Mail7 11.15.2007

[admin]

Not sure what happened with mail0 but I can check on it today. Looks like mail7 is now doing a lot better and spamd can handle the load with zero issue. So it should be all set. There will be a little delay on incoming emails until spamd white lists all the servers but it's only a 7 min. delay at the min. or until the server tries and resends the email. Just so everyone understands and it's clear how that works I will explain.

spamd stops all emails from coming in until you connect to it more than one time. So lets say you send an email from yahoo.com to joe@mail7.hsphere.cc the first time yahoo.com will get a fail message but it's next attempt will go though with zero issues and then every email from that ip will go right in to the mail server. As long as it tries 7 min. later than the first one it will go right on the white list. Default retries for windows is 15 min and unix is 7.5 or higher so there should no issues and this will stop a LOT of spammers as well, as they don't try emails in most cases and will also stop the attack as they are chaning IPs so much with out retries.

[usereasy]

so exchange servers can send mail to this host now?

[acerdesign]

Any final verdict on whether or not mail has been lost and if so how much?

[themidnightwill]

Originally Posted by Dreamzz

i got a reply from the helpdesk, the earlier emails were lost. But noone gave me a reason why it happens and how it happens.
If it was a not enough disk space issue, i thought vortech should have known it before hand.
Thanks

I got a reply saying they weren't lost. Weird. It was from someone I hadn't seen before, "Abey", saying any mail server sending to it would try again in 12 hours "if properly configured". Which is irritating since a) can't guarantee how they're configured b) I haven't got any email people told me they sent yesterday, and it's been over 12 hours sicne they sent it

Grr.

[DustinStream]

Brad,

So using your '7 minutes' description below, let me put forth a hypothetical....

If I have someone send me a message from an outside server, it will fail the first time.... but what happens if they get a message saying it failed and then immediately try to resend it, or just send a different email message, before the '7 minutes' are up?

Are they black-listed, grey-listed, white-listed, plaid-listed?

Thanks for the clarification....

-Dustin

[usereasy]

...?

Originally Posted by DustinStream

Brad,
So using your '7 minutes' description below, let me put forth a hypothetical....
If I have someone send me a message from an outside server, it will fail the first time.... but what happens if they get a message saying it failed and then immediately try to resend it, or just send a different email message, before the '7 minutes' are up?
Are they black-listed, grey-listed, white-listed, plaid-listed?
Thanks for the clarification....
-Dustin

They are ignored for 7 minutes. When they connect again after the 7th minute they are added to the grey list. We do not have it configure to black-list anyone.

[inetdanno]

So are you official saying mail9 is back fully operational?

I have some very anxious customer wondering if things are going to stay fixed?

I also have some customer on mail9 that are getting some messages 2x and up to 4x but not all messages. Any idea what is causing that?

Thanks

-Dan T

[bmarlin]

Is there an issue with Mail1? Not recieving email.

[admin]

mail9, mail1, mail0 this post is about mail7 and some about mail8 that had attacks I have no idea what you guys are talking about mail1 or mail0 it could be an isolated issue and not system wide, it would be best to open a ticket or start a new post. Getting other issues mixed in to this post may not get it fixed.

I am not aware of any major issues with any other mail servers.

[admin]

Every mail server in the world has a retry attempt to deliver mail, this is how you get mail if the mail server would be down for less then 24 hours and keeps you from losing mail that has not made it to the server.

So we are using the option as well to stop the attack and spam. I will explain it again, I wish I could just draw a picture here. lol

1. joe@somedomain.com sends you an email.
2. That email goes to there mail server.
3. There mail server tries to send the email. ( if they have sent an email before then they will skip 4 )
4. Our mail server says please try again later.
5. There mail server tries again in 7.5 min. up to 30 min later it goes right in to your mail box and they get added to the greylist. ( grey list means they no longer have to try and resend again it will allow there mail to come right through the next time )


So now any emails from joe@somedomain.com will go right to your email box after there first time. So what this does is stop a LOT of spam because spammers in general don't use mail servers that retry, it also stops this attack because they are trying to reconnect every 5 seconds and they get black listed.

This does not affect your out going mail at all and I do recommend every one to use 2525 on there side for sending mail it should connect a bit faster as it a different process running then the one running on port 25 and could be a tad bit more backed up if the attack increases but at this point it is under control.


The system is about as fool proof as you can get going by the mail RFC's and will cut server load and spam load by a TON. If all works out we may use this system network wide and should reduce your spam by at least 50% or more and help prevent attacks such as the one we were and are under still at this time.

I hope I cleared that up for everyone. If you have any questions about mail7 please reply here, if you have questions about another mail server please start a new post as this one is already up to 13 pages.

[treeves]

Will this fix resolve the issue that our clients on Mail8 have changed the port to 2525 and were still getting the sending errors?

[admin]

One note and we are about to send out an email, it would be best if everyone uses 2525 for SMTP.

treeves, I am not aware of any sending issues on mail8 really only mail7 at this time as it's the only one behind the proxy for port 25. It would be best to open a ticket on that. I just asked the techs and said they had not seen any tickets. Just as a note please use http://www.vortechsupport.com to insure we get your ticket.

[inetdanno]

My bad I mis-spoke I ment to referr to mail8.

So are you official saying mail8 is back fully operational?

I have some very anxious customer wondering if things are going to stay fixed?

I also have some customer on mail9 that are getting some messages 2x and up to 4x but not all messages. Any idea what is causing that?

Thanks

-Dan T

[microm]

inetdanno, first I would open a ticket since this seems like an issue specific to you, and this thread isn't related to mail9. but to answer your question, this exact issue has happened to me where there was a really funky spam, or large attachment that the email client kept getting stuck on. depending on the client, first it will download the emails, then delete them all. so, say there are 10 emails, and #6 has the big attachment or funky msg, outlook or whatever program gets to #6, chokes, and then quits the xfer and "delete" off the server procedure. 10 minutes later it tries again, downloads the first 5 msgs, then chokes on #6. I would login to their webmail and see what is there. You can move the msgs to the draft folder and narrow it down to a particular msg that way.