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Grex > Helpers > #149: Grex System Problems - Spring 2006 | |
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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 333 responses total. |
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 |
fastmail.fm offers 10MB webmail without ads. Login at least 8 characters.
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rcurl
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response 291 of 333:
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Jun 12 02:50 UTC 2006 |
When are we going to get e-mail back on Grex? Or is now the time to "jump
ship" from using Grex for e-mail?
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nharmon
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response 292 of 333:
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Jun 12 11:42 UTC 2006 |
Some of us "jumped ship" a long time ago.
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slynne
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response 293 of 333:
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Jun 12 12:50 UTC 2006 |
As much as I hate to say this, I dont think that grex currently has the
staff needed to maintain email up to the standards we all would like.
This is especially true since there are so many excellent free email
services out there (like gmail).
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davel
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response 294 of 333:
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Jun 12 14:27 UTC 2006 |
I tried to offer a gmail invitation to Grace. They supposedly sent her
email containing the invitation. But since mail to Grex isn't going through,
she never got it.
AFAICS Grex is just plain not accepting mail at present. Always that same
too-many-SMTP-connections message.
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keesan
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response 295 of 333:
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Jun 12 15:46 UTC 2006 |
Last I knew grex was not sending outgoing email either. I don't know any
other place besides freeshell to get a shell account that will let us use
non webmail with mail, mutt, or pine, and set up spamassassin and procmail.
Is anyone working on this problem?
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krj
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response 296 of 333:
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Jun 12 17:01 UTC 2006 |
Rane in resp:291 :: It was probably time to leave Grex's email service
about a year ago. I'm still doing too much mail here, unsuccessfully,
too.
Dave in resp:294 on Gmail invites: Have grace get a hotmail account, then
send the Gmail invite to the hotmail account?
Sindi in resp:295 :: There are probably good reasons there are
very few public shell accounts with e-mail any more. Email has become
a very difficult and hostile environment. There is little reason to
expect volunteers to work like beavers to give you reliable 1985-style
e-mail any more.
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mcnally
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response 297 of 333:
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Jun 12 17:05 UTC 2006 |
Here's the deal. I'm out of town, on the first vacation I've had in
quite a while. As much as it annoys me (I conduct most of my personal
e-mail through Grex and there's no telling what I'm missing, same as
many of the rest of you..) I'm not planning on spending my vacation
learning how to administer exim properly and fixing Grex's e-mail.
Unfortunately nobody else from staff seems to be responding to,
or possibly even reading this conference posts.
When I get back I'm willing to take a shot at getting a mail configuration
working on Grex, but if I do it I'd prefer to use postfix, a mailer I'm
more familiar with. Also, there may be a period when mail doesn't work
at all while things are swapped over. If people can live with that I'll
give it a try when I get home.
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remmers
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response 298 of 333:
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Jun 12 17:33 UTC 2006 |
Well, I'm at least reading this item. Don't know that I'll have time to
work on exim either. (Mail server configuration is in general something
I haven't had a lot of experience with.)
As I recall the history, we're using exim because a staff member at the
time we were transitioning to openbsd was intimately familiar with it
from work and volunteered to set it up. Unfortunately, for reasons that
I think were beyond his control, he's no longer an active staff member,
so we no longer have a resident exim expert.
I think that if you're willing to work on mail configuration and nobody
else is, the mail software we use should be your call, so I would
support switching to something you'd be more comfortable with.
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