Bug#1115604: exim4-base: Paniclog email fails to deliver when paniclog contains long lines

[Célestin Matte]

Package: exim4-base
Version: 4.96-15+deb12u7
Severity: normal

When exim paniclog contains lines longer than 1000 characters, exim fails at delivering the "exim paniclog on <domain> has non-zero size" email because it violates SMTP specifications (RFC 5321): "message has lines too long for transport". In other words, exim is dropping an issue-reporting email. This email is generated by the /etc/cron.daily/exim4-base cron script installed by the Debian package.

To fix this issue, /etc/cron.daily/exim4-base should wrap lines of the paniclog email ("exim paniclog on <domain> has non-zero size") to less than 1000 characters per line, for instance using "fold -w 980".

I reported this issue upstream as I initially thought that it was a bug in exim itself: https://bugs.exim.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3159


-- Package-specific info:
Exim version 4.96 #2 built 22-Mar-2025 10:25:14
Copyright (c) University of Cambridge, 1995 - 2018
(c) The Exim Maintainers and contributors in ACKNOWLEDGMENTS file, 2007 - 2022
Berkeley DB: Berkeley DB 5.3.28: (September  9, 2013)
Support for: crypteq iconv() IPv6 PAM Perl Expand_dlfunc GnuTLS TLS_resume move_frozen_messages Content_Scanning DANE DKIM DNSSEC Event I18N OCSP PIPECONNECT PRDR PROXY Queue_Ramp SOCKS SPF SRS TCP_Fast_Open
Lookups (built-in): lsearch wildlsearch nwildlsearch iplsearch cdb dbm dbmjz dbmnz dnsdb dsearch ldap ldapdn ldapm mysql nis nis0 passwd pgsql sqlite
Authenticators: cram_md5 cyrus_sasl dovecot external plaintext spa tls
Routers: accept dnslookup ipliteral iplookup manualroute queryprogram redirect
Transports: appendfile/maildir/mailstore/mbx autoreply lmtp pipe smtp
Malware: f-protd f-prot6d drweb fsecure sophie clamd avast sock cmdline
Fixed never_users: 0
Configure owner: 0:0
Size of off_t: 8
Configuration file search path is /etc/exim4/exim4.conf:/var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated
Configuration file is /etc/exim4/exim4.conf

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 12.12
   APT prefers oldstable-updates
   APT policy: (500, 'oldstable-updates'), (500, 'oldstable-security'), (500, 'oldstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Locale: LANG=C.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages exim4-base depends on:
ii  adduser                        3.134
ii  cron [cron-daemon]             3.0pl1-162
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]          1.5.82
ii  exim4-config [exim4-config-2]  4.96-15+deb12u7
ii  libc6                          2.36-9+deb12u13
ii  libdb5.3                       5.3.28+dfsg2-1
ii  netbase                        6.4
ii  systemd-sysv                   252.39-1~deb12u1

Versions of packages exim4-base recommends:
ii  bsd-mailx [mailx]  8.1.2-0.20220412cvs-1
ii  psmisc             23.6-1

Versions of packages exim4-base suggests:
ii  bsd-mailx [mail-reader]          8.1.2-0.20220412cvs-1
ii  emacs-nox [mail-reader]          1:28.2+1-15+deb12u4
pn  exim4-doc-html | exim4-doc-info  <none>
pn  eximon4                          <none>
ii  file                             1:5.44-3
ii  openssl                          3.0.17-1~deb12u2
pn  spf-tools-perl                   <none>
pn  swaks                            <none>

-- debconf information excluded

-- 
Célestin Matte