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+Network Working Group G. Vaudreuil
+Request for Comments: 1892 Octel Network Services
+Category: Standards Track January 1996
+
+
+ The Multipart/Report Content Type
+ for the Reporting of
+ Mail System Administrative Messages
+
+Status of this Memo
+
+ This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
+ Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
+ improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
+ Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
+ and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
+
+1. The Multipart/Report MIME content-type
+
+ The Multipart/Report MIME content-type is a general "family" or
+ "container" type for electronic mail reports of any kind. Although
+ this memo defines only the use of the Multipart/Report content-type
+ with respect to delivery status reports, mail processing programs
+ will benefit if a single content-type is used to for all kinds of
+ reports.
+
+ The Multipart/Report content-type is defined as follows:
+
+ MIME type name: multipart
+ MIME subtype name: report
+ Required parameters: boundary, report-type
+ Optional parameters: none
+ Encoding considerations: 7bit should always be adequate
+ Security considerations: see section 4 of this memo.
+
+ The syntax of Multipart/Report is identical to the Multipart/Mixed
+ content type defined in [MIME]. When used to send a report, the
+ Multipart/Report content-type must be the top-level MIME content type
+ for any report message. The report-type parameter identifies the
+ type of report. The parameter is the MIME content sub-type of the
+ second body part of the Multipart/Report.
+
+ User agents and gateways must be able to automatically determine
+ that a message is a mail system report and should be processed as
+ such. Placing the Multipart/Report as the outermost content
+ provides a mechanism whereby an auto-processor may detect through
+ parsing the RFC 822 headers that the message is a report.
+
+
+
+
+Vaudreuil Standards Track [Page 1]
+
+RFC 1892 Multipart/Report January 1996
+
+
+ The Multipart/Report content-type contains either two or three sub-
+ parts, in the following order:
+
+ (1) [required] The first body part contains human readable message.
+ The purpose of this message is to provide an easily-understood
+ description of the condition(s) that caused the report to be
+ generated, for a human reader who may not have an user agent
+ capable of interpreting the second section of the
+ Multipart/Report.
+
+ The text in the first section may be in any MIME standards-track
+ content-type, charset, or language. Where a description of the
+ error is desired in several languages or several media, a
+ Multipart/Alternative construct may be used.
+
+ This body part may also be used to send detailed information
+ that cannot be easily formatted into a Message/Report body part.
+
+ (2) [required] A machine parsable body part containing an account
+ of the reported message handling event. The purpose of this body
+ part is to provide a machine-readable description of the
+ condition(s) which caused the report to be generated, along with
+ details not present in the first body part that may be useful to
+ human experts. An initial body part, Message/delivery-status is
+ defined in [DSN]
+
+ (3) [optional] A body part containing the returned message or a
+ portion thereof. This information may be useful to aid human
+ experts in diagnosing problems. (Although it may also be useful
+ to allow the sender to identify the message which the report was
+ issued, it is hoped that the envelope-id and original-recipient-
+ address returned in the Message/Report body part will replace
+ the traditional use of the returned content for this purpose.)
+
+ Return of content may be wasteful of network bandwidth and a variety
+ of implementation strategies can be used. Generally the sender
+ should choose the appropriate strategy and inform the recipient of
+ the required level of returned content required. In the absence of
+ an explicit request for level of return of content such as that
+ provided in [DRPT], the agent which generated the delivery service
+ report should return the full message content.
+
+ When data not encoded in 7 bits is to be returned, and the return
+ path is not guaranteed to be 8-bit capable, two options are
+ available. The origional message MAY be reencoded into a legal 7 bit
+ MIME message or the Text/RFC822-Headers content-type MAY be used to
+ return only the origional message headers.
+
+
+
+
+Vaudreuil Standards Track [Page 2]
+
+RFC 1892 Multipart/Report January 1996
+
+
+2. The Text/RFC822-Headers MIME content-type
+
+ The Text/RFC822-Headers MIME content-type provides a mechanism to
+ label and return only the RFC 822 headers of a failed message. These
+ headers are not the complete message and should not be returned as a
+ Message/RFC822. The returned headers are useful for identifying the
+ failed message and for diagnostics based on the received: lines.
+
+ The Text/RFC822-Headers content-type is defined as follows:
+
+ MIME type name: Text
+ MIME subtype name: RFC822-Headers
+ Required parameters: None
+ Optional parameters: none
+ Encoding considerations: 7 bit is sufficient for normal RFC822
+ headers, however, if the headers are broken and require
+ encoding, they may be encoded in quoted-printable.
+ Security considerations: see section 4 of this memo.
+
+ The Text/RFC822-headers body part should contain all the RFC822
+ header lines from the message which caused the report. The RFC822
+ headers include all lines prior to the blank line in the message.
+ They include the MIME-Version and MIME Content- headers.
+
+3. References
+
+ [DSN] Moore, K., and G. Vaudreuil, "An Extensible Message Format for
+ Delivery Status Notifications", RFC 1894, University of
+ Tennessee, Octel Network Services, January 1996.
+
+ [RFC822] Crocker, D., "Standard for the format of ARPA Internet Text
+ Messages", STD 11, RFC 822, UDEL, August 1982.
+
+ [MIME] Borenstein, N., and N. Freed, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
+ Extensions", RFC 1521, Bellcore, Innosoft, June 1992.
+
+ [DRPT] Moore, K., "SMTP Service Extension for Delivery Status
+ Notifications", RFC 1891, University of Tennessee, January 1996.
+
+4. Security Considerations
+
+ Automated use of report types without authentication presents several
+ security issues. Forging negative reports presents the opportunity
+ for denial-of-service attacks when the reports are used for automated
+ maintenance of directories or mailing lists. Forging positive
+ reports may cause the sender to incorrectly believe a message was
+ delivered when it was not.
+
+
+
+
+Vaudreuil Standards Track [Page 3]
+
+RFC 1892 Multipart/Report January 1996
+
+
+5. Author's Address
+
+ Gregory M. Vaudreuil
+ Octel Network Services
+ 17060 Dallas Parkway
+ Dallas, TX 75248-1905
+
+ Phone: +1-214-733-2722
+ EMail: Greg.Vaudreuil@Octel.com
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+Vaudreuil Standards Track [Page 4]
+