[Mailman-Users] Users complain, they don't receive mails from the list

Mon Jan 25 18:10:01 EST 2016

Hello,

This bounce message clearly indicates that your IP address doesn't have 
a reverse DNS entry. This is a standard lookup done as a part of spam 
fighting efforts. You need to get your provider to set the reverse DNS 
for your IP address to the domain name of your mail server if possible.

Newer Mailman versions (I know 2.1.20 at least) have an option to alert 
list admins when anyone's bounce score is incremented. I have this 
feature enabled, and it's helped me catch some bounces before they 
resulted in disabling addresses. Years ago, I switched to a new provider 
and thought everything was going well. Then five days later I received a 
bunch of bounce notices telling me that addresses had been disabled. It 
turns out my IP address was apparently on some blacklists, and the way 
Mailman used to work, I was left blissfully unaware there was a problem 
until days later, when possibly many messages to these people could have 
been rejected and lost. Until Mailman offered the choice of receiving 
alerts as soon as someone bounces a message and gets their bounce score 
incremented, the only way I could be sure my Emails weren't bouncing was 
to set Mailman to disable member addresses after just one bounce. This 
worked, but had the unpleasant side effect of disabling member addresses 
who bounced a single message because their ISP thought it was spam for 
some reason, or for some other temporary reason.

Jayson

On 1/25/2016 5:48 PM, Sascha Rissel wrote:
> Mark,
>
> thanks for your answer.
> I just checked the bounce log.
>
> And I discovered a lot of entries like:
>
> Jan 25 18:33:24 2016 (2741) <BounceRunner at 12019976> processing 9 queued
> bounces
> Jan 25 18:33:24 2016 (2741) <my-list-name>: <some mail address> already
> scored a bounce for date 25-Jan-2016
> Jan 25 18:33:24 2016 (2741) <my-list-name>: <some mail address> already
> scored a bounce for date 25-Jan-2016
> Jan 25 18:33:24 2016 (2741) <my-list-name>: <some mail address> already
> scored a bounce for date 25-Jan-2016
>
> where all mail addresses are from German Web.de and GMX. Both providers
> belong to the same company.
> Thinking about this, I remembered a bounce notification I received last
> week, where some of these addresses were set to disabled by Mailman, with
> the notification below.
>
> Did GMX/Web.de maybe change their mail processing policies with the start
> of the new year?
> Below follows an excerpt from the bounce notification.
>
> Kind regards,
> Sascha.
>
>
> Bounce Mail:
>
> <some_user at web.de>: host mx-ha02.web.de[212.227.17.8] refused to talk
>      to me: 554-web.de (mxweb107) Nemesis ESMTP Service not available 554-No
>      SMTP service 554-Bad DNS PTR resource record. 554 For explanation visit
>      http://postmaster.web.de/error-messages?ip=62.75.175.182&c=rdns
>
> Final-Recipient: rfc822; <second_user>@gmx.de
> Original-Recipient: rfc822;<second_user>@gmx.de
> Action: failed
> Status: 4.0.0
> Remote-MTA: dns; mx00.emig.gmx.net
> Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 554-gmx.net (mxgmx002) Nemesis ESMTP Service not
>      available 554-No SMTP service 554-Bad DNS PTR resource record. 554 For
>      explanation visit
>      http://postmaster.gmx.com/en/error-messages?ip=62.75.175.182&c=rdns
>
> Final-Recipient: rfc822; <some_third_user>@web.de
> Original-Recipient: rfc822;andreas_hacker at web.de
> Action: failed
> Status: 4.0.0
> Remote-MTA: dns; mx-ha02.web.de
> Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 554-web.de (mxweb107) Nemesis ESMTP Service not
>      available 554-No SMTP service 554-Bad DNS PTR resource record. 554 For
>      explanation visit
>      http://postmaster.web.de/error-messages?ip=62.75.175.182&c=rdns
>
> 2016-01-25 23:35 GMT+01:00 Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>:
>
>> On 01/25/2016 01:59 PM, Sascha Rissel wrote:
>>> I have some user on my lists, who complain they don't receive the list
>>> mails anymore, since a few days.
>>>
>>> Am am running Mailman 2.1.15 on Debian.
>>> The error log is empty, the archive seems to correctly contain all recent
>>> mails.
>>> The people saying, they don't receive the mails are on GMail and German
>>> Web.de hosts and they don't have bounces logged by Mailman.
>>
>> If there is nothing in Mailman's error log or bounce log, it is almost
>> certain the mail is being delivered by Mailman to the outgoing MTA and
>> the outgoing MTA is successfully delivering the mail to the mail
>> exchange server for the recipient domain.
>>
>> You can confirm this if you have access to the Mailman (and it's
>> outgoing MTA) server's mail.log.
>>
>> If this is the case and the users have checked their gmail or web.de
>> spam or junk folders and the messages aren't there, the messages are
>> likely being silently discarded somewhere in the delivery chain after
>> leaving the outgoing MTA.
>>
>> Solving this is difficult. Some steps are outlined in the FAQ article at
>> <http://wiki.list.org/x/4030690>.
>>
>> I sometimes will copy the specific MTA log messages indicating
>> acceptance by the receiving MTA, e.g., messages like
>>
>> Jan 24 19:09:41 sbh16 postfix/smtp[1053]: 1279111E1A8F:
>> to=<user at gmail.com>, relay=gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[74.125.28.26]:25,
>> delay=5.8, delays=4.9/0.66/0.09/0.13, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (250 2.0.0
>> OK 1453691381 tt2si3153213pac.167 - gsmtp)
>>
>> and tell the user to ask gmail what happened to that message. In that
>> message, (250 2.0.0 OK 1453691381 tt2si3153213pac.167 - gsmtp) is the
>> acceptance from gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com indicating the message was
>> accepted at unix time stamp 1453691381 with the accepting server's ID
>> tt2si3153213pac.167. I suspect gmail actually ignores such requests from
>> their users or provides only a generic response. People who actually pay
>> for their email service may have a bit more leverage.
>>
>> Anyway, apart from the things in the FAQ article, there's not a whole
>> lot you can do. If you can possibly identify something about the missing
>> mail that triggers it, e.g., only mail From: a certain user or domain,
>> or something in a specific thread (copied in everyone's reply), you can
>> try to avoid that, but if it's all list mail To: particular domains
>> (gmail), I think it's more likely to be a block on mail from your
>> server's IP, but in the US at least, gmail ordinarily bounces such mail
>> with a fairly specific reason.
>>
>> --
>> Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
>> San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan
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