Postfix: forwarding e-mail to GMail not working

Question

On my (web server) machine, I just want to be able to send and receive e-mail, and have e-mail addressed to particular addresses forwarded to my GMail inbox.

Right now, I have installed postfix and made a ~/.forward file with:

[email protected]

If I send mail to myself with one of the following commands, I receive it in my GMail box properly (albeit in the Spam folder):

mail [email protected]
mail [email protected]

However, if I try to send an e-mail from another host (that is, I try to send mail from my GMail to [email protected]), it doesn't arrive at all, not even in the Spam folder.

Curiously enough, /var/log/mail.info shows receipt and delivery back to GMail:

Sep  6 10:39:53 rage postfix/smtpd[13924]: B05BB22018C: client=mail-qw0-f44.google.com[209.85.216.44]
Sep  6 10:39:53 rage postfix/cleanup[13929]: B05BB22018C: message-id=<CADuqLwaaT-MU4hFoL8U-SMBEU8VCQ6aPnB4x0-tzghaAayonBQ@mail.gmail.com>
Sep  6 10:39:53 rage postfix/qmgr[13684]: B05BB22018C: from=<[email protected]>, size=1462, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Sep  6 10:39:53 rage postfix/cleanup[13929]: E2CB422018F: message-id=<CADuqLwaaT-MU4hFoL8U-SMBEU8VCQ6aPnB4x0-tzghaAayonBQ@mail.gmail.com>
Sep  6 10:39:53 rage postfix/local[13930]: B05BB22018C: to=<[email protected]>, relay=local, delay=0.31, delays=0.31/0/0/0, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (forwarded as E2CB422018F)
Sep  6 10:39:53 rage postfix/qmgr[13684]: E2CB422018F: from=<[email protected]>, size=1585, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Sep  6 10:39:53 rage postfix/qmgr[13684]: B05BB22018C: removed
Sep  6 10:39:54 rage postfix/smtp[13931]: E2CB422018F: to=<[email protected]>, orig_to=<[email protected]>, relay=gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[74.125.77.27]:25, delay=0.53, delays=0/0/0.08/0.45, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (250 2.0.0 OK 1315298394 46si2836091een.211)
Sep  6 10:39:54 rage postfix/qmgr[13684]: E2CB422018F: removed

It explicitly says status=sent.

Is GMail dropping my mail? If so, what can I do about it?

Answer 1

This seems to be a common problem:

https://serverfault.com/questions/255300/postfix-not-forwarding-to-forward-address

https://serverfault.com/questions/288863/forward-mails-to-gmail

It seems like gmail doesn't accept mails, that are forwarded back to the same account. Try to send an email to [email protected] from a different account, i.e. not the gmail account it is supposed to get forwarded to. That should work.

Answer 2

Is there a solution for this? I'm very sure this worked some years ago on my server, but not anymore.

I would expect that when the .forward file is set, that all emails will be forwarded to that address and not to the local machine. But in mail.log I see that the email still goes to root@localmachine and not to the forward-address.

Answer 3

As far as I know Gmail detects the received email is exactly the same you sent through Gmail itself so doesn't notice the user. I guess the logic «is why notice the user he received the same message s/he wrote?».