XCON: MTA Doesn't Accept IA5 in General Text Body Part

ID: Q156369

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Exchange Server, version 4.0

SYMPTOMS

It is impossible to send a message from a remote message transfer agent (MTA) to Microsoft Exchange Server over a 1988 X.400 connector. The message is rejected with a non-delivery report (NDR). In the Microsoft Exchange Server Application Event log you will see the following error message:

Event ID: 210
Source: MSExchangeMTA
Type: Error
Description:
An internal MTA error occurred. Content conversion for message C=FR;A=ATLAS;P=RPEXC;L=7705001613031996/A07679/LSPT failed.
Conversion error: 4096, Object at fault: 06000057,
Original content type: 56010A01,
New content type: 2A864886F7140501.[MTA DISP:FANOUT 26 9] (14)

CAUSE

This error will occur when the remote MTA is configured to send all message content as a General Text Body Part and sends a message containing only IA5 characters. This configuration is possible with the DEC MRX product.

General Text Body Part has a parameter for designating character set registrations. Currently the Microsoft Exchange Server system sends out {C0,G0,G1} == {1,6,100} for character set ISO8859-1.


   1   == C0 control characters like LF, CR and so forth
   6   == ISO646 basic 7 bit characters for ASCII in G0
   100 == ISO8859-1 G1 extended Latin 1 chars

Inbound, the MTA checks for the presence of 6 and 100, and if it has both, it then uses the ISO8859-1 tables to do the conversion, otherwise an NDR message is sent with invalid content type because no support for other character sets exists.

RESOLUTION

A possible workaround is to configure the remote MTA so that it does not send all messages as General Text Body Part.

This fix allows Microsoft Exchange to accept General Text Body Part with the following registered character sets {C0,G0} == {1,6}.

To resolve this problem, obtain the hotfix mentioned below.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft Exchange version 4.0. This problem was corrected in the latest Microsoft Exchange 4.0 U.S. Service Pack. For information on obtaining the service pack, query on the following word in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (without the spaces):

S E R V P A C K

Additional query words:

Keywords : kb3rdparty kbusage kbbug4.00 kbfix4.00.sp4 XCON XFOR
Version : winnt:4.0
Platform : winnt
Issue type : kbbug