I am getting mail bounced from yahoo and gmail smtp servers with this message:
554: Message not accepted due to failed RFC compliance. Too many From headers. See https://senders.yahooinc.com/smtp-error-codes#rfc-compliance-failures
What would cause mailman to build too many from headers when distributing email? It appears the from address is repeated 5 times in the from field. I'm guessing it is something in my configuration but what and where?
On 11/16/25 08:08, dap1--- via Mailman-users wrote:
I am getting mail bounced from yahoo and gmail smtp servers with this message:
554: Message not accepted due to failed RFC compliance. Too many From headers. See https://senders.yahooinc.com/smtp-error-codes#rfc-compliance-failures
What would cause mailman to build too many from headers when distributing email? It appears the from address is repeated 5 times in the from field. I'm guessing it is something in my configuration but what and where?
I don't think Mailman can do this. Maybe it's something in fetchmail that's doing it.
It's not clear what you are saying. Is it one From: with the address repeated 5 times or is it 5 From: headers?. Either way, I don't think it's Mailman.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
dap1--- via Mailman-users writes:
I am getting mail bounced from yahoo and gmail smtp servers with this message:
554: Message not accepted due to failed RFC compliance. Too many From headers. See https://senders.yahooinc.com/smtp-error-codes#rfc-compliance-failures
Waste of time, no reference to what RFC may have been violated. And multiple addresses in From is conformant, although unusual. From RFC 5322 (the only RFCs mentioned by Yahoo!'s sender requirements are 5321 and 5322);
from = "From:" mailbox-list CRLFwhich means what you would think it means, more than one is OK. I'm guessing they mean RFC 7489 defining the DMARC protocol which does specify that a message can't satisfy "From alignment" with more than one From address. But that's conformant if all From addresses are p=none domains.
What would cause mailman to build too many from headers when distributing email? It appears the from address is repeated 5 times in the from field. I'm guessing it is something in my configuration but what and where?
I agree with Mark, it's not Mailman. I checked the code and I can only find two cases where Mailman alters the From header, anonymous list and Munge From. Both involve *replacing the entire content* of the header with the List-Post address (and a comment indicating the original address for Munge From).
Please check the incoming messages. I think that what *may* have happened is that
- the message as received by your site already had several From addresses,
- Mailman condensed that to one for the purpose of the DMARC check,[1]
- that one was a DMARC "p=none" address,
- Mailman left From as received when it distributed the post, and
- Yahoo! et al rejected it.
Footnotes: [1] I'll be looking at this in more detail, but as I read it now we only check the first address of multiple addresses in From. I think that either we should reject such messages unless DMARC Mitigation is None, or we should check all the addresses for p=none and reject if any have a different policy.
-- GNU Mailman consultant (installation, migration, customization) Sirius Open Source https://www.siriusopensource.com/ Software systems consulting in Europe, North America, and Japan
Issue filed: https://gitlab.com/mailman/mailman/-/issues/1253
This is low priority for me, I don't think I've ever seen a multiauthor list post in the wild, and I'd like some discussion on the "check all" vs. "just reject" options before implementing.
-- GNU Mailman consultant (installation, migration, customization) Sirius Open Source https://www.siriusopensource.com/ Software systems consulting in Europe, North America, and Japan
I don't know if this is related or not but rather then the list name being in the from header, it is either the list owner or the sender address. Since I'm both I don't know how to tell which from my test emails. I'm downloading the incoming messages with fetchmail so I have to figure out how to see the incoming headers before it gets to mailman but I highly doubt it is coming in that way. Either fetchmail or postfix is doing something funky if it is not mailman.
On Mon, Nov 17, 2025 at 6:08 PM dap1--- via Mailman-users < mailman-users@mailman3.org> wrote:
I don't know if this is related or not but rather then the list name being in the from header, it is either the list owner or the sender address. Since I'm both I don't know how to tell which from my test emails. I'm downloading the incoming messages with fetchmail so I have to figure out how to see the incoming headers before it gets to mailman but I highly doubt it is coming in that way. Either fetchmail or postfix is doing something funky if it is not mailman.
I am a little curious. What necessitated the use of fetchmail, BTW? Is port 25 blocked for your server? Your life would be a lot easier even with a $4/month VM. That is $48/year - much cheaper than the time you've spent struggling with this unusual setup, IMHO.
Without prejudice.
-- Best regards, Odhiambo WASHINGTON, Nairobi,KE +254 7 3200 0004/+254 7 2274 3223 In an Internet failure case, the #1 suspect is a constant: DNS. "Oh, the cruft.", egrep -v '^$|^.*#' ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :-) [How to ask smart questions: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html]
I don't have a static IP and don't want to pay for one or change my ISP. I've had my email address for far too many years to change it now.
On Mon, Nov 17, 2025 at 7:46 PM dap1--- via Mailman-users < mailman-users@mailman3.org> wrote:
I don't have a static IP and don't want to pay for one or change my ISP. I've had my email address for far too many years to change it now.
My only worry for you is that your MM3 system is way too unusual that it's costing you a lot of time. I'd suggest you register a domain ($10 with Cloudflare) and get a VM ($48/year) and run a MM3 instance that's simple/straightforward. You'll still retain your email address, no? BTW, is your MM3 instance going to allow subscriptions from others? I don't seem to clearly understand your need for MM3.
-- Best regards, Odhiambo WASHINGTON, Nairobi,KE +254 7 3200 0004/+254 7 2274 3223 In an Internet failure case, the #1 suspect is a constant: DNS. "Oh, the cruft.", egrep -v '^$|^.*#' ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :-) [How to ask smart questions: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html]
dap1--- via Mailman-users writes:
I don't have a static IP and don't want to pay for one or change my ISP. I've had my email address for far too many years to change it now.
Are you saying your Mailman list-post mailbox is your personal mailbox, perhaps using an mailbox+listname extended address to distinguish list traffic from personal mail? And you're distributing via Mailman to third parties as well as back to yourself?
And while you're answering questions, how about showing us the From header?
Really, you need to stop trying to diagnose the problem yourself ("must be Mailman, Postfix, or fetchmail") -- we're just going to ignore that -- and start giving us some facts to work with.
-- GNU Mailman consultant (installation, migration, customization) Sirius Open Source https://www.siriusopensource.com/ Software systems consulting in Europe, North America, and Japan
On 11/17/25 07:07, dap1--- via Mailman-users wrote:
I don't know if this is related or not but rather then the list name being in the from header, it is either the list owner or the sender address. Since I'm both I don't know how to tell which from my test emails.
It should be the sender. Nothing in Mailman would but the list's owner address there.
You still haven't answered whether it is one From: header with the address repeated 5 times or 5 separate From: headers.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
It appears to be separate headers. I will PM the bounced email to you since there is too much sensitive information to sanitize it for this list.
Stephen: I am running a mailing list on my private Ubuntu server (this is a conversion for a defunct CentOS server) on my LAN. This is not for personal email but rather for a true mailing list. It is one list with a limited number of members. I am also running a web site for several different things.
dap1--- via Mailman-users writes:
I will PM the bounced email to you since there is too much sensitive information to sanitize it for this list.
That should be helpful. The important questions have to do with how mail is routed from you to the server, and then from the server to Yahoo!. Also, it would be nice to know what other recipient domains are experiencing the same "multiple address in From" phenomenon, and if they're seeing exactly the same thing.
Stephen: I am running a mailing list on my private Ubuntu server (this is a conversion for a defunct CentOS server) on my LAN. This is not for personal email but rather for a true mailing list. It is one list with a limited number of members. I am also running a web site for several different things.
We don't really need to know any of that. We're always interested in people's use cases of course, but that's random curiosity and "user stories" for Mailman marketing, not for support. The routing and the exact content of the full header (and sometimes message content) is crucial to issue diagnosis.
Steve
-- GNU Mailman consultant (installation, migration, customization) Sirius Open Source https://www.siriusopensource.com/ Software systems consulting in Europe, North America, and Japan
I think the crux of my problem is the list owner. I need that to be correct in order for postfix to use the right relay host. I tried to use "mailman admins -a" but that did not do what I expected. It did not change the list owner.
As an aside the reply-to header is also incorrect but I could find no way to fix that.
participants (4)
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dap1＠bellsouth.net -
Mark Sapiro -
Odhiambo Washington -
Stephen J. Turnbull