From: "Eric Johnson"

> Could please say it in words for the non-technical. What I'm specifically
> interested in is that some PDF's are fine but these two were rejected.

'Scuse me for jumping in here. The point is that the entries listing allowed
types of attachments do accept wild cards, but they are not supposed to
match the filename and extension. They are supposed to match the MIME
Content-Type description.

There are two reasons some PDF files would be allowed and others wouldn't.
One is the list's Sizelimit setting. That does NOT appear to be the cause of
the present problem, but you should be aware that any file which cannot be
sent in text, including PDFs, is expanded by a factor of slightly more than
4/3 by the necessary encoding, and the Sizelimit also includes the cover
email and headers.

In your present case, the most likely cause is that the sending system
chooses to use a slightly different Content-Type for PDF files.
Unfortunately, these are standardized, but not effectively so: a lot of mail
clients tend to use variants. The way to find out the encoding is to
(1) have the person whose files are rejected send you a copy of what they
are sending to the list; and
(2) view the source of the email to determine the encoding of the
attachment. (The MIME Content-Type is readable as plain text in email
source, though it's probably hidden by your email client if you're reading
the message in normal fashion.)

You may be able to add an attachment specification to your list
configuration, or modify an existing one with wildcards to accept variants.

In the worst (but entirely possible) case, the sending system could be using
application/octet-stream for everything, and expecting receiving systems to
identify the proper software for interpreting the file by the filename
extension. That presents you with an ugly choice: either allow that encoding
(in which case ANY type of attachment could be sent to your list, if
specified that way), or refuse it and block attachments from that particular
sender (who could perhaps pass such files to another list participant for
submission).

If there is a way to permit such general encodings as
application/octet-stream and then filter out unwanted files by extension
(such as .zip files which are often viruses), I don't know it. The content
filtering doesn't appear to access filenames in MIME headers.

Hal Keen


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