Dealing with attachments

Though most email programs deal properly with attachments these days, some mail readers we have (notably emacs rmail) don't. The following instructions will help you isolate those attachments for further action.

Isolate the mail message containing the attachment to a separate file. (This can be done in emacs rmail with the ^O command.)
Run metamail over the isolated message:
```
    /usr/local/bin/metamail filename
```
(On our Solaris 8 machines, metamail now lives in /usr/local/Zmail/lib.zmail/bin.) metamail will type all textual output to your screen and offer to do the appropriate thing with other attachments.
For most attachment types, one of the things offered will be to save the attachment to a file. Typically you would choose this option.

Note: If the attachment was text, you should run metamail under script to capture the output. You can then edit the log file.

Microsoft sometimes sends single-part text messages in base64 encoding such that the above instructions don't work. The message look something like this:

    From: sender <someone@paul.rutgers.edu>
    To: you <yourself@cs.rutgers.edu>
    Subject: Message
    Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2002 15:04:27 -0500
    Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="gb2312"
    X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
    X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000

    DQpUaGFua3MgZm9yIHJlbWluZGluZy4gQW5kIEkndmUgZ290IHN1Y2ggYSB3YXJuaW5nIGxldHRl
    etc...

To decrypt these messages, it it necessary to add

    Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

to the headers of the message before passing it through metamail.

This page last updated August 27, 2002.