Hi,

I have been experiencing issues to receive email from bugs.debian.org.
I can create bugs through reportbug (or M-x debian-bug in Emacs), but
sometimes unable to receive email even if I'm listed in "To:" or "Cc:".
Instead, if certain bugs are forwarded through some mailing lists,
e.g. debian-mentors@lists.debian.org, debian-emacsen@, etc., I can
receive some of them fine.

Initially I thought this could be related to Gmail which somehow filters
the email, but another Gmail user reported that they can receive the
email from bugs.debian.org just fine[1].  So I wonder whether my current
email address is somehow filtered/blocked from the bugs.debian.org side
that prevents my email from being sent to?  I would like to resolve
this, or this missing email delivery issue makes it very hard to keep
track of the bugs of my packages.  I'd like to provide any more info
that can help debug this.

Thanks in advance!

[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1091389#55

On Sun, 07 Sep 2025, Xiyue Deng wrote:n

Can you give me some recent examples of some messages you would have
expected to receive so I can track them down? [A few links like this
would be sufficient:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1114649#5 ]

Thanks!

mail is being sent from the sender's mail server to gmail. If you're
not receiving those, that has nothing to do with the BTS.

The thread you referenced there is from January. debian.org servers
keep mail logs for a little over a week, so there's no way to track
down what happened to a mail to you from the BTS 8 months ago.

According to the mail log, the BTS has sent 4 mails to your gmail
account today - 3 acknowledgements for mails you sent to #1113916, and
one acknowledging the creation of this bug. If you think there should
have been others then you will need to explain what those are so the
logs can be checked further.

Regards,

Adam
(sysadmin rather than BTS admin)

Hi Don,

Don Armstrong <don@debian.org> writes:

Sure.  A recent example is bug#1113916, where I didn't receive any of
the mail from Christian.  (I manually used the "reply" link to compose
the mail so as to avoid breaking the thread.)

Hi Adam,

"Adam D. Barratt" <adam@adam-barratt.org.uk> writes:

I agree with you assessment, which is really confusing.

Sure, as I just replied to Don, a recent example is bug#1113916, which
you mentioned below, so continue there.

Yes, I receive the 3 acknowledgements that my emails had been received,
but I didn't receive any of the mail sent by Christian.  (As I mentioned
in my Reply to Don, I used the "reply" link to avoid breaking thread.)

I was about to make another theory that maybe the issue is related to
the debian.org domain somehow as I didn't receive anything from
Christian which uses @debian.org email, but this is actually false as I
actually received the mail from Don who also uses a @debian.org.  And of
course I received your email from a non-@debian.org email fine also.
So, still confused.

Let me know if there are other info that I can provide for debugging.
Thanks again!

On Sun, 07 Sep 2025, Xiyue Deng wrote:n

Got it; those are examples where Christian's MTA would have sent the
message directly to gmail (possibly via smtp.debian.org) and they
wouldn't have gone through bugs.debian.org at all.

So there's not much that we can do there easily.

Hi Don,

Don Armstrong <don@debian.org> writes:

Thanks for the analysis!  As you are using @debian.org address as well,
I assume your email also goes through smtp.debian.org but I seem to
receive them just fine.

Can you help with another test by dropping me from To or Cc and just use
1114649@bugs.debian.org as destination?

On Sun, 07 Sep 2025, Xiyue Deng wrote:n
@donarmstrong.com, so I don't transit smtp.debian.org. [I suspect you're
not getting mails because of gmail not accepting non-DKIM signed
e-mails.]

You won't receive messages to 1114649@bugs.debian.org, as submitters
don't get e-mails to the bug by default. [That's a mistake, but the
current implementation doesn't allow submitters to opt out, so we're
stuck with it for now.]

Hi Don,

Don Armstrong <don@debian.org> writes:

I see.  Does that mean that smtp.debian.org doesn't do DKIM signatures
and that could result in me not receiving emails?

On the other hand, some other people did mention that they received
emails from the same NNNNNNN@bugs.debian.org in their gmail account
while I didn't :/ So maybe there is still more to it?

Ah OK.  I also see someone used NNNNNNN-submitter@bugs.debian.org, but
some earlier bug emails back in January still didn't reach me.  Is that
probably due to the same issue and as a result NNNNNNN-submitter@ does
not work at all?

On Sun, 07 Sep 2025, Xiyue Deng wrote:n

It does do DKIM signatures (though bugs.debian.org doesn't).

On Sun, 07 Sep 2025, Xiyue Deng wrote:n

It does do DKIM signatures (though bugs.debian.org doesn't).

Don Armstrong <don@debian.org> writes:

I actually received this email, likely because my email address is in
"To" field.

Don Armstrong <don@debian.org> writes:

I actually received this email, likely because my email address is in
"To" field.

On Sun, 07 Sep 2025, Xiyue Deng wrote:n

Yep, but you should have received it twice, and you probably won't get
this one.x

On Sun, 07 Sep 2025, Xiyue Deng wrote:n

Yep, but you should have received it twice, and you probably won't get
this one.x

Hi Don,

Don Armstrong <don@debian.org> writes:

I think Gmail may have some way to dedup email so I only get one copy.
This also happens when I'm subscribed to some mailing lists and being
listed explicitly.

I actually got this one!  So it looks like -submitter@ now forwards the
emails just fine.  This wasn't the case when a few months ago: someone
used -submitter@ for some of my RFS bugs and I didn't receive anything.

So now it may look like that there may be something wrong with
@debian.org that prevents me from receiving emails from there using
Gmail, right?

Hi Don,

Don Armstrong <don@debian.org> writes:

I think Gmail may have some way to dedup email so I only get one copy.
This also happens when I'm subscribed to some mailing lists and being
listed explicitly.

I actually got this one!  So it looks like -submitter@ now forwards the
emails just fine.  This wasn't the case when a few months ago: someone
used -submitter@ for some of my RFS bugs and I didn't receive anything.

So now it may look like that there may be something wrong with
@debian.org that prevents me from receiving emails from there using
Gmail, right?

Hi Don,

Don Armstrong <don@debian.org> writes:

I think Gmail may have some way to dedup email so I only get one copy.
This also happens when I'm subscribed to some mailing lists and being
listed explicitly.

I actually got this one!  So it looks like -submitter@ now forwards the
emails just fine.  This wasn't the case when a few months ago: someone
used -submitter@ for some of my RFS bugs and I didn't receive anything.

So now it may look like that there may be something wrong with
@debian.org that prevents me from receiving emails from there using
Gmail, right?

Hi,

Recently I learned that Gmail started to require DKIM and SPF setup.  I
wonder whether emails from the debian.org domain have set up DKIM and
SPF, and if not, whether that could result in emails being dropped by
Gmail?