Hello, Today I encountered a very weird issue which I'm not sure how to summarize, so I'll just go through the sequence of events. This morning a user reported that one of their posts to a moderated list seemed to just disappear, with no error message, no moderation mail, nothing appearing in the moderation queue when they checked in the web UI. The problem was reproduceible on multiple attempts. Looking at the logs for the relevant times, I saw this in /var/log/mailman/smtp-failure:
May 19 09:55:58 2020 (15631) All recipients refused: {'vice': (550, '5.7.1 Command rejected')}, msgid: <mailman.XXXX> May 19 09:55:58 2020 (15631) delivery to vice failed with code 550: 5.7.1 Command rejected
"vice" (with no @domain) is obviously not a valid email address, and it wasn't clear where it was coming from, but a clue was that that word appeared as the first word of the sender name (not the actual address), i.e. in the format: "Vice Something Or Other, etc" <address@domain.com>
After some trial and error, we eventually figured out that if we massaged the sender name into a format that did not include the quote marks (which it looks like Thunderbird inserts automatically if the name includes a comma), then the mail would go through and hit the moderation queue successfully.
This issue appears to affect only this one particular list - other lists (managed by the same user, using the same email client) don't seem to have the issue. I compared the sender filters and content filters between the list and another list that doesn't have the issue, and didn't see any relevant-seeming differences between them.
Any ideas what would be causing this?
Running mailman 2.1.9
Kevin Bowen kevin.t.bowen@gmail.com <kevin@ucsd.edu>
On 5/19/20 4:16 PM, Kevin Bowen wrote:
Hello, Today I encountered a very weird issue which I'm not sure how to summarize, so I'll just go through the sequence of events. This morning a user reported that one of their posts to a moderated list seemed to just disappear, with no error message, no moderation mail, nothing appearing in the moderation queue when they checked in the web UI. The problem was reproduceible on multiple attempts. Looking at the logs for the relevant times, I saw this in /var/log/mailman/smtp-failure:
May 19 09:55:58 2020 (15631) All recipients refused: {'vice': (550, '5.7.1 Command rejected')}, msgid: <mailman.XXXX> May 19 09:55:58 2020 (15631) delivery to vice failed with code 550: 5.7.1 Command rejected
What's in the MTA's logs for this?
Note that the above smtp-failure messages seem to be for a notice from Mailman back to the sender, and not for delivery from the sender to the list.
"vice" (with no @domain) is obviously not a valid email address, and it wasn't clear where it was coming from, but a clue was that that word appeared as the first word of the sender name (not the actual address), i.e. in the format: "Vice Something Or Other, etc" <address@domain.com>
After some trial and error, we eventually figured out that if we massaged the sender name into a format that did not include the quote marks (which it looks like Thunderbird inserts automatically if the name includes a comma), then the mail would go through and hit the moderation queue successfully.
Actually, this seems backwards to me. If the address with the comma and quoted display name seems correct (a comma in a display name MUST be quoted.
If it were not quoted as in
Vice Something Or Other, etc <address@domain.com>
it would be two email addresses
Vice Something Or Other
and
etc <address@domain.com>
And Mailman would actually pick the first one as the sender which would result in the address 'Vice'
This issue appears to affect only this one particular list - other lists (managed by the same user, using the same email client) don't seem to have the issue. I compared the sender filters and content filters between the list and another list that doesn't have the issue, and didn't see any relevant-seeming differences between them.
Any ideas what would be causing this?
Maybe the above explains why Mailman would be sending to 'vice' but it doesn't explain what happened to the original message, or why only one list is affected.
Running mailman 2.1.9
Really?
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
Note that the above smtp-failure messages seem to be for a notice from Mailman back to the sender, and not for delivery from the sender to the list.
Yes.
Actually, this seems backwards to me. ...
Yes, I know it seems counterintuitive, but that's the behavior I'm seeing - the issue is triggered by a sender name which includes any character which causes Thunderbird to automatically surround it in quotes - at least, that's how it displays it in the GUI, I can't see under the hood to know what it's actually including in the SMTP transaction. I would think it was a Thunderbird bug with not actually enclosing the name in quotes in the SMTP transaction, except that the user reports that it only affects this one list, despite using the same client for other lists.
Running mailman 2.1.9 Really?
Yes, unfortunately. It's an end of life service that my management has decided not to upgrade since we're theoretically going to be migrating to a cloud hosted service soon.
What's in the MTA's logs for this?
Here are the inbound MTA logs from around the time of one of the failed attempts. For outbound we use a cloud hosted service, which I don't have the logs for - I could potentially get those logs, but I don't think they'd tell us anything we don't already know since we can see from the mailman logs that the outbound SMTP server is rejecting the mail due to it being addressed to the invalid address "vice".
May 19 14:56:05 announce sendmail[20291]: STARTTLS=server, relay= mx0b-0016e101.pphosted.com [148.163.141.31], version=TLSv1/SSLv3, verify=OK, cipher=AES256-SHA, bits=256/256 May 19 14:56:05 announce sendmail[20291]: 04JLu4ec020291: from=<>, size=45467, class=0, nrcpts=1, msgid=< 202005192146.04JJVlBh014139@mx0b-0016e101.pphosted.com>, proto=ESMTP, daemon=MTA, relay=mx0b-0016e101.pphosted.com [148.163.141.31] May 19 14:56:10 announce sendmail[20307]: 04JLu4ec020291: to="|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman bounces all-official-l", ctladdr=< all-official-l-bounces@announce.redacted.com> (8/0), delay=00:00:05, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=prog, pri=165467, dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent May 19 14:56:25 announce sendmail[20337]: STARTTLS=server, relay= mx0a-0016e101.pphosted.com [148.163.145.30], version=TLSv1/SSLv3, verify=OK, cipher=AES256-SHA, bits=256/256 May 19 14:56:25 announce sendmail[20337]: 04JLuNQN020337: from=<>, size=8359, class=0, nrcpts=1, msgid=< 202005192155.04JLt91u003417@mx0a-0016e101.pphosted.com>, proto=ESMTP, daemon=MTA, relay=mx0a-0016e101.pphosted.com [148.163.145.30] May 19 14:56:40 announce sendmail[20370]: STARTTLS=server, relay= mx0a-0016e101.pphosted.com [148.163.145.30], version=TLSv1/SSLv3, verify=OK, cipher=AES256-SHA, bits=256/256 May 19 14:56:40 announce sendmail[20370]: 04JLucCj020370: from=< adminrec@redacted.com>, size=8540, class=0, nrcpts=1, msgid=< 6bb38def-fdf0-3662-715f-572193d378de@redacted.com>, proto=ESMTP, daemon=MTA, relay=mx0a-0016e101.pphosted.com [148.163.145.30] May 19 14:57:01 announce sendmail[20441]: 04JLuNQN020337: to="|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman bounces all-official-l", ctladdr=< all-official-l-bounces@announce.redacted.com> (8/0), delay=00:00:36, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=prog, pri=128359, dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent May 19 14:57:01 announce sendmail[20447]: 04JLucCj020370: to="|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman post all-official-l", ctladdr=< all-official-l@announce.redacted.com> (8/0), delay=00:00:21, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=prog, pri=128540, dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent May 19 14:57:24 announce sendmail[20506]: STARTTLS=server, relay= mx0a-0016e101.pphosted.com [148.163.145.30], version=TLSv1/SSLv3, verify=OK, cipher=AES256-SHA, bits=256/256 May 19 14:57:25 announce sendmail[20506]: 04JLvN1N020506: from=<>, size=45236, class=0, nrcpts=1, msgid=< 202005192148.04JL1Lda007930@mx0a-0016e101.pphosted.com>, proto=ESMTP, daemon=MTA, relay=mx0a-0016e101.pphosted.com [148.163.145.30] May 19 14:58:01 announce sendmail[20686]: 04JLvN1N020506: to="|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman bounces all-official-l", ctladdr=< all-official-l-bounces@announce.redacted.com> (8/0), delay=00:00:37, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=prog, pri=165236, dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent
Kevin Bowen kevin.t.bowen@gmail.com <kevin@ucsd.edu>
On Tue, May 19, 2020 at 5:56 PM Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> wrote:
On 5/19/20 4:16 PM, Kevin Bowen wrote:
Hello, Today I encountered a very weird issue which I'm not sure how to summarize, so I'll just go through the sequence of events. This morning a user reported that one of their posts to a moderated list seemed to just disappear, with no error message, no moderation mail, nothing appearing in the moderation queue when they checked in the web UI. The problem was reproduceible on multiple attempts. Looking at the logs for the relevant times, I saw this in /var/log/mailman/smtp-failure:
May 19 09:55:58 2020 (15631) All recipients refused: {'vice': (550, '5.7.1 Command rejected')}, msgid: <mailman.XXXX> May 19 09:55:58 2020 (15631) delivery to vice failed with code 550: 5.7.1 Command rejected
What's in the MTA's logs for this?
Note that the above smtp-failure messages seem to be for a notice from Mailman back to the sender, and not for delivery from the sender to the list.
"vice" (with no @domain) is obviously not a valid email address, and it wasn't clear where it was coming from, but a clue was that that word appeared as the first word of the sender name (not the actual address), i.e. in the format: "Vice Something Or Other, etc" <address@domain.com>
After some trial and error, we eventually figured out that if we massaged the sender name into a format that did not include the quote marks (which it looks like Thunderbird inserts automatically if the name includes a comma), then the mail would go through and hit the moderation queue successfully.
Actually, this seems backwards to me. If the address with the comma and quoted display name seems correct (a comma in a display name MUST be quoted.
If it were not quoted as in
Vice Something Or Other, etc <address@domain.com>
it would be two email addresses
Vice Something Or Other
and
etc <address@domain.com>
And Mailman would actually pick the first one as the sender which would result in the address 'Vice'
This issue appears to affect only this one particular list - other lists (managed by the same user, using the same email client) don't seem to have the issue. I compared the sender filters and content filters between the list and another list that doesn't have the issue, and didn't see any relevant-seeming differences between them.
Any ideas what would be causing this?
Maybe the above explains why Mailman would be sending to 'vice' but it doesn't explain what happened to the original message, or why only one list is affected.
Running mailman 2.1.9
Really?
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
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On 5/20/20 9:01 AM, Kevin Bowen wrote:
Actually, this seems backwards to me. ...
Yes, I know it seems counterintuitive, but that's the behavior I'm seeing - the issue is triggered by a sender name which includes any character which causes Thunderbird to automatically surround it in quotes - at least, that's how it displays it in the GUI, I can't see under the hood to know what it's actually including in the SMTP transaction. I would think it was a Thunderbird bug with not actually enclosing the name in quotes in the SMTP transaction, except that the user reports that it only affects this one list, despite using the same client for other lists.
You (or the user) can view the raw message in Tbird's Sent folder with ctrl-U (or View -> Message Source or More -> View Source). Of course this won't show what the user's outbound MTA does to it.
Here are the inbound MTA logs from around the time of one of the failed attempts. For outbound we use a cloud hosted service, which I don't have the logs for - I could potentially get those logs, but I don't think they'd tell us anything we don't already know since we can see from the mailman logs that the outbound SMTP server is rejecting the mail due to it being addressed to the invalid address "vice".
The only ones of interest are the incoming post to the list which are these (the others are all bounces):
May 19 14:56:40 announce sendmail[20370]: STARTTLS=server, relay= mx0a-0016e101.pphosted.com [148.163.145.30], version=TLSv1/SSLv3, verify=OK, cipher=AES256-SHA, bits=256/256
May 19 14:56:40 announce sendmail[20370]: 04JLucCj020370: from=< adminrec@redacted.com>, size=8540, class=0, nrcpts=1, msgid=< 6bb38def-fdf0-3662-715f-572193d378de@redacted.com>, proto=ESMTP, daemon=MTA, relay=mx0a-0016e101.pphosted.com [148.163.145.30]
May 19 14:57:01 announce sendmail[20447]: 04JLucCj020370: to="|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman post all-official-l", ctladdr=< all-official-l@announce.redacted.com> (8/0), delay=00:00:21, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=prog, pri=128540, dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent
However, these show only the envelope sender <adminrec@redacted.com> and not the From:
I suspect that the issue you are seeing and the fact that it only affects this one list are due to the fact that for some reason, Mailman is doing something with the post and trying to notify the sender, and all you see is the bounce of the notice.
For other list's the post is accepted and delivered and there is nothing that requires notice to the sender.
My first thought that this was an auto-discard, but that doesn't notify the user, so it is still a mystery as to what happens to the post itself since you say nothing appears in the moderation queue? Have you checked Mailman's error log?
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
participants (2)
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Kevin Bowen -
Mark Sapiro