).  Mail can have no subject,
but inews requires one.  My copy of mailpost sets a default subject at
line 128

  my $subject = "(NONE)";

but didn't use it.  The solution was to change this section (showing lines
190-193):

    if (/^Subject:\s*/sio) { 
        $subject = $'; 
        next; 
    } 

to this:

    if (/^Subject:\s*/sio) { 
        $subject = $' || $subject; 
        next; 
    } 

The only change is the added " || $subject" in line 191.  Now mail
messages with no subject become news posts with Subject: (NONE)

As for the "generic Unix mail utility" you used, I'm guessing it replaced
your empty subject with '(none)' in your tests.

Hope this helps.

Michael


On Tue, 23 Oct 2001, Bill Tangren wrote:

> 
> Hello,
> 
> I am using procmail to forward email that comes in from a help account on 
> our web site, to a news group. It works very well, except for one problem. 
> Some people are able to send email that has no Subject in the header. 
> Inews rejects these posts. The rejection message I get is what you see 
> below:
> 
> inews failed: Required "Subject" header is missing or empty. (Article not
> posted
> 
> I have tried to duplicate this by using the generic Unix mail utility,
> and my posts always show up with a '(none)' in the subject field, so I
> can't reproduce this problem. However, some people can and it *is* a
> problem.
> 
> Has anyone else seen this problem, and do they know how to fix it?
> 
> Bill Tangren
> 
> 

Michael Stassen
University Information Technology Services
Indiana University Bloomington
stassenm at indiana.edu