system mail

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Petrus de Calguarium <kwhiskerz@...> writes:

> 
> When I receive system mail, I read it on the command line with the 'mail'
program. It appears to be called
> Heirloom Mail version 12.4 7/29/08.
> 
> Now, as I scroll down, I see that the system mail is sent as:
> 
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ANSI_X3.4-1968"
> 
> However, my system is set up to use UTF-8. Why is this charset wrong, or not
respecting my system setting? How
> can I get it corrected?
> 
Hi,
I hope this explains both logwatch mail and interactive mail.

Formatting of mail (headers and body) by logwatch script (in Perl):
less /usr/share/logwatch/scripts/logwatch.pl 
...
my $report_finish = "\n ###################### Logwatch End ...
...
         #Add MIME
         ...
         if ( $outtype_html ) {
            $out_mime .= "Content-Type: text/html; charset=\"iso-8859-1\"\n\n";
         } else {
            $out_mime .= "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=\"iso-8859-1\"\n\n";
         }
         ...

This is an example of my logwatch mail:

>From root@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  Wed Jul 21 08:33:07 2010
Return-Path: <root@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2010 08:33:05 +0200
To: root@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: logwatch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Logwatch for localhost.localdomain (Linux)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Status: RO


 ################### Logwatch 7.3.6 (05/19/07) #################### 
...

So, the logwatch formats the mail programmatically (line by line), and this
explains the arbitrary fixed string charset="iso-8859-1".

On the other hand, if I prepare mail interactively in my terminal, formatted
by the mail agent, it is subjected to that mail agent's rules.

[jb@localhost ~]$ env |grep LANG
LANG=en_US.UTF-8

$ man mail
...
       sendcharsets
              A comma-separated list of character set names that can  be  used
              in  Internet  mail.  When a message that contains characters not
              representable in US-ASCII is prepared for sending,  mailx  tries
              to convert its text to each of the given character sets in order
              and uses the first appropriate one.  The default is ‘utf-8’.

              Character sets assigned to this variable should  be  ordered  in
              ascending  complexity.  That is, the list should start with e.g.
              ‘iso-8859-1’ for compatibility with older  mail  clients,  might
              contain  some other language-specific character sets, and should
              end with ‘utf-8’ to handle messages that combine texts in multi-
              ple languages.
...

$ cat /etc/mail.rc
...
# Outgoing messages are sent in ISO-8859-1 if all their characters are
# representable in it, otherwise in UTF-8.
set sendcharsets=iso-8859-1,utf-8
...

[jb@localhost ~]$ mail root
Subject: test charset
A line of text.
--> Ctl-D to finish

[jb@localhost ~]$ mail
Heirloom Mail version 12.4 7/29/08.  Type ? for help.
"/var/spool/mail/jb": 2 messages 2 unread
>U  1 logwatch@xxxxxxxxxxx  Tue Jul 27 07:35 100/2779  "Logwatch for localhos"
 U  2 JB                    Tue Jul 27 08:23  21/799   "test charset"
& 2
Message  2:
>From jb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  Tue Jul 27 08:23:13 2010
Return-Path: <jb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: JB <jb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2010 08:23:12 +0200
To: root@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: test charset
User-Agent: Heirloom mailx 12.4 7/29/08
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Status: RO

A line of text.
& 

JB


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