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This has been happening to me for several years now.

I am running a Fedora Linux system at home (currently Fedora 37) and am using Evolution as my e-mail client. The current version of Evolution I have is 3.46.4 (3.46.4-1.fc37).

I cannot send e-mail from my computer to any GMail address. No matter what I try to send to what GMail address, I always get a reply mail:

Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender

This is the mail system at host (host name at my ISP)

I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not
be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.

For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster.

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the attached returned message.

                   The mail system

<(address)@gmail.com>: host gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[64.233.163.26]
    said: 550-5.7.26 Your email has been blocked because the sender is
    unauthenticated. 550-5.7.26 Gmail requires all senders to authenticate with
    either SPF or DKIM. 550-5.7.26  550-5.7.26  Authentication results:
    550-5.7.26  DKIM = did not pass 550-5.7.26  SPF [(domain)] with ip:
    [(IP)] = did not pass 550-5.7.26  550-5.7.26  For instructions on
    setting up authentication, go to 550 5.7.26
    https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126#authentication
    38308e7fff4ca-2e95bccc8cdsi17719101fa.113 - gsmtp (in reply to end of DATA
    command)

This happens only for GMail addresses, I can send e-mail to any other address just OK.

Also, I can send e-mail to GMail addresses all OK if I log on to my e-mail provider's webmail and send e-mail from the webmail site instead of my own computer.

I don't understand anything about SPF or DKIM. I don't know what is at fault here, is it my own computer, my ISP or e-mail provider, or Google.

Might this have something to do with that my ISP and e-mail provider are different companies? I would have imagined such a set-up would work all OK.

What is the reason for this, and can I somehow fix it myself, or is the problem at my ISP or e-mail provider's, or at Google's end?

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  • Times where you could submit e-mails directly to the destination MTA are long, long gone. Just don’t and you’ll be fine because someone else can set up SPF and DKIM and DMARC and whatnot. Use your mail providers MTA instead.
    – Daniel B
    Commented May 27 at 19:48
  • This seems to have worked, at least on my first try. I made a web search for the SMTP settings recommended by my e-mail provider and set Evolution to use them instead of my ISP's. I did a quick test by sending an e-mail to my work address and to a GMail address, and at least both seem to have been sent OK with no error reply. I also logged in to my workplace's webmail and saw that I got the message I sent to myself.
    – user53739
    Commented May 27 at 20:09

1 Answer 1

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Back in the days™ you could send e-mail messages by directly submitting them to the destination mail server (MTA). This method is no longer feasible today in general, mainly to counter spam, phishing and other malicious messages. Most domains that send e-mail messages (ie. appear in the sender address) are secured using multiple methods today:

  • Sender Policy Framework (SPF) allows a domain owner to restrict which MTAs are allowed to send mail on behalf of the domain (your PC isn’t)
  • DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) allows a domain owner to publish a cryptographic key that allows verifying the sending MTA���s identity
  • Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) allows a domain owner to inform receiving MTAs of what to do with mails violating the SPF or DKIM policies

As you can see, unless you’re the domain owner, you can control none of these. So if your e-mail address is, say, [email protected], your only choice is to use Yahoo’s MTA to send your mail. A local mail program might also call this MTA the “outgoing server” or “SMTP server”.

If you operate your own domain and MTA, you’d have to set up at least SPF (quite easy) to send mails to Google.

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    While the email security specifications are published and theoretically possible to be employed by anyone, big hosts are also using domain reputation filtering. I'm trying to find it but there was an article written by an elder geek who had hosted his own email server for years, keeping up with all the required security stuff, but he was facing increasing levels of undeliverable email because the big hosts are getting to the point where they only trust each other. It was an interesting read. If I find it, I'll share it.
    – music2myear
    Commented May 28 at 19:05
  • Yeah that's true, some big mail providers have ridiculous policies and filters.
    – Daniel B
    Commented May 28 at 19:07
  • Yes, using the wrong MTA seemed to be the problem. I think I managed to solve this by switching from my ISP's MTA to my e-mail provider's one as suggested by Daniel B earlier. It's weird how I still managed to send e-mail to everywhere except GMail though. For example sending e-mail to my workplace worked all OK.
    – user53739
    Commented May 28 at 20:08

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