Beginning in February 2024, Koha mailing lists may have delivery problems
for recipients using some large email service providers such as Gmail if
not fixed.  The problem is more likely to affect such recipients of the
Koha general mailing list because more needs fixing even if relatively
easy to fix and it might additionally be considered a large volume sender
if there are enough subscribers reading via Gmail including on popular
mobile devices despite fewer otherwise evident Gmail users.

Please give attention to new party needed for hosting the Koha general
mailing list in section 2.2 further below.


1.  Diminishing Time for Implementing Fixes.

By February 2024, fixing DKIM signing and re-signing may be needed for
lists.koha-community.org lists such as koha-devel and more for the Koha
general mailing list when Gmail and Yahoo mail [with AOL] may start
blocking messages for not being DKIM re-signed when sent from the mailing
lists.  It is uncertain whether Gmail and Yahoo mail will continue to give
a false pass for messages using the original author's DKIM signature which
does not match the mailing list sending server, nor the From header with
DMARC support enabled.  A false DKIM pass may be more likely than not in
February  for the low volume mailing lists.koha-community.org, but we have
been warned, see the announcements linked below.  [The Koha general
mailing list may be more of a problem with more configuration needed and a
greater prospect of being recognised as a large volume sender.]  Gmail,
Yahoo mail, AOL mail, Microsoft [Exchange and various names] etc. have all
rejected messages for bad DKIM signature from mailing lists during past
periods of extra DKIM strictness.


2.   Details of Changes Needed.

See the bug report for some implementation details, "Adding DMARC
compatibility to mailing lists" -
https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=34927 .  The bug
issue was slowly being advanced over the past year before any knowledge of
any particular forthcoming changes at large email providers such as
Google.


2.1.  BibLibre Hosted Mailing Lists.

I have given precise technical details of changes which may be made to
Laurent Ducos and Fridolin Somers at BibLibre for resolving the issue of
OpenDKIM signing and resigning for lists.koha-community.org .


2.2.  New Party Needed to Host the Koha General Mailing List.

I have also communicated with Rachel Hamilton-Williams about adding DMARC
support for the Koha general mailing list.  In addition to DKIM support,
lists.katipo.co.nz needs a DMARC record in DNS and then activating DMARC
in Mailman, and possibly an SPF record for the subdomain
lists.katipo.co.nz .  Rachel informed me that she would like to hand over
hosting of the Koha mailing list for more attentive management than her
partner and system administrator, Simon Blake, may be able to provide
currently.

Without the very simple task of adding DMARC support to the Koha general
list, delivery problems are more likely than not for Gmail, Yahoo, etc.
subscribers from Feb.  A false pass would need at least the pretence of
DMARC support.  ARC support is required for all mailing lists irrespective
of size, for which DMARC might be a workaround as possibly avoiding the
need for ARC support.


3.  February 2024 Changes for Gmail and Yahoo Mail, etc.

At the end of last week, a radio broadcast brought my attention to changes
coming in February 2024 which affect everyone in some manner.  Everyone
includes lists.koha-community.org.  Large volume senders have additional
requirements.

[For large volume senders, there additional requirements beyond those
affecting everyone, which might affect people subscribing to the Koha
general mailing list if the number of mailing list subscribers is enough
and enough people route mail through the popular choice of Gmail even on
mobile despite having some other apparent domain of some subscriber
wherever that may be hosted initially.]

Details about more stringent SPF, DKIM, DMARC, ARC, and one-click
unsubscribe link requirements are available from Google.  Mailing lists
may be able to substitute DMARC support for lack of ARC support when
rewriting the From header and thus re-originating and not merely
forwarding messages but adding ARC is best addressed second.  "Email
sender guidelines : Requirements for all senders" -
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126#zippy=%2Crequirements-for-all-senders
.  Another part of the same document has the requirements which may affect
the Koha general mailing list "Requirements for sending 5,000 or more
messages per day" -
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126#requirements-5k&zippy=%2Crequirements-for-sending-or-more-messages-per-day
.  The Yahoo guide which I found has fewer details and does not refer to
the coming February 2024 policy change: "Sender Best Practices" -
https://senders.yahooinc.com/best-practices/ .  There is no shortage of
secondary sources such as from the support provider Proofpoint, "Google
and Yahoo Set a Short Timeline to Meet New DMARC Policy & Setup
Requirements. Are You Ready?" -
https://www.proofpoint.com/us/blog/email-and-cloud-threats/google-and-yahoo-set-new-email-authentication-requirements
.


4.  Note on ARC Support.

ARC is intended for authenticating the email chain when forwarding
messages which is the basic function of mailing lists.  Adding DMARC
support should make the issue of ARC support for acceptable authentication
for mailing lists might be moot because the mailing list is more clearly
shown as re-originating email and not merely forwarding.  However, the
announcements for February 2024 do not state that case with explicit
clarity and Gmail adds ARC headers to all mail on their system and people
at Google may presume that everyone else should to especially when
messages may retain headers showing that the message has been forwarded
over the mailing list despite having been re-originated from mailing list
with DMARC authentication.

While Mailman 3 has functionality for ARC support which was added
essentially experimentally a few years ago, the proper place for ARC
support is in the MTA not in the mailing list software.  When using ARC
via Mailman 3 the mail envelope is sealed before DKIM re-signing which is
the wrong order and has caused ARC authentication failure.

OpenARC, like OpenDKIM, functions in the MTA for Postfix or Sendmail,
https://github.com/trusteddomainproject/OpenARC .  Mailing lists at
https://openarc.org/ .  OpenARC is not as fully developed as OpenDKIM and
support for some nice things such as multiple sending domains on the
system seems to have been abandoned.

OpenARC has better support for BSD Unix and Red Hat than Debian based
systems but is not as well developed, and although not robustly maintained
for Debian based systems, there are openarc packages based on the OpenARC
development branch for Debian 9 to 11,
https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home%3A/andreasschulze/ . 
[Mailman 2 which we are using for the mailing lists does not go past
Debian 10 for lack of Python 2.  Upgrading to Mailman 3 is non-trivial
because of configuration changes, etc. and should not be the most
immediate priority.]  There is a very brief blog post about using the
Andreas Schulze Debian packages, "OpenARC with Postfix on Debian 10
(buster)" / Matthieu -
https://weber.fi.eu.org/blog/Informatique/openarc_with_postfix_on_debian_10.html
.  You can also build your own packages from source as I have.  [In
current testing of my source build, Postfix has a socket permissions error
for OpenARC which may be from a mistake I had made with umask settings
long ago on the system which runs my mailserver.]


Thomas Dukleth
Agogme
109 E 9th Street, 3D
New York, NY  10003
USA
http://www.agogme.com
+1 212-674-3783

Hi all,

 

Detail pages say “Online resources” but search results say “Online access”. I don’t know if I’ve never noticed before or what but I had a librarian raise it today.

 

I think it makes sense to harmonise so that they’re both the same, but how do we choose which one?

 

I’ve raised a ticket for this: https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=35410

 

David Cook

Senior Software Engineer

Prosentient Systems

Suite 7.03

6a Glen St

Milsons Point NSW 2061

Australia

 

Office: 02 9212 0899

Online: 02 8005 0595

 

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