Re: [exim] body line length limits

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Author: Peter Rindfuss
Date:  
To: exim-users
Subject: Re: [exim] body line length limits

> RFC2822 section 2.1.1 says "Each line of characters MUST be no more
> than 998 characters".
>
> By default exim does not reject messages which fail to comply with
> this requirement. I have searched the documentation and cannot find
> any option which would reject messages which do not comply.
>
> Is there such an option?
>
> I have only ever seen spam messages which exceed the limit so, if all
> the popular e-mail clients are compliant, this would be another weapon
> in the fight against spam.
>


If you compile exim with exiscan, you can use

  deny    message        = line longer than 999 characters
          regex          = ^.{1000,}


in the DATA acl. It's probably wise to restrict this check to
messages below a certain size.

The line length check was introduced here because we have a mail
client that chokes on lines that are too long.

I observed non-spam messages created by webmailers containing HTML
code with no line breaks at all, so it can be a problem to suppress
such messages.





---
Peter Rindfuss
Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fuer Sozialforschung
(Social Science Research Center Berlin, Germany)
email: rindfuss@???
phone: +49-30-25491-566 fax: +49-30-25491-558