Bug 30408

Summary:	'slrn' does not automatically decode base64 news posts; needs additional (& available) library 'uudeview', and compile change.
Product:	Mageia	Reporter:	w unruh <unruh>
Component:	RPM Packages	Assignee:	All Packagers <pkg-bugs>
Status:	NEW ---	QA Contact:
Severity:	normal
Priority:	Normal	CC:	davidwhodgins
Version:	8
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
URL:	http://www.fpx.de/fp/Software/UUDeview/
Whiteboard:
Source RPM:	slrn-1.0.3-8.mga8.src.rpm	CVE:
Status comment:

Description w unruh 2022-05-10 18:01:00 CEST

Description of problem: Some people have taken to posting base64 encoded news posts. slrn simply shows the encoded block, which is pretty useless. Apparently this is because slrn has not been compiled with the uudeview option. It apparently should be to get the base64 to be automatically decoded and shown. 
Also Mageia does not seem to have a uudeview library package which it needs to read those encoded files. Since more and more people seem to be posting to netnews with base64 encoded files (probably some posting software is doing this automatically for some insane reason), it beomes important for slrn to be able to handle these.





Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 1.0.2-8



How reproducible:Always

Comment 1 Lewis Smith 2022-05-11 22:37:04 CEST

Thank you for the report.

The slrn project URL http://www.slrn.org goes straight to this instead:
 https://www.instantcashtime.com/slrn/
This is its new site:
 https://slrn.info/
which is not encouraging: "The most recent release version of slrn is 1.0.3a which came out in 2016".

> slrn has not been compiled with the uudeview option
> Mageia does not seem to have a uudeview library package
These are the only references we have to 'uudeview':
 $ urpmf uudeview                                            
man-pages-ja:/usr/share/man/ja/man1/uudeview.1.xz
 Summary     : Japanese manual pages
firejail:/etc/firejail/uudeview.profile
 Summary     : SUID sandbox program
neither of which are relevant. Since you found out what you cite, can you enlarge on the 'uudeview' aspect?

CC: (none) => lewyssmith

Comment 2 Dave Hodgins 2022-05-12 00:31:01 CEST

uudeview is at http://www.fpx.de/fp/Software/UUDeview/
last updated in 1994.

Keep in mind that while still in use, usenet doesn't change much, if at all
anymore, so old software may still be fine. If it isn't broken, don't fix it.
:-)

CC: (none) => davidwhodgins

Comment 3 w unruh 2022-05-12 07:15:37 CEST

I went to news.software.readers  Thread "slrn and reading base64 encoded posts"

Many said that their system automatically decoded them and we settled on the fact that Mageia's slrn did not contain uudeview. Other distros do. Mageia slrn does not contain uudeview, other doslrn --version on Mageia show -uudeview. 
Others show +uudeview and they do not have the problem. 

In the past year I have run across a number of posts which are base64 encoded (obviously some posting sotware has decided to base64 encode everything.

Comment 4 Lewis Smith 2022-05-12 21:42:31 CEST

Thank you for the clarification; and Dave for comment 2.

So it looks like a new library request for 'uudeview', and a change to how 'slrn' is compiled to use that, probably a suitable 'Requires.

'slrn' does not have a consistent maintainer, so assigning this rather necessary request globally.

Assignee: bugsquad => pkg-bugs
CC: lewyssmith => (none)
Summary: slrn does not automatically decode base64 news posts => 'slrn' does not automatically decode base64 news posts; needs additional (& available) library 'uudeview', and compile change.
URL: (none) => http://www.fpx.de/fp/Software/UUDeview/

Comment 5 sturmvogel 2022-05-13 15:05:29 CEST

According this information https://github.com/jedsoft/slrn/blob/master/doc/INSTALL.unix
slrn has builtin routines for decoding of uuencoded articles. So either the builtin function is broken, or we are using a to old slrn version. 

Yes, there is the possibility to compile slrn with an external uudeview library. But shouldn't we test if the actual slrn version from upstream fixes this issue before we import another rotten dead unmaintained package like uudeview (no maintenace or activity since 18! years)?