2003-09-16 mail1, unix8, unix9

mail1 is backed up and someone got suspended for spamming. Having over 50000 spam bounces stuck in the queue for a full mailbox is Not Amusing to anyone. ETR has been raised to 3-4 hours from now.

unix9 experienced some flurries of very high activity but has stabilised. We're trying to work with the people generating the most volume and maybe have them redo some code.

unix8 was hit this afternoon by extremely high traffic to a site that apparently conducted a disgustingly successful advertising campaign. They won't be liking their bandwidth bill... Service and response times have been restored to near normal and the server's being watched closely.

[somereseller]

Thank you

[Brangwyn]

Thanks Alex ...

wonder what advertising campaign they used, sounds like it works anyway !!

Seriously, I ought to make them tell us. Their reseller was increasing their quota in 100MB increments to accommodate the log file.

[Brangwyn]

Sounds almost like a slashdot effect really doesnt it!

[somereseller]

Hehehe...Now I know the answer to my earlier questions =)

[Brangwyn]

lol, yeah, I guess you do ! .. due credit though, the machine did stay up just really really slow.

[MEELAN]

were any mails deleted in the above process.

At least two of clients are complaing that mails sent some hours ago didn't reach them.

But, the ones I sent now received within minutes.

[Nitro5955]

They probably got Farked.

Peoples bandwidth seems to disapear after being posted on www.fark.com

Just an idea.

Also is there any update on the Mail1 server? I am just wondering because I am still having mail issues.

Thanks

[tkraffty]

Hi - I'm still seeing delays and am also finding out about several messages my clients have been trying to send me - but which have been completely disappearing - without ANY sort of bounced/reply messages from any servers, and definitely not making to any of my mailboxes.

So, maybe I'm talking about a separate issue here, but things have been shaky with email ever since you implimented the new SPAM filters.

I'd MUCH rather prefer a system like BrightMail (which I see when using my ComCast.net mailbox), which allows me to see and review any suspected SPAM messages, because they are saved off to a separate "Screened Mail" folder that I can see when logging into my Web-based e-mail management systems. If I want to remove these messages, I can click the "Empty" button... But at least I'm given a chance to review these messages and decide if they should be filtered or not.

Right now, I have no idea what your spam filters are doing. There are no rules or dat-file I can review for accuracy or errors, and I definitely don't like that my clients are getting ZERO notification that their messages haven't been received or couldn't reach me...

I'd like to hear more about the SPAM filters being used here, if there are any known issues, and why on earth we would have any system or configuration in-place which would allow messages to completely disappear without any bounced reply from the server, to let people know their e-mail didn't reach the recipient...

grumble grumble grumble

[simplicity]

I just wanted to bump this up to the top--I have to agree with tkraffty--I also have an issue with disappearing mail. I have a support ticket in about the problem, but so far--no resolution--not because they aren't trying (you guys are GREAT!) but because it's hard to say there's a problem if you don't get a bounce message or error message when the mail is sent. I don't know if this is related to the spam filters or something else, but I have only found out today that several emails have not come through from clients which were sent over a week to a week and a half ago. My heart sinks at the chances of contacts which were made via my contact form on my site in that length of time that are now never to be seen again.

I have sent a plethora of test messages from tons of email accounts and none of them show up to my inbox OR webmail box--and they don't bounce back to me either. No error. No bounce. Nothingness.

EEK!

[tkraffty]

Yup - I'm currently "sweet-talking" a lucrative corporate client into switching over to my hosting... But with the current state of e-mail services here, even if I can get them to sign-up, I would no doubt lose them within a month - just for this one reason alone (and possible also because of the new 5MB size limit imposed on e-mails)...

And losing this client should be totally avoidable, given that the technical staff here has been able to easily solve much more complicated issues in the past...

[worldhosting]

Around one hours ago - unix9, unix11, unix5 machine has very slow responce time from russia, estonia and tampa (florida). Right now all work is okay, but customter would like know what's happen? I am not found any post about this strange problem from anyone, so i ask you - may be there is networl connectivity problem? But we check access not only from Russia, but also from Estonia, USA, Israel...
Also i check voretch monitoring service and machine showed as okay (green color).

[jmbeach]

There's an ongoing post regarding this - called Network Lag

http://matrixwebhosting.net/forum/sh...&threadid=5847

[rcordray]

Originally posted by tkraffty
Yup - I'm currently "sweet-talking" a lucrative corporate client into switching over to my hosting... But with the current state of e-mail services here, even if I can get them to sign-up, I would no doubt lose them within a month - just for this one reason alone (and possible also because of the new 5MB size limit imposed on e-mails)...

And losing this client should be totally avoidable, given that the technical staff here has been able to easily solve much more complicated issues in the past...

What's the status with the spam filters? The last notice I can find says that SpamAssassin was turned off a week or two ago because it had too much of an impact on performance. However, I've noticed there are a number of newsletters and other respectable mail I no longer receive, presumably because they are being deleted at the server.

I want to echo some of the other comments here:

- I appreciate your efforts to reduce spam. I don't need spam, but I don't need a censor, either. Deleting e-mail based on unknown criteria goes too far. So far, plenty of obvious spam is still getting through, and quite a bit of legitimate mail is tossed. How about revealing the rules being used, plus creating a webmail-accessible folder to hold suspected spam for a while?

- the 5MB limit on outbound mail seems pretty arbitrary and limiting. Some of my customers and potential customers send and receive large files containing monthly utility bill and similar data. A day's delay in getting data transfer details straightened out, or a failure to send the data at all can be pretty serious. E-mail is obviously a poor, insecure way to send this data, but its what they know how to do. Maybe they can master ftp and file compression in the future. Right now they are struggling with e-mail. Please offer us some option for configuring the mail settings, even if you have to charge for it.