[Mailman-Users] Re: Error member gets when sending to one of my lists?

[Odhiambo Washington]

On Mon, Mar 18, 2024 at 1:39 AM Mark Sapiro  wrote:

> On 3/17/24 06:51, Odhiambo Washington wrote:
> > On Sun, Mar 17, 2024 at 2:46 PM Adam Morris  wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data:
> >>
> >> 550 Maximum line length exceeded (see RFC 5322 2.1.1).
> >>
> >
> >
> > That error (550 - Permanent failure) is generated by your MTA (Postfix?,
> > Exim4?) and you need to address it there.
>
> It could be generated by Mailman's LMTP runner. I.e., the MTA attempts
> delivery to Mailman via LMTP and Mailman's LMTP runner rejects the
> message and the MTA returns that rejection.
>
> This issue  may be
> relevant.
>

Ah. I thought they were running MM2.


-- 
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[Mailman-Users] Error member gets when sending to one of my lists?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Adam Morris writes:

 > A member is subscribed to two lists I run.
 > 
 > He can post to one but gets the following error when posting to the
 > other list.

 > SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data:

The message should indicate which server rejected it.

This error depends on the message content (specifically, a physical
line longer than 998 bytes, which he surely sees as a nicely formatted
paragraph of normal-length lines).  I can't imagine why it depends on
the list, it's not hitting the list processing part.  As Mark points
out, it *could* be Mailman (more precisely, the imported 3rd party
library aiosmtpd), but would be at the very mechnical "let's MOVE SOME
BYTES!" stage of the process, not dependent on list settings at all.
It's definitely a mail server error, not a list-related error.

 > 550 Maximum line length exceeded (see RFC 5322 2.1.1).

It's very unlikely to be a recent (< 4yo) version of aiosmtpd, which
issues a different error: "500 Line too long (see RFC5321 4.5.3.1.6)".
Apple's Postfix also doesn't issue that message.  Nor does Debian's
Exim4.  The citation to the Message Format RFC 5322 is odd, suggesting
Microsoft or other commercial software (you *could* enforce RFC 5322
in a mail server, but no respectable free software does -- that's the
MUA's job).

If this was your server (and not some intermediate gateway), there
should be a log message for it.  Do you have access to the MTA logs on
your server?

So, it's possible but somewhat unlikely that the smtpds at the Mailman
host are mishandling the email (doing this *right* *at scale* is
hard).  But it's also possible that the member's MUA is busted, and is
using Content-Transfer-Encoding "8bit" (or worse, "7bit") where it
should be using "binary", The difference between binary and 8bit is
exactly passing control characters verbatim, and specifically allowing
the message composing agent to ignore line-length restrictions.  If
you have access to the message that got rejected in "source" or "raw"
form, you could check those things.

Also, some intermediate MTA may be busted and not requesting the
8BITMIME extension to SMTP, which is necessary to get some receivers
to relax the line length limitation.

Steve

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[Mailman-Users] Re: Error member gets when sending to one of my lists?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Mark Sapiro writes:

 > This issue  may be 
 > relevant.

qmail.org is currently contentless but still owned by Crynwr Software.
So I would guess Russ Nelson[1] has retired from supporting qmail.  If
you're still using qmail I would migrate off it asap (free advice,
worth what you paid for it).


Footnotes: 
[1]  Once an old buddy of mine, but we haven't communicated in ~ 2
decades so   But if he charges $200/hr, the service is worth twice
that.


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[Mailman-Users] Re: Cloudmark blacklist

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Jayson Smith writes:

 > What I mean is that I'd love to find a good, reliable smarthost I
 > can direct my SMTP server on my VPS to use.

You could try some of the services listed here:
Hosting: https://wiki.list.org/COM/Mailman%20hosting%20services
Consulting: https://wiki.list.org/COM/Mailman%20consulting%20services
They might have a better idea or offer exactly the service you want.

Otherwise, I think you kinda have to move your VPS to the service you
want to use, and on top of the monthlies for running a server they'll
charge you for email volume.  AWS SES for example is 10,000 emails for
$1 billed monthly, and there's a throughput charge as well but that
too is probably negligible unless you're mailing videos.  They do
promise an IP with a clean reputation and they bonk your neighbors
(and you) automatically for sending more than a tiny amount of spam,
so I'd expect it to stay that way.  FWIW 

 > The real problem I'm seeing is that seemingly within the last few
 > years, at least some VPS providers (Linode and Digital Ocean for
 > sure) have started getting entire IP ranges put on blocklists.

This is nothing new.  Effort-minimizing admins have been blocking
whole netblocks for well over a decade.  I think one new aspect is
that non-admins have borrowed the technique of mass-reporting to try
to shut down all aspects of an individual's or organization's Internet
presence.  I wouldn't block at the SMTP CONNECT level based on IP or
domain alone for the reasons you give for running your own smtpd, and
I doubt Google or Microsoft do.  But I know a lot of admins who do.

I don't know what to do about it.  I think my own server at my
university got on Microsoft's bad side once, but it got better fairly
quickly.  I did contact Microsoft but I don't know if it had anything
to do with getting off their blocklist, the only reply I got was a
'bot saying thank you for contacting Microsoft, check this link.  I
don't think they have their best minds working on the problem.
Instead they get customers by being too big to block, is my guess.

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[Mailman-Users] Re: Cloudmark blacklist

[Jayson Smith]

Hi,

Comcast/Charter (found out about that one Saturday night when trying to 
reply to a legit individual message) both reject the message as soon as 
a blocked server connects, you don't even get to say HELO. Microsoft, 
when they decide you're evil and put you on their internal blacklist, 
reject after Mail from:. I find these rejections quite annoying, because 
clearly this means their spam analytics software is missing out on a lot 
of details that could help them make a more informed decision about 
whether to accept the message. Are my SPF and DKIM in order? (Yes I know 
spammers can and probably often do also have good SPF and DKIM but it's 
just one factor.) Is the message to a valid recipient? Does the content 
look spammy, as whatever their AI systems are would define spammy? Does 
my sending domain have a good reputation with this provider? Am I 
sending to someone I've sent messages deemed non-spammy to in the past? 
Am I perhaps replying to a message from this person which their software 
can, if they choose to, objectively prove was sent to me through their 
servers by that person?


But oh no, if your IP is on one of the blacklists we check, we won't 
just consider that a factor in delivery decisions, this means you must 
be totally evil and we're not even going to let you talk to us at all, 
even if it was your evil neighbors that got your entire IP range on that 
list. Go away and don't come back until you've solved your spam problem 
that probably isn't even your problem. Goodbye!


Jayson

On 3/18/2024 8:54 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

Jayson Smith writes:

  > What I mean is that I'd love to find a good, reliable smarthost I
  > can direct my SMTP server on my VPS to use.

You could try some of the services listed here:
Hosting: https://wiki.list.org/COM/Mailman%20hosting%20services
Consulting: https://wiki.list.org/COM/Mailman%20consulting%20services
They might have a better idea or offer exactly the service you want.

Otherwise, I think you kinda have to move your VPS to the service you
want to use, and on top of the monthlies for running a server they'll
charge you for email volume.  AWS SES for example is 10,000 emails for
$1 billed monthly, and there's a throughput charge as well but that
too is probably negligible unless you're mailing videos.  They do
promise an IP with a clean reputation and they bonk your neighbors
(and you) automatically for sending more than a tiny amount of spam,
so I'd expect it to stay that way.  FWIW 

  > The real problem I'm seeing is that seemingly within the last few
  > years, at least some VPS providers (Linode and Digital Ocean for
  > sure) have started getting entire IP ranges put on blocklists.

This is nothing new.  Effort-minimizing admins have been blocking
whole netblocks for well over a decade.  I think one new aspect is
that non-admins have borrowed the technique of mass-reporting to try
to shut down all aspects of an individual's or organization's Internet
presence.  I wouldn't block at the SMTP CONNECT level based on IP or
domain alone for the reasons you give for running your own smtpd, and
I doubt Google or Microsoft do.  But I know a lot of admins who do.

I don't know what to do about it.  I think my own server at my
university got on Microsoft's bad side once, but it got better fairly
quickly.  I did contact Microsoft but I don't know if it had anything
to do with getting off their blocklist, the only reply I got was a
'bot saying thank you for contacting Microsoft, check this link.  I
don't think they have their best minds working on the problem.
Instead they get customers by being too big to block, is my guess.



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[Mailman-Users] Re: Cloudmark blacklist

[Dmitri Maziuk]

On 3/18/24 09:46, Jayson Smith wrote:

Hi,

Comcast/Charter (found out about that one Saturday night when trying to 
reply to a legit individual message) both reject the message as soon as 
a blocked server connects, you don't even get to say HELO. Microsoft, 
when they decide you're evil and put you on their internal blacklist, 
reject after Mail from:. I find these rejections quite annoying, because 
clearly this means their spam analytics software is missing out on a lot 
of details that could help them make a more informed decision about 
whether to accept the message.


That's the point of rejecting on HELO: you don't download megabytes of 
content and waste CPU cycles trying to make sense of it. It's a 
feature-not-a-bug.


Dima

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[Mailman-Users] Re: Error member gets when sending to one of my lists?

[Mark Sapiro]

On 3/18/24 00:55, Odhiambo Washington wrote:


Ah. I thought they were running MM2.



A very reasonable thought considering this is a Mailman 2 support list.

Also, as Steve points out, the error probably doesn't come from LMTP 
runner(aiosmtpd) which issues a different message.


--
Mark Sapiro The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, Californiabetter use your sense - B. Dylan

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