Google Apps and Email Delivery Issues

If you're setting up a Google Apps account and would like to use the email service from it in a web application or in a way that you'll be sending a lot of emails, whether to one person or many, you'll suffer from email delivery failures.

I've recently moved a company from a dedicated server to another, and that included switching the email service from being on the dedicated server itself, to Google Apps.

After 2 days, their delivery email account was disabled because it was suspected by Google to be a spam account. Re-enabling it was as simple as logging in through the web interface.

Another 2 days pass, and emails started being rejected from delivery and the company's customers weren't receiving confirmation emails. That's very bad.
 I've asked in Google's public forum and turns out you have to add Google's SPF records to your domain name's DNS records to avoid such issues.

The  bounced emails had the following message:
Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently.
Message rejected.

What's annoying is that Google already has a page explaining why you should use SPF records, but it's not linked to the basic setup that explains setting up email exchange (MX) records.
If I'm going to setup the MX records, then I might as well add the SPF records too since I'll be modifying the DNS records! It would've been very helpful to have linked or pointed at the SPF page rather than wait till I face problems, search for its cause & solution then find out!

So what are SPF records?
In a nut shell, they are records that are added to a domain name's DNS zone and they dictate who is authorized to send emails from that domain name.
The Sender Policy Framework is used by both the sender and the receiver to verify that incoming email was sent by the domain it's claiming to have come from.

Setting up the DNS records:
Add the text as Google has shown to the @none field and not to all. See the picture below.

Make sure to type the text as you were told by Google! Some parts may not show in the above picture.

Android Froyo 2.2 FRF83 Stable/Final Is Here

Build FRF50 was a beta, followed by a second beta FRF72 and now Google has started pushing the final build named FRF83 Over The Air (OTA) a few days back.

If you're running FRF50, you can download the stable update (1.8MB) from Google directly.

As usual, rename the file to update.zip, put it on your sdcard and follow the instructions from #1, skipping #4.

If you have another build, then read on at this link.

Android 2.2 on Rooted Nexus With Stock ROM

I have a Nexus One and I rooted it to get Arabic to work, which it did but only for SMS. The letters were broken for other things.

To get an official ROM to work, it has to verify that your current system is indeed an official release and it is the exact previous update/release.

I had to restore back the original ERE27 files that I replaced to get Arabic to work:

• DroidSansFallback.ttf: 4caeadd734f4be9973163bdf02ea6cf5 (md5sum)
• libskiagl.so: 1b5cedd01b14838320956bea94b0fe97
• libskia.so: cc692fb57efb199045c720de491cc3cf
• libwebcore.so: c8b9931ec8771a720497d5197cd1a108

But that wasn't enough, because rooting the phone modifies the boot partition of the phone which is also checked by updates.

Guides on the Internet were all about using a custom recovery image, wiping user data and doing some other unnecessary things. All what is needed is to flash the original boot image again:

• boot.img: 36a29d765387dd69cde89367def51dda
• ERE27 stock ROM (2.1-update1): 90700607c04279716b505aa203e9c684

To flash the boot image, you need the Android SDK  to get the USB drivers for the phone working, but you should already know that since you already rooted the phone. Painfully long steps can be found here (Windows).

Files you'll need from Android ERE27 (2.1-update1):

• Original / stock font & libs
• Original / stock boot.img
• Fastboot utility
• The new Froyo update (Android 2.2) named as update.zip (put it on your sdcard) 

You can download the stock ERE27 font, libs, boot.img and fastboot from me here.

Steps:

1. Enable USB debugging on the phone: Menu -> Settings -> Applications -> Development -> USB debugging
2. Turn off the phone and connect the USB cable
3. Hold the trackball, press the power button
4. Using fastboot, open a shell/command line and type: fastboot flash boot boot.img
   You should see something like this:
   sending 'boot' (2560 KB)... OKAY
   writing 'boot'... OKAY
5. Then type: fastboot reboot-bootloader to reboot the phone into the bootloader screen
6. To navigate use the volume up/down buttons & to select press the power button once
7. Select BootLoader then Recovery
8. The screen will go black for a while then you'll see a Droid with an exclamation mark. Press volume up & power at the same time
9. In the new menu, use volume up/down to navigate then Trackball to select
10. Select apply sdcard:update.zip
11. Now it'll verify your system files and partitions then start patching then deploying new files
12. The phone will reboot 3 times to unpack multiple updates
13. Enjoy your new toy

The files that I've linked are hosted on my Google account. I've taken them from official releases. Feel free to compare the md5 hashes.

Enhancements that I noticed in Android 2.2:

• Exchange calendars now sync
• Trackball was flashing blue for Facebook updates & white for emails
• The phone now can tether using USB or act as a wireless access point
• Notifications have new funny icons
• Flash 10.1 from Adobe (go to adobe's website then click on Get Flash Player)
• Call log groups calls from a single contact (like in SMS)
• In the market, you can enable application auto-update
• In the market, there's a button to Update All apps
• The on-screen menu button now has 2 more brothers: browser & phone, so you can delete the icons from the desk/screen
• In GTalk, clicking menu gives you the signout option (no need to click more)
• I noticed a Twitter app
• Faster camera response on the display
• More camera options: Focus, Exposure, Zoom, ...etc.
• Arabic font builtin but it looks weird and the letters are broken (unconnected)
• 170-250 MB free RAM rather than the previous 40-60MB free RAM!!!