[H-GEN] Compressing mail attachments

[David Wood]

[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and
Unix-related topics. ]

On Thu, Oct 14, 1999 at 12:52:12PM +1000, Marshall, Joshua wrote:
> Just thinking aloud: I'm wondering if it would be possible to intercept
> emails as they pass through the relay (sendmail), and pull out all the
> attachments, compress them with a compressor such as "zip" and insert the
> compressed file in place of the original, before passing the message along.

Yes, this is possible and a good idea.  Here are two bits which might help:

- There is a Perl module called IspMailGate (on the CPAN) which 
  acts as a sendmail "plug-in" to filter traffic.  Brad Marshall
  is experienced with this and recently convinced the authors to
  release the code under the GPL.

- The MIME::Parser Perl module (also on the CPAN) would make parsing 
  and reinserting the attachements easy.

In my book "Programming Internet Email" I have an example script called
mboxscrub.pl which cleans a mailbox of unwanted attachments.  The approach
would be similar.

-- 
Regards,
Dave
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