12/15/03 mail1.hsphere.cc

We are currently working on fixing a mail backlog on mail1.hsphere.cc. Sorry about the inconvenience, but we will get things back up and running as soon as possible.

Addition By bigdave:

This is also on the end of this 3 page post, but Matt figured out who it was last night, so the worst seems to be over, at least until tonight when they choose another domain to send the list from, we hope that does not happen.'

http://mrtg.vortechhosting.com/crick...2 Fqmailqueue

NICE!!

Is that why I received several copies of the same messages immediately before the server outage? I received 33 copies of a few different emails.

[vagabras]

Is this the reason for the extremely delay emails and the reason i cannot connect to mail1 for download the mail.

[Carly]

Originally Posted by vagabras

Is this the reason for the extremely delay emails and the reason i cannot connect to mail1 for download the mail.

Yeh, that would be the reason, though you shouldn't be having any problems with it now. If you are, send in a trouble ticket.

[Brangwyn]

I've submitted a ticket but mail1's not looking to healthy again, queue is getting up towards 30,000 emails !

[garmol]

Yeah. As of now, mail1 is in error. Looks like works are currently done on it now I hope.

[Brangwyn]

Hopefully, I put the TT in about 3 hours ago and haven't had a response, mail1's Q still seems to be going up rather than down as well.

[theviking]

Vixen / Brad - Could we get an update on mail1 ?

[glz]

I do not understand why this is happening so often? I have mail accounts at other hosting sites for years with out anywhere near the amount of e-mail outages in the past 6 months that I've been here.

Maybe it is time to sit down and REALLY review the servers/software/policies in place.

Just some frustrated venting that hopefully will spark some changes....

Well, 30000 does take awhile to clear. I put a couple more domains in the badmailfrom that I think may be responsible for the blockages.

Just a little information on the problem at hand...

Every morning between 2am-3am, the queue starts to increase gradually till between 6am and 10am, at which time it quickly clears out (at least it did this last week). Due to the timing issue (same time every morning), I assume someone is sending large volumes of email, but its difficult to track since I can't find any consistency in the logs over the number of days. Its as if they are using many domains and I just haven't been able to tie them together.

So... It's not really the server, but a bad customer that is playing hard to get, but we will get him soon.

I spoke to Ron (I think) at Vortech tech support yesterday about some dns issues I was having. (& he was very helpful)

I mentioned how nice it was that mail1 was not experiencing as many outages as it did in the past. I spoke too soon! If you guys think it's been bad over the last month, be glad you were not a customer last spring.

Vortech has been battling spammers all year; as soon as they seem to bust one, another one appears within a week or two. Subsequently, mail1 has always been a problem... Bob Dole can stay up longer.

[glz]

Thanks for the update Matt. The logs don't tag the domain or ip address? With spoofing, I know it is hard to find it.

Heck, send me a log and I'll help look through it :-)

Here is a suggestion: maybe setup a separate server for users to use only to send out newsletters. Restrict the number of e-mails sent on the main server to maybe 1 every 5 or 10 seconds. This would force valid "bulk" mail to the other server, which, if it gets clogged, no one will be down, the newsletter would get out eventually (it is a low priority service anyway), and everyone would be happy.

If 30K was from one user, then obviously it is spam; but if, say 10 users are sending out 3K each to their customers/subscribers, then that could very well be legit.

Just my 3 cents (inflation).

[dlrmartin]

Originally Posted by glz

I do not understand why this is happening so often? I have mail accounts at other hosting sites for years with out anywhere near the amount of e-mail outages in the past 6 months that I've been here.

Maybe it is time to sit down and REALLY review the servers/software/policies in place.

Just some frustrated venting that hopefully will spark some changes....

I don't know so much about mail servers... but seems qmail is not the best soft.
I suppose that a good mail server soft musn't down so often....

Anyone here can opine about qmail?

Certainly all of us we has been in others host providers we had troubles, is true, is acceptable, but so and so issues with a simple mail server never seen, at least for me...

May be Vortech should think about this. while me and many of my customers are waitting.

Any software is open to abuse...

The problem with doing things like limiting the number of emails per second, etc etc, is that the spammers already know the workarounds for these sort of things. The best thing to do is to get them off the server asap (not really proactive solution, but it prevents them from doing it again in the future).

Limiters and such do eat up the CPU and memory, and disk space, and it eventually gets to the point of ... which is more inconveninent, having an issue with a spammer once or twice a month, or having to pace your mail every single day... I think most of our customers owuld rather leave it as is.

Sorry, dlrmartin, qmail is what Psoft uses. Its right under Sendmail in the MTA list... Its a lot better than Exim (Which cpanel uses) imho. Qmail is pretty secure and fast at what it does. Even sendmail has its issues...

[dlrmartin]

Ok I undestand why qmail. But I don't believe that a simple abuse fall the server...

Others providers haven't so and often issues with a simple mail server, I'm sure spammers there are in All places or only attack to us?

if qmail is good, hardware is ok, should be another issue why mail1 lives on floor.

We cannot be on spammers hands.