Problem with @fedoraproject.org mail address

[Marcin Zajączkowski]

Hi,

If that list it not suitable for my question, please let me know how to 
reach the Postmaster.

I gave my email address in fedoraproject.org domain a few people and 
recently I was informed that mails sent to it bounce with error message:

<<< 550 SPF Error: Please see 
http://spf.pobox.com/why.html?sender=some-strange-account%40wsisiz.edu.pl&am... 
            554 5.0.0 Service unavailable

It looks there is a problem with SPF.
209.132.177.92 (mx1-phx.redhat.com) is not allowed to send mails from 
wsisiz.edu.pl domain (which is true) and a message is bounced by a 
destination email server (where mails from @fedoraproject.org are 
redirected). Probably it's not possible to receive any email sent from a 
domain with SPF enabled.

Is there a way to make it work?

I'm not a SPF specialist, but I don't have problems with mails 
redirected from @users.sf.net.

Regards
Marcin

[Matt Domsch]

On Sun, Jan 27, 2008 at 10:23:43PM +0100, Marcin Zaj?czkowski wrote:
> Hi,
>
> If that list it not suitable for my question, please let me know how to 
> reach the Postmaster.
>
> I gave my email address in fedoraproject.org domain a few people and 
> recently I was informed that mails sent to it bounce with error message:
>
> <<< 550 SPF Error: Please see 
> http://spf.pobox.com/why.html?sender=some-strange-account%40wsisiz.edu.pl&am... 
>            554 5.0.0 Service unavailable
>
> It looks there is a problem with SPF.
> 209.132.177.92 (mx1-phx.redhat.com) is not allowed to send mails from 
> wsisiz.edu.pl domain (which is true) and a message is bounced by a 
> destination email server (where mails from @fedoraproject.org are 
> redirected). Probably it's not possible to receive any email sent from a 
> domain with SPF enabled.
>
> Is there a way to make it work?
>
> I'm not a SPF specialist, but I don't have problems with mails 
> redirected from @users.sf.net.

mail forwarding is the primary achilles heel of SPF.  There's nothing
fedoraproject.org can do about the SPF records that your domain has
published.  And fedoraproject.org does not currently implement an SPF-
forwarding-enabled service, as it's really quite painful to do.

Perhaps your domain can not specify "-all" (hard fail messages
originating from elsewhere), and instead specify "~all" (this
message didn't come from one of our mail servers, perhaps it needs
additional spam scrutiny).

[Marcin Zajączkowski]

On 28.01.2008 03:56, Matt Domsch wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 27, 2008 at 10:23:43PM +0100, Marcin Zajaczkowski wrote:

(...)
> > <<< 550 SPF Error: Please see 
> > http://spf.pobox.com/why.html?sender=some-strange-account%40wsisiz.edu.pl&am... 
> >            554 5.0.0 Service unavailable
> >
> > It looks there is a problem with SPF.
> > 209.132.177.92 (mx1-phx.redhat.com) is not allowed to send mails from 
> > wsisiz.edu.pl domain (which is true) and a message is bounced by a 
> > destination email server (where mails from @fedoraproject.org are 
> > redirected). Probably it's not possible to receive any email sent from a 
> > domain with SPF enabled.
> >
> > Is there a way to make it work?
> >
> > I'm not a SPF specialist, but I don't have problems with mails 
> > redirected from @users.sf.net.
>
> mail forwarding is the primary achilles heel of SPF.  There's nothing
> fedoraproject.org can do about the SPF records that your domain has
> published.  And fedoraproject.org does not currently implement an SPF-
> forwarding-enabled service, as it's really quite painful to do.

It's due to my provider restriction. Fedora's mail server looks for them 
like a spamer trying to send an email from a domain which defines (by 
SPF) though which smtp servers it can be sent.
> Perhaps your domain can not specify "-all" (hard fail messages
> originating from elsewhere), and instead specify "~all" (this
> message didn't come from one of our mail servers, perhaps it needs
> additional spam scrutiny).

It's a quite big mail provider and they fight hard with spam. Probably 
it won't be an option to they also due to performance issues.

Does anybody know how SourceForge deal with that? I receive mail sent 
via @users.sf.net alias without any problem.

Regards
Marcin

[Ray Van Dolson]

> Does anybody know how SourceForge deal with that? I receive mail sent via 
> @users.sf.net alias without any problem.

Perhaps your ISP made an exclusion for them?

I used to work at an ISP and quickly realized it was much more useful
to have SPF as a spam scoring contributor, rather than hard rejecting
email based on it.  Just caused more headaches than it was worth.

Definitely worth emailing your postmaster and asking if they'll either
update their SPF record or make this particular SPF failure a "soft
fail" instead of just throwing your mail away wholesale.

Ray