[colug-432] Emailing COLUG list

[Rob Stampfli]

On Thu, Oct 08, 2009 at 12:29:05PM -0400, R P Herrold wrote:
> There was an interval where gmail was reacting differently to 
> the delays and retries to the greylisting we use, which caused 
> many desubscribes for people using gmail provided services.

I can understand why gmail's antics would prevent a post from
gmail from making it through to the list, but why would gmail's
crazy retries result in desubscribes?

> The executive summary is: google was hammering a single 
> mailserver from multiple IP's and giving up in short order on 
> delivering email.

I realize this is going to be unpopular because it involves work,
but it could be automated and I'm willing to provide the script
if you are willing:  Why not extract the membership lists from
your mailing lists and formulate a grey-milter exception for
these addresses?  Yes, I know that the purist will blanch at the
suggestion because email addresses can be forged, but the reality
is that they hardly ever are forged for the purpose of sending
spam to lists.  (Yet!)

Another alternative would be to simply whitelist the domain
"gmail.com".  I suppose it is conceivable that someone could
put establish an rDNS record to impersonate gmail, but I'm also
fairly confident Google would make quick work of them if they
did.

Sometimes it's easier to plow around the stumps.

Rob