​Hey William​

On Sun, Nov 30, 2014 at 4:39 AM, William T <[email protected]> wrote:

> In trying to sniff a successful standard Gmail SMTP connection, all
> traffic is encrypted. STARTTLS is the first command of any transmission. Is
> there a trick to be able to use telnet or SSH to diagnose a Gmail
> connection somehow?
>

​No, just telnet to the MX server on the standard SMTP port TCP/25 like so:

$ telnet ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. 25
Trying 173.194.78.26...
Connected to ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 mx.google.com ESMTP hn8si26075071wjb.124 - gsmtp
ehlo
​server.somedomain
250-mx.google.com at your service, [
​​
80.68.92.173]
250-SIZE 35882577
250-8BITMIME
250-STARTTLS
250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
250-PIPELINING
250-CHUNKING
250 SMTPUTF8
mail from: <m
​e@somedomain
>
250 2.1.0 OK hn8si26075071wjb.124 - gsmtp
rcpt to: <
​recipient@googlegroup
>
250 2.1.5 OK hn8si26075071wjb.124 - gsmtp
data
354  Go ahead hn8si26075071wjb.124 - gsmtp
Subject: test

Testing 123
.
550-5.7.1 [80.68.92.173      12] Our system has detected that this message
is
550-5.7.1 likely unsolicited mail. To reduce the amount of spam sent to
Gmail,
550-5.7.1 this message has been blocked. Please visit
550-5.7.1
​​
http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=188131 for
550 5.7.1 more information. hn8si26075071wjb.124 - gsmtp
Connection closed by foreign host.​



​The black text is what I typed, green text is what is returned.​

​In the above case you can see that the Google MX rejected my message, I
suspect because my ehlo statement contained an invalid FQDN and/or I did
not send full headers. In my test the envelope headers were valid sender
and recipient addresses.​


> Our SPF record does have the IP address of the sending website
> (ip4:#.#.#.#) plus the CNAME (a:blah.com) of the website as well. (For
> the domain the A records point to our website which is what's generating
> the emails, and the MX records are pointing to Gmail, which won't forward
> emails to members of the group. Dang confusing!)
>

​I performed this test from my own VPS which has a valid PTR record, does
the IP address of your website server host have a valid PTR? Is this a
shared website host? Perhaps the IP address has been blacklisted.
Is whatever application you are sending from using a valid, reply-able
From: header?


> Any pointers on *HOW TO DIAGNOSE WHY GMAIL IS BOUNCING INTERNAL EMAILS TO
> INTERNAL GMAIL GROUPS* would be very thoroughly appreciated.
>

​That depends on how you define 'internal'. You are sending mail from a
external (to Google) hosted server to a Google Group.

​Do have a look at the guidelines as per the link returned in my test
above. See https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126?hl=en

If I do the same test using a valid information, the email is accepted:

$ telnet ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. 25
Trying 74.125.133.27...
Connected to ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 mx.google.com ESMTP d8si4359131wjy.80 - gsmtp
ehlo za.atnight.co.za
250-mx.google.com at your service, [80.68.92.173]
250-SIZE 35882577
250-8BITMIME
250-STARTTLS
250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
250-PIPELINING
250-CHUNKING
250 SMTPUTF8
mail from: <marko@a_domain>
250 2.1.0 OK d8si4359131wjy.80 - gsmtp
rcpt to: <marko@b_domain>
250 2.1.5 OK d8si4359131wjy.80 - gsmtp
data
354  Go ahead d8si4359131wjy.80 - gsmtp
From: Marko <marko@a_domain>
To: Marko <marko@b_domain>
Subject: only testing

Hello there

.
250 2.0.0 OK 1417362621 d8si4359131wjy.80 - gsmtp
quit
221 2.0.0 closing connection d8si4359131wjy.80 - gsmtp
Connection closed by foreign host.


a_domain is a valid domain that I own and b_domain also a valid domain that
is on Google MX.

-- 
Marko

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