My PHP app is now sending mail via Exim just fine to everywhere but Gmail.

Weirdly, if I send to Gmail via the command line, like

the message arrives promptly in the inbox.

BUT

When my PHP app sends a message to Gmail, their servers appear (based on the Exim logfile) to accept the message without error, but the message never arrives in the inbox (or spam folder). I have tried several different Gmail addresses with the same result.

Here's an example of a happy-looking logfile message:

2014-01-09 11:52:54 1W1JmV-0000Eh-Cw => redacted@gmail.com R=dnslookup T=remote_smtp H=gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com [2607:f8b0:400d:c02::1a] X=TLS1.2:RSA_ARCFOUR_SHA1:128 DN="C=US,ST=California,L=Mountain View,O=Google Inc,CN=mx.google.com"

But if I log into Gmail as redacted@gmail.com, there is no message in the inbox or in spam.

Best I can tell, I have a valid SPF record that authorizes linode to send mail for my domain. Not sure what other sins I could be committing.

Any ideas?

Emails a tricky thing, even a single link can block a message getting through spam filters. (I had this problem with yahoo a couple of weeks ago).

What's your server's FQDN

hostname -f

and the email address you're sending from?

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How to ask for help
1. Give details of your problem
2. Post any errors
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hostname -f returns http://www.acceleratenorthfield.org
The sender is baz@acceleratenorthfield.org

In the process of answering that question, I checked the full message headers on one of the other, non-gmail recipients of one of the failed messages, and here is what I found:



I changed my SPF record from


to


Now I no longer get the SPF fails in the message headers, but my messages still don't show up in my Gmail inboxes.

[CORRECTION: I'm still getting the old fails, so the SPF record must not have propagated yet. I'll try again in a couple of hours.]

You can't have http:// in your FQDN hostname. It should be whatever your computer name is + the domain name (i.e. sparky.acceleratenorthfield.org)

_________________
Either provide enough details for people to help, or sit back and listen to the crickets chirp.
Security thru obscurity is a myth - and really really annoying.

Yes, sorry, that was a typo. hostname -f returns www.acceleratenorthfield.org

Headers from Gmail (these headers appear on messages for one of the CC recipients whose address is not at Gmail) now confirm the SPF record is correct and complete:



but message still doesn't appear in Gmail inbox or spam folder.

does hostname return "www" ?

hostname -f should return the hostname+domain

You shouldn't name your server "www"

_________________
Either provide enough details for people to help, or sit back and listen to the crickets chirp.
Security thru obscurity is a myth - and really really annoying.

hostname returns northfield
hostname -f returns http://www.acceleratenorthfield.org

/etc/hosts looks like this:


I'm guessing that's b0rked? Can you talk me through fixing it?

Here's a CentOS box I'm just getting started setting up the LAMP stack and Web Engine (sorry, it's on a DO droplet, it was the only free dev space I had, and this is a open source gratis project so money is more scarce then the need for Linodes most excellent network and support).

nano /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain
192.241.224.196 midori.ipcopsupport.org midori

nano /etc/sysconfig/network
NETWORKING=yes
HOSTNAME=midori.ipcopsupport.org

hostname
returns midori

hostname -f
returns midori.ipcopsupport.org

_________________
Either provide enough details for people to help, or sit back and listen to the crickets chirp.
Security thru obscurity is a myth - and really really annoying.

Okay, thanks.

I changed /etc/hosts to

and rebooted.

hostname responds northfield
hostname -f responds northfield.acceleratenorthfield.org

My web apps are all still running fine.

I re-tested my email issue, and found no change:

When I have PHP send a single message with multiple recipients, the non-Gmail accounts receive the message, and the Gmail accounts do not. No errors in the Apache logs.

Anyone have ideas what to try next?

You've changed your hostname to northfield.acceleratenorthfield.org however your rDNS is pointing to www.acceleratenorthfield.org you should update this, you should also change -all to ~all in your SPF records -all tends to be a bit aggressive. Update your records give it 24 hours and try again.

_________________
Paid support
How to ask for help
1. Give details of your problem
2. Post any errors
3. Post relevant logs.
4. Don't hide details i.e. your domain, it just makes things harder
5. Be polite or you'll be eaten by a grue