Mail11 - 12/12/06

[chungmike]

It's been working for the past 3 hours. Whew! I hope it stays working like this.

Good work Vortech!

I know this is serious business, but sometimes we need to loosen up a bit. Therefore, I present my own "made up" account of what happened....and it's exactly what I sent to my customer too:

"It appears that we had a massive flood of traffic trying to go through the
mail server, and that was the cause of all the problems. Spam, viruses, etc
usually are to blame when something like this happens. We have a constant
battle against hackers, spammers, and viruses just to keep the networks up
and running. I'm sorry for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience."

Yes, I know it's BS, but I had to tell them something. It's probably not far from the truth. Feel free to use it or modify it for your own use. Or post your "own explanation" of what might have happened to mail11.

[admin]

The problem is fixed at this time, the reason it took so long to fix is the amount of emails coming in to the box more than 600 real emails a second, problem was ClamAV could not keep up because the virus and spams had zips attached to them causing it to try and scan 100's of emails a second with attachments.

For the time being we disabled ClamAV for mail11 and it fixed the problem right away. So we will leave it disabled until we see that the amount of spam and virus emails slow down.

It's always a good idea to run your own local virus scan anyway, but you may want to notify your customers just incase to make sure they have at least something running.

If you need a good free one AGV is GREAT. Any one can download the free NON-COMMERCIAL version here http://free.grisoft.com/doc/avg-anti.../lng/us/tpl/v5

[Brangwyn]

F-PROT is also pretty good though not free, for $50 though you can license it legitimately for 10 machines

http://www.f-prot.com/products/prices/price_win.html

[server-68]

Finally a nice explanation. Txs.

[server-68]

A Beta one: http://antivirus.comodo.com/

[rheide]

Admin - thanks for the info.

Just so I'm clear, it took 24 hours to realize ClamAV needed to be disabled? (I'm not saying I could have figured it out, I just give you guys more credit than needed multiple senior admins and 24 hours to figure this out)

[rheide]

free year of Computer Associate's ezAntivirus:
http://home3.ca.com/SubscriptCenter/...istration.aspx

[dvanburen]

Originally Posted by rheide

Admin - thanks for the info.
Just so I'm clear, it took 24 hours to realize ClamAV needed to be disabled? (I'm not saying I could have figured it out, I just give you guys more credit than needed multiple senior admins and 24 hours to figure this out)

I was called at about 12:30pm, it was fixed within the hour. The issue was not reported to us until this morning.

[Samgold]

Originally Posted by dvanburen

I was called at about 12:30pm, it was fixed within the hour. The issue was not reported to us until this morning.

Don't you think that is a problem? We have benn complaining to support and on this board since yesterday morning and you got called only 24 hours later?

[admin]

Originally Posted by rheide

Admin - thanks for the info.
Just so I'm clear, it took 24 hours to realize ClamAV needed to be disabled? (I'm not saying I could have figured it out, I just give you guys more credit than needed multiple senior admins and 24 hours to figure this out)

It's always the last thing we want to do is turn off services and we were not sure what cause was ClamAV, SA, Qmail it's self, another attack, so it took some time to find what the cause was, we also thought it would calm down a bit if it was spam or a virus but it never did. It's still coming in, it just does not have to scan all these files.

[dvanburen]

Originally Posted by Samgold

Don't you think that is a problem? We have benn complaining to support and on this board since yesterday morning and you got called only 24 hours later?

I worked yesterday until 3pm, and was called at 1am for an unrelated issue. Neither time was there a single ticket regarding mail11.

[Samgold]

Originally Posted by dvanburen

I worked yesterday until 3pm, and was called at 1am for an unrelated issue. Neither time was there a single ticket regarding mail11.

All day yesterday not one ticket about mail11? Only people complaining on the forum?

[chungmike]

I think David was just not informed about the mail11 tickets as they were handled by other techs at the time.

I'm not trying to be nitpicky or complain, but I wanted to bring the fact that I submitted ticket # ARG-487752 on Dec 11 at 1:44pm specifically about mail11. I don't think I was the only one.

If David fixed the mail11 problem within the hour, next time we need to make sure David knows about a problem ASAP.

[saback]

I still having problems with mail11.

POP3 is not working.

SMTP is not working.

But at least I still pinging ...

[chungmike]

Originally Posted by saback

I still having problems with mail11.
POP3 is not working.
SMTP is not working.
But at least I still pinging ...

When I saw this, I just thought - crap.

I just checked the status page, and mail11 looks ok. I tested by sending and email from mail11, and it worked. I was also able to receive. It seems to be working ok for me.

Maybe try again.