Inbound and outbound internet HTML messages show the message body as blank when read

  • Document ID:7015903
  • Creation Date:18-Nov-2014
  • Modified Date:18-Nov-2014
    • Micro Focus Products:
      GroupWise

Environment

Novell GroupWise 8 Support Pack 3 Hot Patch 3
Novell GroupWise 2012 Support Pack 2
Novell GroupWise 2014

Situation

All html messages to and from the internet when read, have a message body that shows blank.  Plain text messages show fine.

Resolution

The issue apparently was caused by a corrupted "preamble.txt" file in the GW-Domain\wpgate\gwia\ directory.  It had garbage in the file, and once the file was restored from backup from before the problem started, the problem went away.  

Cause

The customer had a spam blocker process or appliance that fronted the GroupWise Internet Agent (GWIA), 
apparently once the spam blocker saw the garbage in this file it put it spam tags in the mime that was contributing to the issue. 

This is an example of the portion of a problem messages mime that when removed, resulted in the problem going away:

Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="=__PartC7F2A1CF.2__="

X-DLP-ENABLED: 11.111.111.1/11
X-MAG-OUTBOUND: my.genericsmtpserver.com@11.222.333.4/32

**
*T*0*"****~*c{*GVi***L*%
'*"5**`.a*@****n******C**[**\******ly**p*`b*******a****y*****Dh****h******YP[9***c-,***Kl*4**Z*>****ig*8*A**E*.**)***Ngp*/*oRy*******E****--=__PartC7F2A1CF.2__=

Additional Information

  The GroupWise documentation discusses the need for the "preamble.txt" file :

https://www.novell.com/documentation/groupwise2014/gw2014_guide_admin/data/adm_gwia_inet_smtp_mime_messages.html.

Customizing MIME Preamble Text

An ASCII file called preamble.txt is installed in the GWIA gateway folder (domain\wpgate\gwia). This file, which is included with any MIME multipart message, is displayed when the message recipient lacks a MIME-compliant mail reader.

The content of the preamble.txt file is a warning, in English, that the file is being sent in MIME format. If the recipient cannot read the message, he or she needs to either use a MIME-compliant mail reader or reply to the sender and request the message not be sent in MIME format.

We recommend that you use the preamble.txt file so that those who read MIME messages coming from your GroupWise system and who lack MIME-compliant mail readers can understand why they cannot read the message and can take corrective action.