GMail and Sourceforge E-mail Bouncing Saga

An anonymous reader writes "All e-mail going back and forth from Sourceforge and Gmail is being bounced. This leaves many Open Source projects with helpless mailing lists. Fortunately, Sourceforge blames Google and Google is blaming SourceForge for this. The Sourceforge support site is clogged with support requests for a resolution to this problem. Google's response to this bouncing has been automated e-mails saying it is probably at the other end of mail delivery. This is something that the community needs to know about since it has been going on for a week already with no end in sight." Worth noting that Sourceforge and Slashdot are both part of OSTG. Update 20:07 GMT by SM: According to SourceForge support staff this issue is now resolved. Apparently a few days ago the sender-verify to gmail started resulting in 450 errors. Google has since either corrected this issue or whitelisted SourceForge and several tests of the system have resulted in correct delivery.

Sourforge?

Worth noting that Sourforge and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.

After all the great software I've found on there, I'd call it sweetforge.

Loss of communication can only mean one thing...

Invasion.

Re:Loss of communication can only mean one thing..

I for one welcome our new e-mail bouncing, blame placing, invading overlords!

Re:Loss of communication can only mean one thing..

Hmm... take down one of the biggest Open Source Software repositories and the biggest search engine?

This must be the work of Microsoft!

Now how can we fit Haliburton into this?

Re:Loss of communication can only mean one thing..

(here comes the quote nazi:)
A communications disruption can mean only one thing - invasion. [moviewavs.com] (MP3) [moviewavs.com]

Re:Loss of communication can only mean one thing..

They don't have a "+1 Nerd Movie Quotes" mod, sorry. :)

Why is the email bouncing?

The summary was useless, there's only a few things I want to know about this spat. Who sends the first DSN, why and why was it rejected by the other party?

Re:Why is the email bouncing?

Here you go, a complete bounced message from sf.net:

X-Gmail-Received: ecfafb0784517c3cc7f903105542834cd33fde22
Delivered-To: [e-mail]
Received: by 10.35.42.5 with SMTP id u5cs205830pyj;
                Sat, 30 Sep 2006 21:26:16 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.35.61.2 with SMTP id o2mr4364526pyk;
                Sat, 30 Sep 2006 21:26:16 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path:
Received: by 10.35.61.2 with SMTP id o2mr5005562pyk;
                Sat, 30 Sep 2006 21:26:16 -0700 (PDT)
From: Mail Delivery Subsystem
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Delivery Status Notification (Delay)
Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2006 21:26:16 -0700 (PDT)

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

THIS IS A WARNING MESSAGE ONLY.

YOU DO NOT NEED TO RESEND YOUR MESSAGE.

Delivery to the following recipient has been delayed:

          [e-mail]

Message will be retried for 2 more day(s)

Technical details of temporary failure:
TEMP_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 9): 451-Could not complete sender verify callout
451-Could not complete sender verify callout for .
451-The mail server(s) for the domain may be temporarily unreachable, or
451-they may be permanently unreachable from this server. In the latter case,
451-you need to change the address or create an MX record for its domain
451-if it is supposed to be generally accessible from the Internet.
451 Talk to your mail administrator for details.

      ----- Message header follows -----

Received: by 10.35.61.2 with SMTP id o2mr1893905pyk;
                Fri, 29 Sep 2006 20:41:07 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.35.42.5 with HTTP; Fri, 29 Sep 2006 20:41:07 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2006 00:41:07 -0300
From: "Rodolfo Borges"
To: [e-mail]
Subject: pkill -l
Cc: "Kjetil Torgrim Homme" ,
        "Albert Cahalan"
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline

      ----- Message body suppressed -----

SourceForge uses Mailman

In my opinion, the problem with SourceForge lies in that Mailman doesn't work well with Gmail addresses. I use Mailman discussion lists on my DreamHost account, and while testing I couldn't get the emails to work until I added a non-gmail account. I contacted support, blaming them for a while and getting frustrated, until I tried a different email account.

This was DreamHost's response:

I've closed out this ticket for you. I thought I should mention however
that quite a few people that have forwards to gmail have ran into similar
problem, the only thing that is consistent is that the messages make it
to the gmail relays and then disappear.

I don't know if that means that GMail rejects Mailman messages, or Mailman has problems sending to Gmail addresses, but one way or another, it doesn't work right.
--
Use coupon DH75OFF to get $75 off hosting at DreamHost.com

Probably Sourceforge?

The message linked to in the post says the person is having trouble with both gmail and sending mail from his own domain. I have also had trouble with sourceforge, where mails from my ISP seemed to be "eaten" about half the time. I've just moved mailing lists off sourceforge, although I'm still using them as their svn support is good. Unless anyone else is having trouble with gmail, I'm tempted to just lay all of the blame at sourceforge.

Re:Probably Sourceforge?

Unless anyone else is having trouble with gmail, I'm tempted to just lay all of the blame at sourceforge.

Hear, hear. Considering all of the problems I've (personally) encountered with SourceForge (broken databases, unresponsive, utterly down) and how few problems I've seen with Google (as in, none), I'd be inclined to think the problem is on SourceForge's end. Google has a reputation for reliability and quality. SourceForge, on the other hand...

--- SER

Umm

Fortunately, Sourceforge blames Google and Google is blaming SourceForge for this.

I don't think that word means what you think it means. Unless you are glad that no one is willing to take responsibility for the problem and fix it???

Re:Umm

Fortunately, the word Schadenfreude [wikipedia.org] does mean what I think it means.

Re:Umm

Hello, I'm sarcasm, I don't believe we've met before.

Re:Umm

A sarcasm detector? Like that'd be useful.

Re:Umm

I would find such a device highly useful. I am one of many people who find it hard to differentiate sarcasm from strait forward conver...wait a minute...

Re:Umm

A sarcasm detector? Like that'd be useful.

I think it would, because many people don't recognize it when they see it.

SourceForge is good for spewing into the ether...

I've had cases where mail coming from SourceForge never reached me; their servers never even attempted to connect to my e-mail server (i.e. nothing in the logs to indicate this). I was running my own DNS at the time, at a colocation center, and never had problems sending or receiving e-mail before with any other domains.

I don't see the problem...

...you all have the source code, and the developers do not consider this a priority, so feel free to solve your problem and post a patch

well this looks clear as mud

Greetings,

This is something recent that has changed in how Google handles
email (other sites have started to get the same errors). We
are investigating how to deal with this.

SourceForge.net Support

Is it because sourceforge is not following the RFCs and google has just tightened up?

We had a similar issue in one of our programs where mailing worked wonderfully for months and months for all customers, then one morning complaints started.
It appears as though we weren't following the RFCs to the letter and the main isp in our country (bt) had updated to a more stringent mail server (we shockingly used an additional CR where one was not expected...).

This all sounds similar.

eh

Troubleshooting IT on message boards involving the public is a highly effective way to get things done.

Allow me to start. *ahem*

WHY is SourceForge even using SMTP????!!!

Open Source vs. Google

Who is the Slashdotter to root for? Hmm... I know, third option! It is Microsoft's fault!

Google's Answer if they find it is them...

Original Response:

Google's response to this bouncing has been automated e-mails saying it is probably at the other end of mail delivery.

New Response:
"Well Gmail is still in beta so don't blame us."

Don't be evil...

...but nobody said anything about complacency!

Glad I'm not the only one losing messages

In the past couple weeks I've "lost" at least a dozen messages on gmail. Not bounced, not in spam filter, they just don't appear.

E-mail isn't reliable, ya know

Sure, there are RFCs and other standards to ensure that if an e-mail isn't delivered, someone is notified, but those are hardly written in stone. Sometimes e-mail just disappears into the wonderful world of dev/null.

There is never, ever any absolute guarantee that an e-mail is going to reach its destination, just as there is no way of knowing if that letter you drop in a mailbox is really going to go where it is supposed to.

If you're trying to maintain a discussion, use a bulletin board. There you can see whether your message was posted, and... as long as the host is up, other people will see what you see.

In any event, people gotta learn that technology is never 100% reliable. You'd think we'd understand this by now.

SPF records....

Google has SPF records. Sourceforge seems to reject mail that seems spoofed (eg people 'pretending' to be allowed to send [e-mail] mail without going through google.

It's neither sourceforge's fault not google's fault. It's the enduser's fault. You must send/receive email through google's gmail system.

You get what you pay for.....

Re:SPF records....

> Google has SPF records. Sourceforge seems to reject mail that seems spoofed (eg people 'pretending' to be allowed to send [e-mail] mail without going through google.

SPF has nothing to do with it. Sourceforge is employing callback verification, which is not only abuse itself (it's basically a dictionary attack that we're just supposed to trust is for good and not evil), it's also incredibly broken.

See http://atm.tut.fi/list-archive/nanog/msg37172.html [atm.tut.fi] for an explanation.

Just one more reason to jump ship from sourceforget.

I beg to differ

"All e-mail going back and forth from Sourceforge and Gmail" is certainly not being bounced. My Gmail account has been getting plenty of email from Sourceforge during the period when "all e-mail" has supposedly been bouncing.

Of course, this is the sort of accuracy I expect from Slashdot.

Callbacks Are Evil

I would say this is Gmail's problem.

Gmail is initiating what are called call-backs. For every incoming e-mail, they attempt to send a fake e-mail back to the sender to verify that the sending address actually exists.

The theory is that since spammers forge many names, it will reject spams that have made up names forged into them.

The end result, however, is that it pushes your spam problem back on to the domain forged into the spam. It causes an extra load on that server as it has to accept all these bogus connections. For another it will just encourage spammers to forge other people's actual addresses as the sender of their garbage.

It is encouraging to see that Sourceforge does not support that. I would give the solution as to either complain to Gmail that callbacks break they stated goal of "Do no evil".

Barring that, don't use gmail.

Re:Callbacks Are Evil

Initially callbacks will be evil as you say. But if gmail implements a learning system and starts tagging which ip addresses in the call chain are routinely sending spam it can become better. So at some point it will detect spam without actually calling back. So give them some slack please.

Re:Callbacks Are Evil

It is true that there are vast botnets. And the spammers routinely change the bots. And most bots are on dynamic ip address that keeps changing. You are right in saying that I or you or most other companies would not have the resources to combat spam by tagging the ip addresses. But if there is a company that has the resources, both in terms of money and in terms of searching, organizing and finding patterns it would be Google.

Most legitimate mailservers are running on static ip addresses. Google will be able to compile a list of legitimate good mailservers rather quickly. Google is also an IP address registrar. It has the routing tables and other registration information and netblock ownership information. It will know the dynamic ip addresses by the block. Mailservers running on dynamic addresses, or relays running dynamic addresses are suspect immediately. It is not proof. But more like preponderance of evidence (IANAL).

Can they determine spam without callbacks in three months. No way. Can they reduce the number of callbacks to confirm legitimacy of email by atleast an order of magnitude? Yes, they can by collecting relay ip addresses, mail server ip addresses, netblock ownership data and putting them all together like "page-rank", "mailserver-rank". They might even find the bots and inform the ISP that they probably have a bot and the ISPs might even contact the boob with the infected machine. Good things can come out of this.

Will they? There you got me. Dont know if they will. But I hope they do.

pragmatism

A pragmatic solution would be to say, "I don't care whose fault it is, we will disable/filter our automatic reply system on our end for a couple days until a real solution can be found." The chances of someone being pragmatic on ONE side is pretty good, and while it wouldn't be necessary, the chances of someone being pragmatic on BOTH sides isn't too terrible to contemplate either.

Once you turn off the water at an upstream valve, fixing the actual pipe rupture gets a lot easier. Just git 'er done.

It is not just a problem with gmail

I had a heck of a time trying to set up an account at sourceforge using gmail, hotmail, and yahoo, and even my ISP email address. The emails just never got to me. After weeks of trying, I finally got an email confirming my sourceforge account. I don't know the technical nature of the problem, but the email system at sourceforge has got to be improved! Especially since the whole idea behind the site is collaboration! How can you collaborate without email in this modern age!

The Solution

Um, INCOASFML (I'm not currently on a source forge mailing list) but the way I've been operating for years would probably remedy this situation. I have my own domain... I run my own sendmail (insert MTA flamewar here, perhaps someday I'll switch to postfix or qmail or something). I have my own webmail, but it sucks. I signed up for gmail with an obscure username. Gave *noone* the account name. I just forwarded my user on my colocated machine to GMail, and have GMail use that username as a reply to address. Works great. GMail's become my glorified webmail client (it beats the crap outta my other ones).

  So at the end of the day, have your friendly local neighborhood mail admin forward a real domain account to your gmail. Then just change it on sourceforge's list. Then I'm not subject to gmails (or sourceforges) mail policies, only my own.

hosted gmail

gmail also has a hosted solution. you sign up, point your dns to gmail's mail servers, and can have all your email go through email. You can even create accounts, mailing lists, etc. Right now they appear to be limiting me to 25 users per domain. Works really well. you can pop3 off their system too.

It is definitely Sourceforge's problem

Sourceforge is posting the following message to bug reports about this problem.

Greetings,
    We're aware of the difficulties in the interaction
between
our mailing list services and Gmail. Our network operations
team
is currently aware of the issue and is working with Gmail
administration on a resolution.

-Jay Bonci
Systems Programmer Analyst,
Sourceforge.net

Somebody posted a SMTP dialog to one of the bug reports:

Example:
telnet mail.sourceforge.net 25
Trying 66.35.250.206...
Connected to mail.sourceforge.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 mail.sourceforge.net ESMTP Exim 4.44 Sat, 30 Sep
2006 01:12:02 -0700 sc8-sf-mx1.sourceforge.net
HELO aisa.fi.muni.cz
250 mail.sourceforge.net Hello 14397 at aisa.fi.muni.cz [147.251.48.1]
mail from:
250 OK
rcpt to:
451-Could not complete sender verify callout
451-Could not complete sender verify callout for <[e-mail]>
451-The mail server(s) for the domain may be temporarily unreachable, or
451-they may be permanently unreachable from this server. In the latter case,
451-you need to change the address or create an MX record for its domain
451-if it is supposed to be generally accessible from the Internet.
451 Talk to your mail administrator for details.
QUIT
221 mail.sourceforge.net closing connection
Connection closed by foreign host.

Sourceforge's mail server is doing a callback to gmail.com, to verify the sender address is accepted by gmail.com. This check is screwing up. It's Sourceforge's problem. Callback verify is not covered by any RFC, so SF has gone above and beyond the standards, it is their responsibility to make sure their SMTP service is interoperable with standard servers, not the other way around. Google can provide logs of the failed callbacks, but that's all the burden they should assume. It's SF's problem to fix.

Re:It is definitely Sourceforge's problem

Callback verify is not covered by any RFC

On the other hand, there is nothing in any RFC that prohibits you from doing callbacks.

Unfortunately the above post misses critical information about the callback itself. What mail address is it using as a source?
Usually, callbacks use "MAIL FROM:<>" and the RFCs explicitly state that you MUST accept this. But, some mailservers reject mail from <>. That could be a problem, but in this case the problem is in the called server that does not implement a MUST item.

The mailserver I manage at work uses callbacks. It almost never causes problems. In cases where the sending server refuses MAIL FROM:<> it tries to use MAIL FROM:<mailer-daemon@domain>.
The only known problem occurs when the called server first accepts MAIL FROM:<> and then rejects the RCPT TO: with an error referring back to the <> source.
This is done by the broken "Spamfilter for ISP" by LOGSAT. But this one has other SMTP protocol bugs, so just don't use it.

And then of course there are some mailinglists that simply send their mail from a nonexistant address. Presumably to avoid having to do list maintenance.
I consider this antisocial, and have no problem with blocking their mail.

Gmail and SPAM filtering

Gmail seems to frequently get blocked by spam filtering. As many companies buy their spam filtering from third parties, the really have little control or expertise in it. Some spam filters work on strange rules, e.g. put one too many hyperlinks in a message and your email goes to the bit bucket.

Matter of fact, I've had problems with Slashdot mail messages and spam filters in the past. Just try to get an domain unblocked with your corporate IT undead and see how easy it is!

Google Mail *BETA*

Looking at my gmail account it shows a little *BETA* under the Google mail logo.

Call me stupid but using beta grade software for real world stuff could be asking for trouble by the many people using the gmail service....

Not much of a surprise.

Sourceforge has been blocking my email for ages, from the biggest ISP of the country no less. This of course is on a whole different level (small country :-), but doesn't surprise me.

Google mail forwards.

While i understand that this post will be read by noone because im not writing this to the topic thats still hot, i'd like to share my experiences. *Gmail* Looses Forwarded Mails. Sometimes. I have my domain thats *now* being hosted in gmail. At one point when my domain was not in use due to outtake on my internet connection, i started to use regular gmail [e-mail], about 6 months later, my domain was "accepted" to the beta phase of gmail for your own domains. As i was allready so used to that account and had all my calendar there, i just forward all my mail from my own domain to regular gmail account - and *alot* of messages never reach from One gmail account (hosted) to Another Gmail account (normal gmail). All the messages are visible ofcourse where they first come into the system but they are never delivered to the main account where im supposed to read'em.

IT'S FIXED!!!

Emails I sent a few days ago have now appeared on the SF.NET mailing lists, as of this morning! So it appears that the problem is fixed, or at least that one of the many workarounds that have been suggested have been applied (like temporarily disabling callbacks).

This problem has been going on for a whole week, and now the very morning that this complaint appears on slashdot is the same morning that the problem is fixed. Coincidence? Or is it that the impending publicity motivated someone to reprioritize this problem and do something about it? It's shameful that Sourceforge allowed a communications failure to persist for so long from what is undoubtedly one of their biggest email sources.

In any case I'm very happy that it seems to be working again. Are other gmail users seeing similar improvements?

gmail rejects too many messages

In September gmail started rejecting many good e-mails. That's why I've switched to my ISP's e-mail.

I want to receive all incoming e-mails, but in gmail it's impossible to disable filters.

Messages are blocked in the SMTP session, there is no way to whitelist a sender.

The error message is:

550-5.7.1 Our system has detected an unusual amount of unsolicited
550-5.7.1 mail originating from your IP address. To protect our
550-5.7.1 users from spam, mail sent from your IP address has been
550-5.7.1 rejected. Please visit
550-5.7.1 http://www.google.com/mail/help/bulk_mail.html [google.com] to review
550 5.7.1 our Bulk Email Senders Guidelines.

my sf account never forwards

I've setup my SF preferences to forward messages from @users.sourceforge.net to my gmail account. Since I've signed up for gmail, none of the messages sent to my sf address have been received. I always meant to put in a ticket at SF, but never really considered it a big deal, I would just direct people to email my gmail account directly.

Another big company

There's another big company that doesn't configure its mail servers/dns entries properly too.

Sep 26 03:11:47 hosting postfix/smtpd[19263]: connect from mail7.exchange.microsoft.com[131.107.1.27]
Sep 26 03:11:49 hosting postfix/smtpd[19263]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from mail7.exchange.microsoft.com[131.107.1.27]: 450 4.7.1 <df-gwy-07.exchange.corp.microsoft.com>: Helo command rejected: Host not found; from=<[e-mail]> to=<[e-mail]> proto=ESMTP helo=<df-gwy-07.exchange.corp.microsoft.com>
Sep 26 03:11:49 hosting postfix/smtpd[19263]: disconnect from mail7.exchange.microsoft.com[131.107.1.27]

The trouble? There's no DNS entry for df-gwy-07.exchange.corp.microsoft.com, and hence Postfix (with reject_unknown_hostname ) slings out the mail.

Re:Not Google's only screwup

Google AsSense and some Blogger content also seem to be having issues...

Re:Why not just dump GMail?

Why not just dump SourceForge? Surely there are utilities to migrate to another development platform or an open source repository solution...

Re:Can you expand on this a bit?

http://code.google.com/hosting/ [google.com]

Includes web space, svn hosting, a tracker, and the like.

I'll dump Sourceforge first

But, then I don't reflexively hate large corporations.

Gmail doesn't drop any of my other, numerous, mailing lists or subscriptions, and it's spam filtering is 100.00000% percent accurate.

I suspect there are self-righteous Net Nazis on both sides. Hang your frgaile punk ego at the door and fix it.

Heretic!

Genesis 1:32 And God typed :wq!

All true believers know he typed C-x C-s C-x C-c!

Re:Why not just dump GMail?

True. GMail's still in beta after 2+ years; it could crash tomorrow and half the Slashdot comments would be apologizing sarcastically for the loss of a free beta service.

Re:Not Google's only screwup

You're a moron. Go post on some other site.