Sender Policy Framework

This article is more of a place holder for enabling the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and is not FreeBSD specific.  We've encounter a couple eMail servers which are not delivering our eMails, but at the same time not returning an error.   I read about SPF and decided to give it a try, sure enough everything worked after a couple trial eMails.

There is a web site dedicated to SPF and it provides an online wizard to help create the required DNS TXT record here:  http://www.openspf.org/wizard.html

Once you create the required DNS TXT record you'll want to send a couple eMails to verify the record definition.  My immediate choice which helped me debug a couple problems was using Port25's eMail validation tool.  After the DNS updates have been completed simply send an eMail to check-auth@verifier.port25.com and shortly there after you'll receive an automatic reply hopefully indicating you've passed.  If you fail or "softfail" then you'll need to review the SPF configuration and try again, look closely at the communication occurring, I was able to correct my TXT record after just one test eMail.