Mail server problems again?
Cadbury Moose
Brutish Telecon doing greylisting against Demon, or something
else. (Needless to say, this moose has no diagnostics other than
the mail headers that showed a 2.5 day gap in the handoff from
Demon to Yeehaa!/BT - other mail sent to the same recipient
arrived OK.
On t'other hoof, Incoming email from Yeehaa! has vanished
without trace.
Furrfu!
Cadbury.
--
Cron Flakes: the breakfast cereal that _keeps_ you regular.
ni...@nyarrow.demon.co.uk
> Demon appears to be delaying/losing mail again. This might be
> Brutish Telecon doing greylisting against Demon, or something
Same problem here. Two emails returned undelivered yesterday because
Yahoo appears to be blocking Demon emails. Another delayed by some
days. As with you, problem emails going to BT email addresses.
Nick
Tony Quinn
<ple...@do.not.spam.the.moose> writes
>Demon appears to be delaying/losing mail again. This might be
>Brutish Telecon doing greylisting against Demon, or something
>else. (Needless to say, this moose has no diagnostics other than
>the mail headers that showed a 2.5 day gap in the handoff from
>Demon to Yeehaa!/BT - other mail sent to the same recipient
>arrived OK.
On a couple of mailing lists that I subscribe to the BT internet people
have been having all sorts of issues for a few days now. These include
mails disappearing, long delays and multiple deliveries.
There seem to be issues with the BT/Yahoo servers, which apparently
surfaced just after some "work" was done.
--
I'm just waiting for the day that someone decides that "ignorant moron" is
an ethnic group, and thus cannot be discriminated against.
Cadbury Moose
>
> In message <49A9D3...@do.not.spam.the.moose>, Cadbury Moose
> <ple...@do.not.spam.the.moose> writes
> >Demon appears to be delaying/losing mail again. This might be
> >Brutish Telecon doing greylisting against Demon, or something
> >else. (Needless to say, this moose has no diagnostics other than
> >the mail headers that showed a 2.5 day gap in the handoff from
> >Demon to Yeehaa!/BT - other mail sent to the same recipient
> >arrived OK.
>
> On a couple of mailing lists that I subscribe to the BT
> internet people have been having all sorts of issues for
> a few days now. These include
> mails disappearing, long delays and multiple deliveries.
>
> There seem to be issues with the BT/Yahoo servers, which apparently
> surfaced just after some "work" was done.
It is. here's one of the rejection messages:
SMTP error from remote mail server after initial connection:
host mx1.bt.mail.yahoo.com [217.146.188.189]:
421 4.7.0 [TS01] Messages from 195.173.77.133 temporarily deferred
due to user complaints - 4.16.55.1; see
http://postmaster.yahoo.com/421-ts01.html:
retry timeout exceeded
What is happening is that the Demon mail clusterfuck retries from a
different IP address each time, so the greylisting causes it to go
roundandroundandround until it either retries from an already tried
(and non-expired) greylisted address, or it times out at Demon.
I also think the Demon spamfilter is playing up again (either that
or the botnets are coming back online) as there's a lot of Make Penis
Fast spam turning up at Moose Central. This may be (backscatter)
the cause of the BT/Yahoo greylisting (or not).
Either way, I've had enough and a mail migration is on the cards.
Cadbury.
--
"There are some complaints that money can't buy. For everything else,
there's BastardCard. Accepted everywhere, especially with mallets."
-- Inquisitor in nan-ae
Ian Dalgleish
btinternet.com addresses.
The emails take 3 or 4 days to arrive or get lost in the ether
somewhere.
Ian
Roy Brown
<i...@methyl.demon.co.uk> writes
It was their end.
<URL:http://help.btinternet.com/yahoo/help/servicestatus/0,8411,Narrowban
d_0_5_BTY_Home,00.html>
Supposed to be fixed now.
In general, if your outgoing mail is working to all ISPs save one, then
first suspect a problem at that ISP, rather than some strange quirk in
which Demon has unilaterally taken against that ISP.
(By all means suspect that second, though)
--
Roy Brown 'Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be
Kelmscott Ltd useful, or believe to be beautiful' William Morris
Cadbury Moose
>
> In message <090320091024405026%i...@methyl.demon.co.uk>, Ian Dalgleish
> <i...@methyl.demon.co.uk> writes
> >I've had problems with emails sent from my Demon address to
> >btinternet.com addresses.
> >The emails take 3 or 4 days to arrive or get lost in the ether
> >somewhere.
> >
> >Ian
>
> It was their end.
>
> <URL:http://help.btinternet.com/yahoo/help/servicestatus/0,8411,Narrowban
> d_0_5_BTY_Home,00.html>
>
> Supposed to be fixed now.
>
> In general, if your outgoing mail is working to all ISPs save one, then
> first suspect a problem at that ISP, rather than some strange quirk in
> which Demon has unilaterally taken against that ISP.
>
> (By all means suspect that second, though)
You have it backwards, it's mail _FROM_ Demon _TO_ Brutish Telecon that
isn't working properly (due to BT/Yahoo greylisting Demon because of
complaints of spam from Demon reported by Yahoo! customers, apparently,
plus the way Demon retries the greylisted mail from different servers).
Cadbury. (Transitioning my mail to somewhere more reliable.)
James Hoddinott
[snip]
> You have it backwards, it's mail _FROM_ Demon _TO_ Brutish Telecon that
> isn't working properly (due to BT/Yahoo greylisting Demon because of
> complaints of spam from Demon reported by Yahoo! customers, apparently,
s/complaints of spam/complaints/
Its being being looked into.
> plus the way Demon retries the greylisted mail from different servers).
We don't do that.
--
James Hoddinott
Manager, Network Abuse Team, THUS, a Cable&Wireless business
Roy Brown
<ple...@do.not.spam.the.moose> writes
>Roy Brown wrote:
>>
>> In message <090320091024405026%i...@methyl.demon.co.uk>, Ian Dalgleish
>> <i...@methyl.demon.co.uk> writes
>> >I've had problems with emails sent from my Demon address to
>> >btinternet.com addresses.
>> >The emails take 3 or 4 days to arrive or get lost in the ether
>> >somewhere.
>> >
>> >Ian
>>
>> It was their end.
>>
>> <URL:http://help.btinternet.com/yahoo/help/servicestatus/0,8411,Narrowban
>> d_0_5_BTY_Home,00.html>
>>
>> Supposed to be fixed now.
>>
>> In general, if your outgoing mail is working to all ISPs save one, then
>> first suspect a problem at that ISP, rather than some strange quirk in
>> which Demon has unilaterally taken against that ISP.
>>
>> (By all means suspect that second, though)
>
>You have it backwards, it's mail _FROM_ Demon _TO_ Brutish Telecon that
>isn't working properly
No, at that URL, entry 3rd March 2009 - 'We are currently investigating
a problem with our mail servers, affecting the sending and receiving of
email.'
Note the 'and receiving'.
> (due to BT/Yahoo greylisting Demon because of
>complaints of spam from Demon reported by Yahoo! customers, apparently,
I'll bow to James Hoddinott, who is looking at this, but:-
(i) do we know that BT/Yahoo use greylisting?
(ii) do we think they would be stupid enough to greylist Demon without
consultation[1]?
(iii) if they are greylisting, do we know that it is Demon responding
incorrectly, rather than BT/Yahoo operating it incorrectly?
>plus the way Demon retries the greylisted mail from different servers).
Would arguably breach the relevant RFC, besides defeating the purpose of
the recognisable 'second send'.
>Cadbury. (Transitioning my mail to somewhere more reliable.)
Somebody remind me again what it is about Demon's mail handling that
seems to get everybody tarred with the same 'spam' brush, why this
doesn't happen on other ISPs (or does it?), and why Demon don't change
their arrangements accordingly?
[1] I suppose 'yes'. As they are stupid enough to be thinking of
introducing Phorm.....
Jim Crowther
>Somebody remind me again what it is about Demon's mail handling that
>seems to get everybody tarred with the same 'spam' brush, why this
>doesn't happen on other ISPs (or does it?),
It does occasionally, even with 'the best'. Usually smarthosts are only
tarred with the 'spam' brush by the bigger, thicker and more
uncommunicative ISPs. Hotmail used to be particularly bad at doing
this, and used to drop the email silently. They've sharpened up their
act it seems over the last year.
--
Jim Crowther
Jeff Gaines
>(i) do we know that BT/Yahoo use greylisting?
Yes.
>(ii) do we think they would be stupid enough to greylist Demon without
>consultation[1]?
Yes, and not just Demon.
>Somebody remind me again what it is about Demon's mail handling that seems
>to get everybody tarred with the same 'spam' brush, why this doesn't
>happen on other ISPs (or does it?), and why Demon don't change their
>arrangements accordingly?
There's nothing special about Demon's mail handling. BT/Yahoo have a very
aggressive spam process that other ISP's despair of. Mail from my own
domain was black listed by BT/Yahoo a couple of days ago, it sorts itself
out after an hour or so.
--
Jeff Gaines Damerham Hampshire UK
There are 10 types of people in the world, those who do binary and those
who don't.
Wm...
<Roy_now_fre...@acanthus.demon.co.uk>
>seems to get everybody tarred with the same 'spam' brush, why this
^^^^
You called? Oops probably a wrong number :0
--
Wm...
Reply-To: address valid for at least 7 days
Chris Bell
<URL:mailto:tcn...@blackhole.do-not-spam.me.uk> wrote:
> Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:26:40 <gWu+8VWgintJFwCF@x.x> demon.service Roy Brown
> <Roy_now_fre...@acanthus.demon.co.uk>
>
> >seems to get everybody tarred with the same 'spam' brush, why this
> ^^^^
> You called? Oops probably a wrong number :0
>
What do you think is wrong with that? Even the correct spelling (I have
just double checked in the Oxford Dictionary).
--
Chris Bell
Microsoft sells you Windows ... Linux gives you the whole house.
www.overview.demon.co.uk
Roy Brown
<postm...@127.0.0.1> writes
>In article <a$5g2w2qXotJFwXS@[127.0.0.1]>, Wm...
><URL:mailto:tcn...@blackhole.do-not-spam.me.uk> wrote:
>> Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:26:40 <gWu+8VWgintJFwCF@x.x> demon.service Roy Brown
>> <Roy_now_fre...@acanthus.demon.co.uk>
>>
>> >seems to get everybody tarred with the same 'spam' brush, why this
>> ^^^^
>> You called? Oops probably a wrong number :0
>>
>
> What do you think is wrong with that? Even the correct spelling (I have
>just double checked in the Oxford Dictionary).
>
(Which Turnpike refuses to believe is spelt correctly, and offers me 19
alternatives.
Is this a record?)
Cadbury Moose
>
> Cadbury Moose wrote:
> [snip]
> > You have it backwards, it's mail _FROM_ Demon _TO_ Brutish Telecon that
> > isn't working properly (due to BT/Yahoo greylisting Demon because of
> > complaints of spam from Demon reported by Yahoo! customers, apparently,
>
> s/complaints of spam/complaints/
>
> Its being being looked into.
Is that why mail has excreted bricks today?
> > plus the way Demon retries the greylisted mail from different servers).
>
> We don't do that.
Unless you have changed the way your mail cluster(f**k) operates in the
last couple of years, I disagree. Observe:
-------------
On 2007-03-23 at 13:44 +0000, redacted wrote:
> Well, that seems to demonstrate how good Demon is at retrying, doesn't it?
>
> Sent: 19th February
> NDR: 23rd March
>
> Furrfu!
The only difference between your response and mine is that I didn't
abbreviate it.
Okay, 194.217.242.0/24 whitelisted. Of course, normally I whitelist
either private boxes or really big providers who have pools of addresses
which retries can come from. Not just ISPs who don't do their retrying
properly.
I really need to get around to nuking old mail logs automatically; glad
now that I didn't:
% fgrep heresiarch mainlog-200*
mainlog-20070219:2007-02-19 10:54:01 H=anchor-post-33.mail.demon.net
[194.217.242.91]:2125 F=<postm...@heresiarch.demon.co.uk> temporarily
rejected RCPT <redacted>: greylisted
mainlog-20070219:2007-02-19 10:54:01 H=anchor-post-33.mail.demon.net
[194.217.242.91]:2125 incomplete transaction (QUIT) from
<postm...@heresiarch.demon.co.uk>
mainlog-20070323:2007-03-23 13:39:00 H=anchor-fallback-93.mail.demon.net
[194.217.242.93]:52437 F=<postm...@heresiarch.demon.co.uk> temporarily
rejected RCPT <redacted>: greylisted
mainlog-20070323:2007-03-23 13:39:00 H=anchor-fallback-93.mail.demon.net
[194.217.242.93]:52437 incomplete transaction (QUIT) from
<postm...@heresiarch.demon.co.uk>
mainlog-20070323:2007-03-23 13:44:52 H=anchor-post-34.mail.demon.net
[194.217.242.92]:1047 F=<postm...@heresiarch.demon.co.uk> temporarily
rejected RCPT <redacted>: greylisted
mainlog-20070323:2007-03-23 13:44:52 H=anchor-post-34.mail.demon.net
[194.217.242.92]:1047 incomplete transaction (QUIT) from
<postm...@heresiarch.demon.co.uk>
mainlog-20070323:2007-03-23 13:47:23 H=anchor-fallback-94.mail.demon.net
[194.217.242.94]:36121 F=<postm...@heresiarch.demon.co.uk> temporarily
rejected RCPT <redacted>: greylisted
mainlog-20070323:2007-03-23 13:47:23 H=anchor-fallback-94.mail.demon.net
[194.217.242.94]:36121 incomplete transaction (QUIT) from
<postm...@heresiarch.demon.co.uk>
mainlog-20070323:2007-03-23 14:56:56 1HUlCJ-000Iem-Sb <=
postm...@heresiarch.demon.co.uk H=anchor-fallback-94.mail.demon.net
[194.217.242.94]:47108 P=esmtp S=8113
id=E1HUk4X-...@pr-webmail-2.demon.net for redacted
mainlog-20070323:2007-03-23 14:57:00 1HUlCJ-000Iem-Sb => redacted
<redacted> F=<postm...@heresiarch.demon.co.uk> R=dnslookup
T=remote_smtp H=redacted [2001:828:301:1::1] C="250 OK
id=1HUlCO-000IG9-E0" QT=5s DT=4s
> Diagnostic texts:
> expired after 4 days, problem was:
Hrm. Which planet's rotation are they using for defining a day?
-------------
That was the 'stuck mailserver' problem from a couple of years ago, but
it illustrates my point: retries come from *different* IP addresses than
the one that made the original delivery attempt. Greylisting does NOT
play nice with this behavior.
Cadbury.
Cadbury Moose
>
> I'll bow to James Hoddinott, who is looking at this, but:-
>
> (i) do we know that BT/Yahoo use greylisting?
Yes.
> (ii) do we think they would be stupid enough to greylist
> Demon without consultation[1]?
Not just "yes", but "HELL, YES!".
> (iii) if they are greylisting, do we know that it is Demon
> responding incorrectly, rather than BT/Yahoo operating
> it incorrectly?
A difference that makes no difference _is_ no difference.
> >plus the way Demon retries the greylisted mail from different
> >servers).
>
> Would arguably breach the relevant RFC, besides defeating
> the purpose of the recognisable 'second send'.
You know that, I know that. They apparently don't know that,
or didn't, two years ago (see other post in which several
different IP addresses were used to retry the same message).
> >Cadbury. (Transitioning my mail to somewhere more reliable.)
>
> Somebody remind me again what it is about Demon's mail handling that
> seems to get everybody tarred with the same 'spam' brush, why this
> doesn't happen on other ISPs (or does it?), and why Demon don't change
> their arrangements accordingly?
It's probably backscatter. The botnets appear to be back, Cloudmark
is doing its usual piss-poor job of filtering the Make Penis Fast
mails, and I suspect some of it had forged BT or Yahoo addresses
as the originator.
> [1] I suppose 'yes'. As they are stupid enough to be thinking of
> introducing Phorm.....
They don't care, they don't have to, they're the phone company.
Cadbury. (Who has just discovered he needs to upgrade to something
that supports SMTP-Auth, bugrit.)
James Hoddinott
> James Hoddinott wrote:
>> Cadbury Moose wrote:
>> [snip]
>>> You have it backwards, it's mail _FROM_ Demon _TO_ Brutish Telecon that
>>> isn't working properly (due to BT/Yahoo greylisting Demon because of
>>> complaints of spam from Demon reported by Yahoo! customers, apparently,
>> s/complaints of spam/complaints/
>>
>> Its being being looked into.
>
> Is that why mail has excreted bricks today?
No, that was a separate problem, something that is hopefully fixed at
the time of writing (yours and another posting in the thread about that
suggest it is).
>>> plus the way Demon retries the greylisted mail from different servers).
>> We don't do that.
>
> Unless you have changed the way your mail cluster(f**k) operates in the
> last couple of years, I disagree. Observe:
The current platform is new and doesn't include the old 'fallbacks'
which were a necessary means to an end at the time (even they went
through various numbers of configuration changes to improve on things
like greylisting and different servers).
[snip rest]
Bruce Goatly
> Cadbury. (Who has just discovered he needs to upgrade to something
> that supports SMTP-Auth, bugrit.)
Millennium hand and shrimp.
--
Bruce
Anthony
<ple...@do.not.spam.the.moose> wrote:
> Cadbury. (Who has just discovered he needs to upgrade to something
> that supports SMTP-Auth, bugrit.)
I'm communicating now by SIP message over IPv6oSN on Facebook. It works
well.
--
Anthony
ant...@catfish.demon.co.uk
Cadbury Moose
Unfortunately someone appears to have nailed it to the counter.
(Probably a damned cheesemonger.)
Eudora is about to be dragged into the century of the fruitbat,
I have no doubt that this is going to suck very hard indeed,
and will induce a severe attack of user interface loathing.
Cadbury.
dnya...@googlemail.com
has returned. I sent an email yesterday early afternoon and as of
today ( 20 March 8am) it does not appear to have been delivered.
Ian Dalgleish
<00d50564-363e-4b9f...@t3g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>,
<dnya...@googlemail.com> wrote:
Yes, that's happening to me again too.
An email sent to a btinternet.com address, with an attachment, has not
arrived. An email sent to the same address, without the attachment,
*did* arrive. Work that one out!
Ian.
Cadbury Moose
This moose reckons it's BT/Yeehaa! misbehaving this time, as email
to btinternet.com that went nowhere near Demon has been delayed up
to 6 hours. It was quite small email, too.