'From:' header string running together on Apache server

[nabrown]

Hi All, my client whose site is using com_connect recently flagged an issue where the From: field had a bunch of stuff in it, not just a clean email address. For example:

From: [email protected]
    Reply-To: [email protected]
    X-Mailer: Textpattern (com_connect)
    X-Originating-IP: 71.192.96.233
    Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

It seemed like the "From" header string was not being separated properly. When I changed these lines: $sep = IS_WIN ? "\r\n" : "\n"; to be $sep = IS_WIN ? "\r\n" : "\r\n"; (ie, a carriage return and newline character no matter what) the issue was resolved. Here is the server info:

Apache Version	2.4.59
MySQL Version	5.7.23-23
Architecture	x86_64
Operating System	linux
Shared IP Address	162.241.194.200
Path to Sendmail	/usr/sbin/sendmail
Path to Perl	/usr/bin/perl
Perl Version	5.16.3
Kernel Version	4.19.286-203.ELK.el7.x86_64

Now, those header lines look like:

From: [email protected]
X-Mailer: Textpattern (com_connect)
X-Originating-IP: 71.192.96.233
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

So, for me I think this issue is fixed but posting here for others.

[Bloke]

Thank you for sanity checking this. It has been flagged before and when the penny eventually dropped the plugin has been patched and a new release made.

Does that version work?

[nabrown]

No, that was my first attempt at a fix -- just upgrading to the latest version (4.7.1). But the issue still happened. I edited the plugin code for that version as mentioned above, and then things started working perfectly. If there's any more info I can provide that would be helpful, let me know.

[Bloke]

Hmmm, that is strange. And annoying. What is the setting of RFC 2616 headers in your Txp diagnostics? And are there any other settings you think may be relevant? If so, please post values so I can investigate. Thank you.

If there is something we can latch onto and determine what conditions trigger this behaviour, we can code around it.

[nabrown]

Hi @Bloke , here's the TXP Diagnostics info (minus 'private' information):

Textpattern version: 4.8.8 (a5969b336c096d872a7ecab9ee25914b)
Last update: 2022-04-17 13:43:42/2022-04-17 13:40:27
Textpattern path: __TXP-ROOT/textpattern
Article URL pattern: section_title
Production status: live
Temporary directory path: __TXP-ROOT/textpattern/tmp
PHP version: 8.2.17
GD Graphics Library: bundled (2.1.0 compatible); Supported formats: GIF, JPEG, PNG, WebP.
Intl extension: 8.2.17
Multibyte String extension: 8.2.17
Server time zone: America/Chicago
Server local time: 2024-04-16 16:24:37
Daylight Saving Time enabled?: 1
Automatically adjust Daylight Saving Time setting?: 0
Time zone (GMT offset in seconds): America/Chicago (-21600)
MySQL: 5.7.23-23 (Percona Server (GPL), Release 23, Revision 500fcf5) 
Database server time: 2024-04-16 16:24:37
Database server time offset: 0 s
Database server time zone: SYSTEM
Database session time zone: SYSTEM
Locale: en_US.UTF-8
Site / Admin language: en-us / en-us
Web server: Apache
PHP server API: litespeed
PHP SSL version: OpenSSL 1.1.1w  11 Sep 2023
RFC 2616 headers: 
Server OS: Linux 4.19.286-203.ELK.el7.x86_64
Admin-side theme: classic 4.8.8
Active plugins: 
	ajw_if_comment_owner-0.3.1
	chh_article_lib-1.04
	chh_if_data-0.10 (modified)
	chh_related_articles-0.41 (modified)
	com_connect-4.7.1 (modified)
	mrw_spamkeywords_urlcount-0.1 (modified)
	pap_comconnect-0.1.2 (modified)
	rah_sitemap-1.3.0
	rss_admin_db_manager-4.6.0
	rss_auto_excerpt-0.5 (modified)
	smd_where_used-0.30
	tru_tags-3.9.2 (modified)
	upm_image-0.6.2 (modified)

Other than that the only thing I can say is that something must've changed in my client's server environment to cause the problem...she is on Hostgator. We had not made Textpattern core or plugin updates of form changes when it started happening, I think in early March.