MailRoom Doesn't Show the Message if Subject Header Contains <

[Volodymyr Shcherbinin]

E-mail from Cron (with errors) contain username@hostname in Subject header when e-mailing errors. This is done to have a possibility to distinguish which box generated the error. Below is the example of such header

Subject: Cron <root@somehost> /usr/sbin/ntpdate ntp.ubuntu.com pool.ntp.org > /dev/null

Actual test. Empty notification:

root@somehost:~# telnet 30279659.in1.mandrillapp.com 25
Trying 54.70.134.182...
Connected to 30279659.in1.mandrillapp.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 smtp.mandrillapp.com ESMTP
EHLO somehost
250-ip-10-212-6-2
250-PIPELINING
250-SIZE 26214400
250-STARTTLS
250-AUTH PLAIN LOGIN
250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
250 8BITMIME
MAIL FROM: root@somehost
250 2.1.0 Ok
RCPT TO: [e-mail]
250 2.1.5 Ok
DATA
354 End data with <CR><LF>.<CR><LF>
From: root@somehost (Cron Daemon)
To: root@somehost
Subject: Cron <root@somehost> /usr/sbin/ntpdate ntp.ubuntu.com pool.ntp.org > /dev/null
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ANSI_X3.4-1968
X-Cron-Env: <SHELL=/bin/sh>
X-Cron-Env: <HOME=/root>
X-Cron-Env: <PATH=/usr/bin:/bin>
X-Cron-Env: <LOGNAME=root>
Message-Id: <20151124160701.EAA607F035@somehost>
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2015 17:07:01 +0100 (CET)

Oh no!

.
250 2.0.0 Ok: queued as A64AB380988

Result:

[Derek Price]

I can confirm this bug. My team is experiencing it as well. I just ran some tests here and it doesn't appear to be the email address that is causing this, but the "<" and ">" characters, and whether the email appears depends on the HipChat client (we see the message via the Android client but not the Windows client). Therefore, I believe this is a problem with quoting HTML characters in the message correctly.

When I tried to report this to the HipChat support team, they said, "I understand that it looks like an issue with HipChat app or how it renders the message, however, if the integration code does not have a properly formatted code that can handle any message contents, HipChat may ignore the display of a broken message. The reason why it's shown in the mobile app is because the mobile app does not use the same web rendering as HipChat desktop clients and the web app."

[Derek Price]

The title of this issue should be changed to, "MailRoom Doesn't Show the Message if Subject Header Contains <".

[Derek Price]

I just did a little more testing. It appears to be specifically the "<" character. When I put a ">" in the subject by itself, the message is delivered just fine, but the "<" by itself is enough to break it.

[Derek Price]

BTW, our use case is also delivering cron notifications so that we have a HipChat channel that we can monitor for errors. This is probably not an uncommon way to want to use Mailroom.

[Volodymyr Shcherbinin]

@pricede Well, it's always good to know that you're not all alone with the issue :) Yep, I agree that this is not common, but it's very handy. Unfortunately, not possible with Mailroom. We've switched to Zapier Email. Not free, but works like a charm.