[CentOS] [OT] mail address - centos mail list

On Fri, November 7, 2014 12:10, Bob Marcan wrote:
> Hi.
> Your mails to centos mailing list are constantly marked as spam by
> gmail.com.
> Marking it nospam is annoying and had no effect on gmail filtering.
> I can filter it into the proper folder, but this will only fix my problem.
> Can you do anything in that matter?
>
> Best regards, Bob
>

I do not think that I have any influence over this issue, other than to change
email providers and that, for various security reasons, is not going to
happen.  Nor, for similar reasons, is it feasible for me to have a second
email address just for the Centos mailing list since I would be unable to use
it from my workplace.  I do understand your frustration and I am appreciative
of the effort that you took to contact me about it.  I wish I had some
solution for you that was available to me.

The reason that my emails from the CentOS list are marked as spam by Google is
that our domain employs DKIM and SPF for outgoing SMTP traffic.  The CentOS
mailing list manager is the stock Mailman package provided with CentOS.  That
version mangles the originator's mail headers and body, thus invalidating the
DKIM signature.  It then sends the message out as originating under the
original sender's domain but from an unauthorised SMTP server address, thus
triggering the SPF failure.

The reasons that this has become an issue is that Google, Yahoo, AOL and I
believe Microsoft, began enforcing DMARC to varying degrees beginning last
April.  Google at least forwards my messages on with a warning. I believe that
Yahoo simply blocks all my CentOS list traffic.

We have set SPF to a policy of ~all, which is a soft failure.  That permits
delivery, providing the recipient MX agrees as is the case with Google. It is
not permissible for us to authorise an alien IP address as a legitimate source
of our SMTP traffic so we cannot eliminate the SPF failure.  We can do nothing
about the DKIM invalidation since it is Mailman that is changing the headers
and appending text to the body after it is signed by our servers.

There is a patch for Mailman to resolve the SPF issue and the DKIM issue with
respect to headers, but it has not made it into the RedHat distribution.  The
body mangling issue is in the hands of the mailing list owner.

I have raised an issue on this:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1095359

I also tried building the new Mailman package for CentOS-6. The problem is
that the Mailman project does not follow the FHS.  Restructuring the source
files to properly package on CentOS is simply beyond my limited skills and
time.  I suspect that the effort involved is why the issue has not made much
progress inside RH either.

I am replying to the list as well so that anyone else having the same problem
with my traffic is apprised of the cause.

With regrets,

-- 
***          E-Mail is NOT a SECURE channel          ***
James B. Byrne                mailto:ByrneJB at Harte-Lyne.ca
Harte & Lyne Limited          http://www.harte-lyne.ca
9 Brockley Drive              vox: +1 905 561 1241
Hamilton, Ontario             fax: +1 905 561 0757
Canada  L8E 3C3