[comp.protocols.tcp-ip] Bug in Berkeley popper

DASCHER@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU (David Ascher) (03/14/91)

This is very important to all people using popper as a pop server.
reposted from comp.sys.mac.comm.


   From: dorner@pequod.cso.uiuc.edu (Steve Dorner)
   Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.comm
   Date: 13 Mar 91 21:51:51 GMT
   References: <DA.91Mar8111526@igor.cs.brown.edu>
 <1991Mar8.185229.20456@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <1991Mar9.002825.5868@parc.xerox.com>
   Sender: usenet@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (News)
   Organization: University of Illinois at U-C
   Lines: 22


   I give up.  No response out of Berkeley, so...

   You can all have my version of popper, which is a slightly hacked 1.7b4.
   Anonymous ftp to pequod.cso.uiuc.edu, and get pub/popper1.7b4.tar.Z.

   If you are running popper version 1.6, YOU NEED THIS POPPER.
   If you are running popper version 1.7 (actually, 1.7b5 or later), YOU NEED
   THIS POPPER.

   Version 1.6 can corrupt maildrops, and 1.7b5 and later will very happily
   lose all your mail if anything goes wrong during a network connection.
   (UNIX gurus may be able to get it back from /usr/spool/mail/.popYOURLOGIN).

   I have had NO problems with popper1.7b4.

   Yes, I know I'm probably violating some copyright.  I wouldn't do it if
   the bugs were not so serious, and I will withdraw this version of popper
   as soon as Berkeley puts a fixed version on their server.
   --
   Steve Dorner, U of Illinois Computing Services Office
   Internet: s-dorner@uiuc.edu  UUCP: uunet!uiucuxc!uiuc.edu!s-dorner

cliff@garnet.berkeley.edu (Cliff Frost) (03/21/91)

The problem with popper reported here last week is real, and serious.  It
appears to have been introduced into popper around September, 1990.  It
would occur if you had compiled popper with -DDEBUG, and then run popper
without the "-d" (debug) flag.

If you compiled popper without -DDEBUG then you are not vulnerable to this
particular bug.  Unfortunately, the Makefile in the popper-1.7.tar.Z file
has -DDEBUG set as the default.

I have changed the default in the makefile in popper-1.7.tar.Z in the ftp
repository.  There is also a popper-1.81beta.tar.Z there which fixes two
other problems.  I believe 1.81 is stable, but will wait for some time
before removing the 1.7 file.

The ftp repository is ftp.CC.Berkeley.EDU.  Its current addresses are:
128.32.136.9, 128.32.206.9, 128.32.206.12, 128.32.136.38.

	Cliff Frost
	UC Berkeley

Re: <9103141743.AA04692@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>