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.

well this looks clear as mud

[LiquidCoooled]

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.

Google offers Sourceforge-like services

[einhverfr]

I am considering dropping Sourceforge for Google partly for this reason. I have had trouble with some of my other domains and Sourceforge isn't even interested in helping me get my email servers working properly with their system.

SourceForge uses Mailman

[ben there...]

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

The Solution

[Cytlid]

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.

Re:Callbacks Are Evil

[ccandreva]

> So the email server that sent the email is required to ensure that it actually not spam

No. The e-mail server that handles whatever domain happens to be in the sender field is being asked if the address actually exists. There is a big difference.

People can put whatever address they want in the From: field of their mail. Return addresses are forged in spam all the time.

It is becomming a very big problem, when someone decides to forge your return address into 100,000 pieces of spam, and now your server has to deal with all those connections back. Not to mention the Outlook "Iam out of the office messages", or bounces from idiot servers that accept mail for any address THEN boune recipients that don't exist.

It's dumping your garbage on my lawn. It's evil, and it's just as wrong for Sourceforge to do them.

Re:well this looks clear as mud

[jfinke]

Been there as well. Our developers were using a old library that was compliant to the old SMTP RFC, but not that new one. When we switched firewalls from proxy (which was rewriting the smtp packets under the new RFC) to statefull inspection 5% of our clients has munged up attachments. It was really odd.

Google mail forwards.

[rasjani]

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.

Re:SourceForge value = GMail value

[Anonymous Coward]

SF sucks. We selected SF to host one of our company's GPL'd projects without researching the alternatives, and it's been one screw up after another on SF's part. Support is non-existant.

Belios seems to be a feature-for-feature clone, but they're smaller and more responsive. There are many similar services, Berlios as least has a good track record behind it. Google code seems a bit underfeatured. In the end we just installed Trac and self-hosted. Way better.

my sf account never forwards

[Paralizer]

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.

Re:Callbacks Are Evil

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

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.