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Grex > Helpers > #149: Grex System Problems - Spring 2006 | |
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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 333 responses total. |
mcnally
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response 266 of 333:
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Jun 8 00:37 UTC 2006 |
Grex's mail config sucks, but I'm afraid I don't know enough about exim
to fix it.
The maillog shows we're dropping connections on the floor pretty much
constantly, but I'm not sure how to fix that. I have a hypothesis that
it may be due to our policy of introducing a 30s delay for any host listed
in one of several RBLs, which I think causes a lot of tied up exim processes,
but my attempts to reduce that delay to 1s by tweaking the exim.conf file
have probably not been successful.
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keesan
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response 267 of 333:
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Jun 8 01:50 UTC 2006 |
Several people report that they can never send me mail, including from
mindspring/earthlink, which is impatient so it always times out.
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ball
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response 268 of 333:
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Jun 8 04:20 UTC 2006 |
Re #267: That's what prompted me to post what I did on my
Web site. It's pointless people trying to send me email
on Grex unless they happen to be another local user here.
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rcurl
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response 269 of 333:
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Jun 8 15:42 UTC 2006 |
I see what people mean about a problem with e-mail. I had sent a message here
a few days ago that arrived within minutes, but last night I sent one that
has still not arrived after nearly 12 hours.
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keesan
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response 270 of 333:
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Jun 8 19:40 UTC 2006 |
ssh did not work just now but telnet does. Please someone remove the email
not working message from last week (motd).
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krj
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response 271 of 333:
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Jun 8 21:05 UTC 2006 |
My unscientific observation is that my incoming and outgoing mail
have stopped working for approximately the last 24 hours.
I realize that some of this is still my fault for not having moved
to a modern mail platform.
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rcurl
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response 272 of 333:
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Jun 8 22:45 UTC 2006 |
I have received some mail dated today, but not what I sent yesterday. Has it
gone into a black hole?
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keesan
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response 273 of 333:
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Jun 8 23:34 UTC 2006 |
I got three mails from AOL today (they have fixed the problem of refusing to
accept mails from us too).
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keesan
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response 274 of 333:
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Jun 9 02:06 UTC 2006 |
sdf.lonestar.org is working now, but freeshell.org is not, and the disk quotas
all set themselves to 0 (with 400MB free) and I had to 'tweak' them - I
wonder what people do who have not paid for the use of 'tweak'. I posted this
info for people who signed up at freeshell.org for more reliable email than
grex, which has been astonishingly reliable recently.
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rcurl
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response 275 of 333:
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Jun 9 14:28 UTC 2006 |
After a few days with no spam, the dam broke this morning and 21 spam messages
poured in. But the message I sent two days ago has not. Where is it?
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keesan
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response 276 of 333:
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Jun 9 15:53 UTC 2006 |
Your message must have drowned in the flood of spam.
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davel
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response 277 of 333:
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Jun 9 16:16 UTC 2006 |
I also am seeing much more spam. OTOH, SMTP connections are not being
closed (or much, much less frequently) with that too-many-smtp-connections
message. I suspect no mere coincidence.
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mcnally
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response 278 of 333:
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Jun 9 16:25 UTC 2006 |
In an attempt to end the backlogs that were causing many valid
messages to be dropped, I disabled two of the three spam blacklist
checks to see whether that would improve mail delivery. Apparently
it hasn't had any affect on the delay problems people are complaining
about, only facilitated the delivery of more spam.
I'll put back the copy of the exim configuration I kept from before
my changes, restoring the status ante.
I apologize for the extra spam; it was an experiment to see whether
some tuning of the system would help the situation; unfortunately I
don't know enough about exim to figure out how to increase the
number of simultaneous connections it will accept. I *do* know that
the mail log is full of dropped connections, constantly, and it
would be nice if whoever committed us to exim would look at them.
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keesan
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response 279 of 333:
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Jun 9 16:33 UTC 2006 |
Mike, could you set up some simple script that would let people use
spamassassin? I have never ever had a false positive (I only require three
points to dump suspected mail) but still sometimes get false negatives.
Spamassassin with 3 points was getting at least 3/4 of my spam. (I added some
more filters on top of it). Unfortunately it puts some large files into a
./.spamassassin directory but they could be deleted automatically at login.
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rcurl
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response 280 of 333:
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Jun 9 16:38 UTC 2006 |
Re #278 - so my message to me here was killed by a Grex spam filter? From
a UM server address? Why would any of those be in a spam blacklist?
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cyklone
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response 281 of 333:
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Jun 9 16:58 UTC 2006 |
In case you are unaware, some ISPs, etc, filter HARD on umich.edu. I know
from experience because several times in the last year or so I've had that
problem with another ISP I use blocking the umich mail. There reasons were
quite understandable. Apparently, a lot of spam or other problems involve
umich.edu addresses. I was once told it had to do with all the freebies
the students download using their umich accounts (presumably a reference
to the hidden "zombieware" some freebies contain) though I don't know the
details. In any case, if you haven't learned already, be warned now: a
umich.edu address is apt to be filtered by any number if ISPs for any
number of reasons. I'd suggest an alternate address for time-critical
communications.
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keesan
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response 282 of 333:
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Jun 10 12:18 UTC 2006 |
I cannot send mail from grex or even postpone it.
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keesan
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response 283 of 333:
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Jun 10 12:52 UTC 2006 |
Sdf.lonestar.org is also inaccessible again. When I try to telnet
it gets stuck - how do I exit from the attempt (in DOS, Ctrl-C
does not work)?
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lorance
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response 284 of 333:
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Jun 10 17:35 UTC 2006 |
I've never used telnet under DOS, but in UNIX if you enter Control-]
you should get a prompt. Enter q and press enter and you should quit.
If you don't get the prompt then I have no idea.
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keesan
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response 285 of 333:
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Jun 10 18:01 UTC 2006 |
Thanks. First time today sdf at freeshell was 'down', an hour later
it had been up for over 3 days. ???
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davel
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response 286 of 333:
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Jun 10 18:13 UTC 2006 |
I'm not able to get any mail at all into Grex.
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keesan
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response 287 of 333:
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Jun 10 18:16 UTC 2006 |
Ctrl-] works when I am ssh'ed to grex, but what I need is a way to
end a telnet attempt FROM grex to freeshell/lonestar.
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mcnally
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response 288 of 333:
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Jun 11 07:42 UTC 2006 |
re #280:
> so my message to me here was killed by a Grex spam filter?
I have no way of knowing that, but probably not. Delaying messages
from sites that are believed to be spam sites potentially affects
delivery of messages from all sites. Let's say that Grex is configured
to support N simultaneous mail connections at any given time. Now imagine
a whole bunch of sites that are listed in these RBLs connect and attempt
to deliver messages. Because they're listed in the RBLs their connections
are intentionally delayed to slow down spam delivery. What happens if
N of these sites are being kept waiting while your non-blacklisted mail
site attempts to make the N+1th connection?
If I understand the system properly your connection, the N+1th,
is rejected because the mail server is busy and it's assumed that
the host trying to deliver it will reconnect later when the Grex
server isn't busy. But from what I see in the log files I think
we're being more or less constantly bombarded with connections
from other hosts and there's never a time when Grex's server is not
busy and dropping connections from other hosts that want to connect.
I really hope I'm misunderstanding something fundamental here
but whether I am or not something is clearly very wrong with mail
delivery.
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keesan
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response 289 of 333:
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Jun 11 12:51 UTC 2006 |
Grex is not accepting mail for the last day or two, and yesterday (and
probably today) was not sending mail either. What is the problem and is
anyone working on it? I have a couple of craigslist ads listing my grex
address, because freeshell was broken at the time.
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keesan
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response 290 of 333:
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Jun 12 01:36 UTC 2006 |
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