This is not an exmh problem, but an interaction between sendmail, Solaris and
Your sysadmin is wrong.  It is the responsibility of the receiving mail
server to escape lines beginning with "From " if they choose to turn on that
facility.  It is not the responsibility for email clients to cater to the
stupid design of the unix mail spool, and Sun's even more stupid decision to
rely on "Content-length:" instead of dealing with this problem.  Since mh is
unaware of "Content-length:", rcvstore gags trying to parse messages from the
I had this same problem.  There are several ways to fix it:
1)  Get your mail administrator to add the "E" flag to your sendmail.  This
means you will never see a line beginning with "From ".  Any such line will
2)  There is a patch to mh to make it respect "Content-length:".  When I was
having this problem, porting this patch to nmh was low on the priority list,
then nmh development stalled for a long time.  I doubt it has been done, but
you can check with the nmh list at nmh-workers@mhost.com to find out for sure.
3)  You can learn to use procmail, invoking rcvstore directly instead of
letting sendmail put your incoming mail into the spool.  This avoids the
whole issue.  rcvstore only deals with a single message at a time, and
In message <200210091657.g99GvDmX025433@life.ai.mit.edu>, Jason Rennie said:
> When I receive a message that has a line starting with "From ", it's
> broken into two messages.  I get my mail from /var/spool/mail.  The
> program that incorporates mail thinks that the "From " line starts a new
> My sysadmins have told me that the sending mail client is supposed to
> escape lines begining with "From ".  EXMH (2.5) doesn't do this.  Should
> it?  It appears that my MH is MH 6.8.  Does NMH fix this?

from localhost (jalapeno [127.0.0.1])
	by jmason.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1F39816F1B
	for <jm@localhost>; Wed,  9 Oct 2002 22:40:04 +0100 (IST)
from jalapeno [127.0.0.1]
	by localhost with IMAP (fetchmail-5.9.0)
	for jm@localhost (single-drop); Wed, 09 Oct 2002 22:40:04 +0100 (IST)
from listman.spamassassin.taint.org (listman.spamassassin.taint.org [66.187.233.211]) by
    dogma.slashnull.org (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g99IbGK16522 for
    <jm-exmh@jmason.org>; Wed, 9 Oct 2002 19:37:16 +0100
from listman.spamassassin.taint.org (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by
    listman.redhat.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 89E97415A8; Wed,  9 Oct 2002
    14:37:38 -0400 (EDT)
from int-mx1.corp.spamassassin.taint.org (int-mx1.corp.spamassassin.taint.org
    [172.16.52.254]) by listman.redhat.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id A329C4099F
    for <exmh-users@listman.redhat.com>; Wed,  9 Oct 2002 14:30:08 -0400 (EDT)
(from mail@localhost) by int-mx1.corp.spamassassin.taint.org (8.11.6/8.11.6)
    id g99IU8I05660 for exmh-users@listman.redhat.com; Wed, 9 Oct 2002
    14:30:08 -0400
from mx1.spamassassin.taint.org (mx1.spamassassin.taint.org [172.16.48.31]) by
    int-mx1.corp.redhat.com (8.11.6/8.11.6) with SMTP id g99IU8f05656 for
    <exmh-users@redhat.com>; Wed, 9 Oct 2002 14:30:08 -0400
from dimebox.bmc.com (adsl-66-140-152-233.dsl.hstntx.swbell.net
    [66.140.152.233]) by mx1.redhat.com (8.11.6/8.11.6) with SMTP id
    g99IALX07278 for <exmh-users@redhat.com>; Wed, 9 Oct 2002 14:10:21 -0400
by dimebox.bmc.com (Postfix, from userid 1205) id 53ABB37EBF;
    Wed,  9 Oct 2002 13:30:05 -0500 (CDT)
from dimebox.bmc.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by dimebox.bmc.com
    (Postfix) with ESMTP id 980AA37EA6 for <exmh-users@redhat.com>;
    Wed,  9 Oct 2002 13:30:05 -0500 (CDT)
In-reply-to Jason Rennie <jrennie@ai.mit.edu> message dated
    "Wed, 09 Oct 2002 12:57:13 -0400."
From exmh-users-admin@redhat.com  Wed Oct  9 22:41:12 2002