For some reason my Linode is slow to receive email from Gmail. I will eventually receive the messages but only an hour or more after they were sent.

All other inbound domains and outgoing emails seems to function nearly simultaneously.

My linode is Ubuntu 10.04 with Postfix/dovecot/spamassassin.

Any ideas on things to check out?

Thank you,

Jeff

1) Look at the full headers on the message you finally receive and see if you can tell where the delay is.

2) Look at your log files and see if google is attempting delivery and you are deferring it for some reason.

Email header shown below (hopefully properly sanitized). CobraSound.com is the destination domain.

Return-Path: <SenderAddress>
Delivered-To: DeliveryAddress
Received: from mail-ww0-f53.google.com (mail-ww0-f53.google.com [74.125.82.53])
by cobrasound.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5E16B1A83F
for <DeliveryAddress>; Thu, 27 Jan 2011 10:51:24 -0500 (EST)
Received: by wwi18 with SMTP id 18so2439631wwi.34
for <DeliveryAddress>; Thu, 27 Jan 2011 07:51:24 -0800 (PST)
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed;
d=gmail.com; s=gamma;
h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:in-reply-to:references:from:date
:message-id:subject:to:content-type;
bh=ZsW1RQSb8XW7ZmrXBNklDxk/S6hHmSR+3HCFyMBcer8=;
b=OaqiyR/sprdvW6qPOh3FT3gmPNf7Spg1j0ir+Fxb/kCM9xpk0aQ/Za+iHzRUKNWaYT
G2flt3rC3GHc1JEfKWxm/DSAKEGgoXp6hyGBcHja/0bQomi/V3iImZ0hvYpLfuEGLhZL
UHmctFi+0eXyOyEdn/N5LCClXK9cNahhvRnuk=
DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws;
d=gmail.com; s=gamma;
h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:from:date:message-id:subject:to
:content-type;
b=JC/NxolI0yScIE894PW4iLmJ8GP73fBnfZ3Zrs5fxbMIMLTydYoDGTY3dQvbFQ/g3j
7Ea8XwtPdQkIWRiGz04Rrlu0pgzJb8yv+/I/MR+z/P04XB/RQUooGo6t9kk2tLf9jSU/
WJjYVPChD0v2ksBxyUvJnDqCDrx3N28ASfPcc=
Received: by 10.216.169.202 with SMTP id n52mr2117844wel.15.1296139887645;
Thu, 27 Jan 2011 06:51:27 -0800 (PST)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Received: by 10.216.136.129 with HTTP; Thu, 27 Jan 2011 06:50:57 -0800 (PST)
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTin8tGaMts52OWHmzxazTht4qjdtsnPuiAX=kmKi@mail.gmail.com>
References: <AANLkTin8tGaMts52OWHmzxazTht4qjdtsnPuiAX=kmKi@mail.gmail.com>
From: SenderName <SenderAddress>
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2011 09:50:57 -0500
Message-ID: <AANLkTi=xtc+B-tuGYcA646EZUC0VxaoRpfE-eT1rmWD0@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Fwd: Thanks for your time yesterday
To: "DeliveryName" <DeliveryAddress>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=0016e659ffa295147b049ad51588
X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.0 required=8.0 tests=FREEMAIL_FROM,HTML_MESSAGE,
T_DKIM_INVALID,UNPARSEABLE_RELAY autolearn=unavailable version=3.3.1
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.3.1 (2010-03-16) on linode49175

It looks like it took the email an hour to make the hop before it arrives to me. I'm not sure where the "Received: by wwi18" server is?!

Any advice/tips?

Thank you,

Jeff

Looks like 10.216.169.202 held the mail for an hour - this is definitely on google's side of the fence - probably nothing you can do other than contact them about it.

You do have two entries for your MX that point to the same name - not sure if that is causing them grief but there is no reason to have them both there.

Thanks Stever,

Good catch on the MX records. I just removed the duplicate entry.

Thanks again,

Jeff

I also just noticed that you only have one nameserver for your domain - maybe that is leading to unreliable lookups on google's end and causing the delay?

Also, check your mail log to see if there was anything odd around 9:51am... deferred attempts will not show up in the Received headers. Exactly 1 hour is a weird delay

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