Re: [Nmh-workers] Emails being tagged as spam -- NMH solution???

[Bob Carragher]

Apologies to Ken and others who replied to this a week ago!  Last
week turned into a very busy week for me.  B-(

Also, I posted this using Ken's suggestion of send(1) below, while
connected to a different ISP than mine (Comcast), so ... success!!
Thank you for this much, Ken!!!



On Sat, 21 Feb 2015 23:25:52 -0500 Ken Hornstein <address@hidden> sez:

> >Good question.  I'm assuming it's because of the different sender
> >domain versus From: domain because friends have warned me that
> >their mailer is popping up a "this email might not have been sent
> >by address@hidden" warnings.  I also see something similar
> >when GMail tags my own messages (that I've Cc-ed myself on).
> 
> Yeah, based on what Oliver said, I think my first guess was wrong;
> you're almost certainly being tripped up by the SPF rules gmail is
> using.

I'm guessing that this might be a good document for me to become
familiar with:

     http://www.openspf.org/FAQ/Common_mistakes

> >Is there a better domain to use?
> 
> Well, I was thinking that probably you should just let someone else
> add the message-id, or create your own (see send(1) and the -msgid and
> -messageid options), but really, I think submitting directly to gmail
> is better.

Submitting directly makes sense to me.  I just never thought I had
the ability to do so, and had to rely on going through my ISP's
mail servers to "legitimize" my email.  (Thus, when I'm not
connected to my ISP, I post emails using GMail's web interface,
which is a real pain in the ass since I compose them using vim and
must then copy-and-paste component-by-component for each message.)

> >Comcast is my ISP, but I don't want sendmail thinking that
> >another Comcast user's email address (e.g. address@hidden)
> >is a local address, trying (and failing) to send email to a
> >non-existent user on my computer.  I also don't want the Sender:
> >address that would be generated (address@hidden) to be seen as a
> >possible address for mailers to send replies to (see below).
> 
> Ah, okay. post(8) will no longer create a Sender: header for what it
> THINKS (and frequently got wrong ) is the email address as of 1.5.  So
> that should not be a concern anymore.

Thanks for pointing that out!  I hadn't noticed that before, but
a quick grep through my outbox shows that a Sender: field hasn't
been inserted into my email headers since around the time I
upgraded to 1.5.  (I did that while I was away from my ISP, so the
last such altered email was from before the trip.)

> >Not needing to use Sendmail would probably be a godsend for me,
> >as I obviously don't understand it or how to correctly set it up!
> >I can try this and see if I'm successful.
> >
> >Could you point me to a man page, or maybe NMH archives that I
> >could read to experiment?
> 
> I think you should look at send(1), specifically the following
> options:
> 
>       -server
>       -port
>       -tls
>       -sasl
>       -user
> 
> If your mts.conf has a setting of "sendmail/smtp" or
> "sendmail/pipe" for "mts", you can temporarily override that
> via the -mts switch (you want smtp for the MTS).

Nope, I'm using the default mts.conf file, which specifies
sendmail for the MTS:

     # grep mts /etc/nmh/mts.conf 
     mts: sendmail

This has not changed since the first time I configured MH on my
own computer (as opposed to letting *real* sysadmins do it), so,
for at least 15 years.

What program do I use -mts with?  It is not a valid option for
send(1), at least with version 1.5:

     % send -draft -snoop -server smtp.gmail.com -port 587 -tls -sasl -user 
dnc2dnc
     send: -mts unknown

(I was able to test the above -- successfully, at least in that
I was able to send email, though I don't know if it appears
spammy to recipients other than me -- by editing the
/etc/nmh/mts.conf file to specify "smtp" for the "mts" value,
setting up a ~/.netrc file for my GMail account, and then using
send(1) with the above switches.)

Also, while I can specify a server in the /etc/nhm/mts.conf file,
I cannot specify a port.  Is there some way to do so without
needing to explicitly call send(1) with those options?  I couldn't
find anything I could use in ~/.mh_profile, or another user-level
config file, or environment variables.  So right now I'm doing the
following for each message instead of just using comp(1):

     % vim Mail/draft
     % send -draft -snoop -server smtp.gmail.com -port 587 -tls -sasl -user 
dnc2dnc

Is the answer to all the above questions/problems, "Upgrade to
version 1.6?"  B-)

> Ralph pointed you this web page:
> 
> https://support.google.com/mail/troubleshooter/1668960?hl=en#ts=1665119,1665162
> 
> Which should point you in the right direction.  You can also
> add -snoop to see what is actually being exchanged between you
> and the gmail servers.  I just want to caution you up front ...
> if, for instance, you run into problems and you want to post
> the output from -snoop, you should be careful as some of the
> exchanges can expose your password (it will be base64 encoded,
> but anyone can undo that).

Thanks for that warning!  I never would've guessed that from my
cursory read of the -snoop output!

I looked at the page Ralph pointed me to, and the key bit of it
should be this:

     Standard configuration instructions:
     Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server - requires TLS or SSL:   smtp.gmail.com
                                                          Use Authentication: 
Yes
                                                          Port for 
TLS/STARTTLS: 587
                                                          Port for SSL: 465

The SMTP server and TLS/STARTTLS port information worked for me.

                                Bob