problems with BLU mail?

[blu at vl.com (Tom Metro)]

Jerry Feldman wrote:
> The combination of incoming SPAM traffic, SPAMassasin, and
> mailscanner seem to have postfix taking too long to read mail.
...
> The best solution would be to stop SPAM on the Internet :-)
> More of a stopgap solution for us would be to acquire a new system.

Something that might be more easily obtained than a donated server, and
would also address the spam problem, is getting spam filtering services
donated. Some provider, like Brightmail, might welcome the opportunity
to get some publicity with a tech community in exchange for providing
filtering services.

However, it isn't clear to me why you need to run tools like
SpamAssassin, and mailscanner on a machine used exclusively for
processing list messages. Assuming all of the lists reject senders who
aren't subscribers, that should take care of most of it. (A Postfix
policy server could be created to reject such emails during the SMTP
transaction - even before mailman gets the message.) Running
SpamAssassin on what makes it past that point would be a nice
enhancement, and shouldn't add much overhead.

If the machine handles more than just mailing lists, then maybe general
mail should be split to a different server (an option I think you
mentioned). It may make sense to have Gmail host mail for the few
volunteers that have @blu.org addresses. (I know JABR experimented with
Gmail hosting for a blu.org subdomain.) If you did that, the top-level
list aliases might even get spam filtered by Gmail before being
forwarded to list at olduvai.blu.org. (olduvai.blu.org could then be
firewalled to only accept connections from Gmail's servers.)


> I'm also seeing some issues with the hourly cron job that JABR set up 
> for the virus updates. 

Do any of the hosted lists accept attachments? If not, why check for
viruses? Why not just use a simple Postfix rule to reject everything
with a binary attachment?

  -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/

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