sourceware.org mailing list manager warning

sourceware.org mailing list manager warning

[Brian Inglis]

Hi folks,

My mail forwarder believes there may be a problem on your end, underlying their
sometimes not connecting to your mailing list forwarder, resulting in some
emails from lists not being delivered, and regarded as bouncing.

The below is in the order from their ticket, and does not mean much to me
regarding production server email setup.

Hope you can shed some light on the situation for me.


On Sat, 25 Jan 2020 14:10:41 -0800, support@webnames.ca wrote:
> 
> Hi Brian,
> 
> Here are my thoughts on the email situation you described:
> 
> We use Barracuda as a spam filter for our mail server, and neither cygwin.com
> nor sourceware.org came up as blacklisted on Barracuda when I queried them on
> MXToolbox. So then I focused on this part of the bounce message:
> 
> *Connected to 209.15.37.22 but greeting failed.*
> 
> If it isn't "passing" the greeting, then it's quite likely it isn't even getting
> to the spam filter, because it's getting rejected before that stage. This
> article I stumbled across when searching for the bounce message describes how
> mail servers communicate with one another.
> 
> https://manuals.gfi.com/en/kerio/connect/content/troubleshooting/general-errors/cannot-send-to-some-mail-servers-with-the-explanation-that-the-smtp-greeting-failed-400.html
> 
> So after reading that, my suspicion is that the mail server isn't trusted
> because it isn't properly "identified". This also makes me think that it is also
> possible that it isn't just Webnames.ca-hosted emails that aren't receiving the
> automated messages being sent out by cygwin@cygwin.com <mailto:cygwin@cygwin.com>.
> 
> I noticed that cygwin.com also doesn't have an SPF record in its DNS
> configuration, which my be part of the problem. An SPF record helps identify the
> authoritative mail server for a domain name (in this case, sourceware.org is the
> authoritative mail server for cygwin.com.
> 
> The mail administrator for cygwin.com would typically be the one to insert the
> SPF record on the domain, which is composed of the parts shown in this image:
> 
> For instance, for customers who send email from domains hosted by Webnames (for
> their email), we add the following SPF record to their DNS:
> 
> *v=spf1 a:spf10.webnames.ca -all*
> 
> You should probably have one added to cygwin.com as well, as it can help ensure
> delivery by identifying sourceware.org as the authoritative mailserver for the
> domain.
>> You forward my professional email at the above address and appear to be bouncing
>> some emails from mailing lists to which I subscribe using that professional
>> email address as my permanent public address.
>> 
>> You appear to be bouncing email from sourceware.org (see below) mailing lists
>> for "reputation".
>> 
>> Sourceware.org is provided by RedHat (now IBM) as a base for important volunteer
>> projects such as GCC, glibc, GDB, binutils, Cygwin, etc. see:
>> 
>> 	https://sourceware.org/projects.html
>> 
>> to host source code repositories, web sites, and mailing lists.
>> 
>> In my experience, the lists are not moderated, but heavily filtered, and
>> automated (see below), allowing only plain text posts, bouncing anything
>> containing HTML parts, and only the occasional spam gets thru, manageable by
>> manual deletion.
>> 
>> Please reconsider your rating and filtering criteria regarding sourceware hosted
>> mailing list sourced emails including GCC, glibc, GDB, binutils, Cygwin, etc.
>> 
>> Almost every email is only a few K of plain text (to a few hundred K with
>> [possibly encoded] diagnostic dump attachments to cygwin@cygwin.com).> On 24 Jan 2020 13:31:02 -0000, cygwin-help@cygwin.com wrote: 
>>> Hi! This is the ezmlm program. I'm managing the
>>> cygwin@cygwin.com mailing list.
>>> 
>>> Messages to you from the cygwin mailing list seem to
>>> have been bouncing. I've attached a copy of the first bounce
>>> message I received.
>>> 
>>> If this message bounces too, I will send you a probe. If the probe bounces,
>>> I will remove your address from the cygwin mailing list,
>>> without further notice.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I've kept a list of which messages from the cygwin mailing list have bounced
>>> from your address.
>>> 
>>> Copies of these messages may be in the archive.
>>> To retrieve a set of messages 123-145 (a maximum of 100 per request),
>>> send an empty message to:
>>>    <cygwin-get.123_145@cygwin.com>
>>> 
>>> To receive a subject and author list for the last 100 or so messages,
>>> send an empty message to:
>>>    <cygwin-index@cygwin.com>
>>> 
>>> Here are the message numbers:
>>> 
>>>    218915
>>>    218916
>>> 
>>> --- Enclosed is a copy of the bounce message I received.>>> Return-Path: <>
>>>> Received: (qmail 96221 invoked for bounce); 12 Jan 2020 21:29:45 -0000
>>>> Date: 12 Jan 2020 21:29:45 -0000
>>>> From: MAILER-DAEMON@sourceware.org
>>>> To: cygwin-return-218915-@cygwin.com
>>>> Subject: failure notice
>>>> 
>>>> Hi. This is the qmail-send program at sourceware.org.
>>>> I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
>>>> This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.
>>>> 
>>>> <brian.inglis@systematicsw.ab.ca>:
>>>> Connected to 209.15.37.22 but greeting failed.
>>>> Remote host said: 554-mx6.webnames.ca
>>>> 554 Your access to this mail system has been rejected due to the sending MTA's
>>>> poor reputation. If you believe that this failure is in error, please contact
>>>> the intended recipient via alternate means.
>>>> I'm not going to try again; this message has been in the queue too long.