Long delays in KPLUG mail delivery

[James G. Sack (jim)]

Brad Beyenhof wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 11:12 AM, Carl Lowenstein
> <carl.lowenstein at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 10:54 AM, Gus Wirth <gwirth79 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> The KPLUG mail server seems to be having difficulty delivering mail to
>>> Google gmail accounts. Delays of 30 minutes to several hours are being
>>> encountered. I can't tell by the headers where the delay is being
>>> encountered, either Sparky or gmail. Here's an example header from a recent
>>> message:
>> The two most recent items that I received from the KPLUG server, from
>> you and from Karl Cunningham, took about 20 seconds in transit from
>> end to end.
> 
> If you haven't had an issue yet, it's possible that Gmail is rolling
> out an update of some sort and not all accounts have it yet.
> Generally, they push out updates in batches in the order that the
> accounts were originally created. My account (well, my main one,
> anyway) was started probably within a week of the initial public
> invitation, so it tends to be affected by service changes fairly
> early.
> 
> A cursory look at those headers seems to show that Google is having a
> hard time accepting the SPF record from Sparky, though whether that's
> Gmail's fault or KPLUG's I can't tell. It could be something as simple
> as Gmail rebuilding its SPF whitelist, which means we'll just have to
> wait for it to iron itself out. On the other hand, if Sparky isn't
> using SPF in a way that Google expects, it'll need to change somehow.
> 

Does sparky implement SPF? Should it?
How does one test -- is there a dig syntax to check for this?

Regards,
..jim