My apologies if this is not the correct list, I did not see one for development or bug talks.

One of my hosted users recently reported messages being bounced from a particular domain (malexmedia.net). I reviewed the logs and found the error message "Maximum of 20 nested SPF queries exceeded." This could indicate improper SPF configuration but I always like to investigate further. Google did not provide me much information on that error message but did locate the spf.c source code for Courier which I believe the message to be originating from (I do have SPF checking turned on).

I downloaded the Debian sources to confirm I had the same source. What catches my attention is that the comments of this particular block of code indicate that SPF_UNKNOWN should be returned however the code is actually returning SPF_FAIL which agrees with what I am seeing in the logs. I'm not sure that this is a bug or if it is just commented incorrectly. Which should it be? If it was SPF_UNKNOWN I believe this message would have been delivered per my configuration. SPF_FAIL will never allow it to be delivered unless I permit failures which defeats the purpose of SPF.

What are my options for correcting this issue for this particular domain?

Thanks,

Jim