Anyone noticed any odd behavior with gmail? Particularly in the last few weeks?
Particularly, we're seeing gmail deliver multiple instances of a message from a gmail subscriber to a mailing list server...
The following post gives as much info as i've been able to collate to date:
http://www.linux.net.nz/pipermail/nzlug/2006-February/003398.html
The problems were first observed by us week-before-last.
At this stage i'm being forced to moderate any gmail-using-subscriber, it may be that we need to forbid gmail.com entirely.
Gmails website didn't list any suitable NOC-type contact addresses, nor are there any on the NOC list site.
The fact we're seeing discrete SMTP connections does make it look like the problem is definately related to the-other-end and at the minimum, some liason with an appropriate person at google/gmail would be great.
Likewise if this is a 'known issue', someone please feel free to shoot me down as appropriate....
Thanks
Mark Foster.
As a subscriber that interacts on multiple lists, as well as the
occasional personal e-mail I'll send out to friends and family, no one
has ever reported that they are receiving multiple instances of my
e-mails. I have also never received multiple e-mails from other gmail
users directly or through a list.
Only contact I can find for gmail is gmail-support(at)google.com
Mark Owen wrote:
Particularly, we're seeing gmail deliver multiple instances of a message
from a gmail subscriber to a mailing list server...
Well, doubled instances, yes. Multiple instances, no.
http://www.linux.net.nz/pipermail/nzlug/2006-February/003398.html
I read this, and it sounds like you're talking about the duplicate message problem, which I've noted on multiple lists, for, oh, six months, maybe a year.
Gmails website didn't list any suitable NOC-type contact addresses, nor
are there any on the NOC list site.
As a subscriber that interacts on multiple lists, as well as the
occasional personal e-mail I'll send out to friends and family, no one
has ever reported that they are receiving multiple instances of my
e-mails. I have also never received multiple e-mails from other gmail
users directly or through a list.
I've seen just exactly this problem on many of the mailing lists that I'm on (although it's only been two copies, not multiple copies). I've seen surmises that suggest it *is* a proxying problem. In these cases, where I've been interested to examine the headers, the message ID is always the same; proxies are always different (i.e. Google/Gmail is the one choosing to send it out twice). I believe that this may have been reported to gmail-support@google.com (the only address that I know of that you may report this type of thing to).
It may be an oddity of the mailing list software itself. I have never heard of an instance where an interchange between a gmail user and a single person, or persons, created more than one copy. It also seems to me that when I've seen this error, it has been on a list using either Majordomo or Mailman. I've not seen it on any other lists. It does not appear to be related to the size of the list's subscribers, since one of the lists I've seen this on averages about 200 members, and another is in the thousands.
Just another data point.
At this stage i'm being forced to moderate any gmail-using-subscriber, it may be that we need to forbid gmail.com entirely.
If the message contains the same message-id which it sounds like it should, it should be really easy to filter. If majordomo or whatever your mailing list agent is gets messages delivered to it by procmail, you just do:
:0 Whc: msgid.lock
formail -D 16384 msgid.cache
:0 a:
/dev/null
in procmail and you should rarely if ever see duplicates.