/var space issues on balug VM, almost certainly from Internet miscreants & their bots
/var space issues on balug VM, almost certainly from Internet miscreants & their bots So ... bit more background on this below, and see also wiki page: https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php?id=system:annoyances I'll likely have the more detailed analysis/summary/progress there - including also history of the wiki page. I'll likely post more to BALUG-Admin <balug-admin@lists.balug.org> when it's more-or-less resloved ... or other major or possibly significant developments/findings/changes. Anyway, feel free to ask/discuss on BALUG-Admin if you may wish (or toss about ideas/suggestions/questions/whatever). Anyway, I thought the list traffic would be more fitting for BALUG-Admin than BALUG-Talk, so ... pointing that discussion to here ... also linked (notably on wiki page) to the earlier, if one wants to catch up on reading that (much or possibly all of which, might also be captured below). references/excerpts:
From: "Michael Paoli" <Michael.Paoli@cal.berkeley.edu> Subject: -->BALUG-Admin Re: [BALUG-Talk] Possible solution of blankness or editing outline-only on BALUG DokuWiki? Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2021 21:40:57 -0700
I'm going to suggest taking this discussion to the BALUG-Admin <BALUG-Admin@lists.balug.org> https://lists.balug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/balug-admin list, as, though the matter does involved Linux somewhat generally, it's much more specific and relevant to BALUG and the specific inner workings thereof. So, expect my next update and further communications on the matter to be on the BALUG-Admin list, and I'll likely start it off with latest update(s) and some background references/links on the matter, at least as of late.
Also ... dates, lists, number of members: YYYY-MM-DD announce talk admin 2021-04-01 832 259 35 https://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-admin/2021-April/001046.html I'm guestmating probably not around 259 subscribers are that interested in these particularly details ... but quite possibly closer to about 35 are ... or would be. I may well also put up a wiki page regarding findings/developments ... or maybe update an older one if such suitable wiki page already exists.
Anyway, I still have some 'work' to do ... # date -Iseconds && df -h /var 2021-04-24T04:39:59+00:00 Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/balug-var 6.4G 5.9G 287M 96% /var #
From: "Michael Paoli" <Michael.Paoli@cal.berkeley.edu> Subject: Re: [BALUG-Talk] Possible solution of blankness or editing outline-only on BALUG DokuWiki? Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2021 08:44:22 -0700
Well, not out of the woods yet.
Have done fair bit of compression (even using xz -9) of some moderately older data on /var ... and have grown /var several times, ... yet it filled up again very recently (or exceedingly close - I saw it at 100% again, but that's probably rounded, so at least >99.5%).
So, at present, now have: # df -h /var Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/balug-var 6.4G 5.7G 491M 93% /var # And very recently (only few days back) that was:
df -h /var Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/balug-var 4.9G 4.5G 190M 97% /var Can't just keep growing /var indefinitely. Much of the volume is mail and related - logs, queued mail, bounces & failures, mail to listadmin and postmaster, etc., and mostly lots of other nuisance stuff - fail2ban database takes fair bit of space, but trimming what that holds would increase data in other logs - notably of lots of nuisance failed login/authentication attempts and the like.
And, even if I caught it before completely full, some services (e.g. exim4) will proactively stop processing when the free filesystem space runs too low.
So, yeah, I'll need to do some more work on it. May need to analyze why it's ballooning more than it was in past - what's the nature of the problematic traffic that keeps driving up the storage.
I suspect it's mostly spam (and attempts thereof) and bad bots doing/attempting stuff ... essentially all some type(s) of nefarious unwanted traffic chewing up resources.
So, in only a couple days or so, it's already nearly 1.5 GiB more data, and that's already after having done fair bit of aggressive data data compression on some older data (e.g. some of the older mail data easily compressed from around 200 of MiB to under a few tens of MB ... and I even moved the compressed off of the /var filesystem).
So, ..., yeah, miscreants on 'da Internet ... more work for me to do. :-/
Would also be nice to get some of that /var space back, and not have to give so much of it over to what's basically mostly unintersting crud.
And, have had stuff like this happen before, ... e.g. like bad bots trying to register on wiki - and chewing up huge volumes of space ... that's why there's no self-registration option anymore ... blame it on abusers on 'da Internet. Manual registration only now. Even captcha's weren't really enough for most of that ... bad bots still pounded away and repeatedly filled up log space. Maybe more fail2ban config would help that ... but then that also ends up chewing up additional space with its database ...
# du -x /var | sort -bnr | head -n 12 5866812 /var 2102592 /var/lib 1249060 /var/log 1017624 /var/spool 1015100 /var/mail 932200 /var/spool/exim4 731780 /var/lib/fail2ban 616584 /var/lib/clamav 531456 /var/log/apache2 505952 /var/log/exim4 491980 /var/spool/exim4/input 364892 /var/spool/exim4/msglog #
From: "aaronco36 via BALUG-Talk" <balug-talk@lists.balug.org> Subject: Re: [BALUG-Talk] Possible solution of blankness or editing outline-only on BALUG DokuWiki? Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2021 16:21:14 +0000 (UTC)
Quoting Michael Paoli <Michael.Paoli at cal.berkeley.edu> from [1]: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Thanks for the report, but I'm unable to reproduce the issue. Anyone else able to reproduce it? Are you/anyone seeing the issue at this time? Anyone else also see it earlier?
I've tried the following on: https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php without being able to reproduce the issue: Chromium Chromium incognito mode Firefox Firefox private browsing mode Lynx curl wget Chome on Android from another ISP Chrom icognito mode on Android from another ISP ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Cut-and-pasted a text screen-capture and submitted it as a [BALUG-Test] 'Test of BALUG Wiki pages' posting yesterday morning; see [2]. AFAICT, that "blankness or editing outline-only issue" for BALUG DokuWiki pages [3] and [4] occurred from before 08:00am PDT up through the late morning, and then went away by mid-afternoon yesterday. Probably reloaded both those BALUG DokuWiki pages a half-dozen times or so over the morning time-period using mostly Firefox-ESR standard mode and Firefox-ESR private browsing mode, and maybe once or twice using TOR browser in its [least] Safe mode.
Same results for all browsers used to test those pair of pages during that entire morning time-period.
Quoting Michael Paoli <Michael.Paoli at cal.berkeley.edu> from [5]: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ That may have done it. Looks like I need to add more space to /var and/or clean some more stuff off of it: df -h /var Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/balug-var 4.9G 4.5G 190M 97% /var # ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks much, Michael, for effectively diagnosing and resolving the issue! :-)
Besides considering the issue arising from the DokuWiki site itself or BALUG's device /dev/mapper/balug-var, was also considering the possibility that the issue might have arisen from my own browser client.
Why so?
Well, there was no issue whatsoever with successfully loading BALUG DokuWiki pages [3] and [4] throughout Sunday and Monday of this week. What changed on Tuesday afternoon was upgrading Firefox-ESR to a slightly higher, minor version as per 'less /var/log/apt/history.log' :
Start-Date: 2021-04-20 14:10:03 Commandline: apt upgrade Upgrade: firefox-esr:amd64 (78.9.0esr-1~deb10u1, 78.10.0esr-1~deb10u1) End-Date: 2021-04-20 14:10:15
One or more bugs in the upgraded FF 78.10.0esr could have conceivably rendered text and links in the BALUG DokuWiki incorrectly afterwards, as remote as this possibility might seem to be. It's good to know that this wasn't the case at all, and that this latest Firefox-ESR browser was fine after all :-)
Thanks again Michael!
-Aaron
=========================== REFERENCES =========================== [1]https://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-talk/2021-April/000220.html [2]https://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-test/2021/000048.html [3]https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php [4]https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php?id=balug:offered_wanted_hardware_et... [5]https://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-talk/2021-April/000221.html ===========================
So ... much better now. :-) Still more to do, but it's at least "better enough" - things are quite in operation again. I did stop SMTP (exim4) on the balug Virtual Machine (VM) host for a while while dealing with the problem (roughly about 24 hours or so). But at this point, things are back in "normal" operation ... and even better now! (At least for the most part). E.g. ... And, now with ye olde crufty eximconfig out of the way, which has been doing some of the anti-spam, some drain bamaged anti-spam it had that was causing issues with legitimate mail, is probably quite gone now. E.g., mailed commands to mailman can now be done using just the Subject: header and with an empty body - and that now works fine. Whereas earlier, the eximconfig configuration would mostly reject emails with an empty body as spam. So, I'll also be updating configurations to take out text regarding the workaround for that (include a body with just end in it) - as that's no longer needed at all. So, yeah, drain bamaged anti-spam ... I recall many moons ago, Rick Moen sent an email which had a http or https url which ended in linuxmafia.com ... probably just https://linuxmafia.com Well, silly rules in eximconfig would look at that and essentially says, oh my gosh, that's a URL to a .COM executable file, must protect those happless Microsoft Windows/DOS users from that, and can't allow that thorough, it's probably some malware binary anyway. Well, anyway, at this point shouldn't be getting tripped up by stuff like that. Anyway, lots more to do, but the present is "better enough" to (literally) run with it (currently running). And, will make further improvements from that base.
From: "Michael Paoli" <Michael.Paoli@cal.berkeley.edu> Subject: /var space issues on balug VM, almost certainly from Internet miscreants & their bots Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2021 23:30:52 -0700
/var space issues on balug VM, almost certainly from Internet miscreants & their bots
So ... bit more background on this below, and see also wiki page: https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php?id=system:annoyances
I'll likely have the more detailed analysis/summary/progress there - including also history of the wiki page.
I'll likely post more to BALUG-Admin <balug-admin@lists.balug.org> when it's more-or-less resloved ... or other major or possibly significant developments/findings/changes.
Anyway, feel free to ask/discuss on BALUG-Admin if you may wish (or toss about ideas/suggestions/questions/whatever). Anyway, I thought the list traffic would be more fitting for BALUG-Admin than BALUG-Talk, so ... pointing that discussion to here ... also linked (notably on wiki page) to the earlier, if one wants to catch up on reading that (much or possibly all of which, might also be captured below).
references/excerpts:
From: "Michael Paoli" <Michael.Paoli@cal.berkeley.edu> Subject: -->BALUG-Admin Re: [BALUG-Talk] Possible solution of blankness or editing outline-only on BALUG DokuWiki? Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2021 21:40:57 -0700
I'm going to suggest taking this discussion to the BALUG-Admin <BALUG-Admin@lists.balug.org> https://lists.balug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/balug-admin list, as, though the matter does involved Linux somewhat generally, it's much more specific and relevant to BALUG and the specific inner workings thereof. So, expect my next update and further communications on the matter to be on the BALUG-Admin list, and I'll likely start it off with latest update(s) and some background references/links on the matter, at least as of late.
Also ... dates, lists, number of members: YYYY-MM-DD announce talk admin 2021-04-01 832 259 35 https://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-admin/2021-April/001046.html I'm guestmating probably not around 259 subscribers are that interested in these particularly details ... but quite possibly closer to about 35 are ... or would be. I may well also put up a wiki page regarding findings/developments ... or maybe update an older one if such suitable wiki page already exists.
Anyway, I still have some 'work' to do ... # date -Iseconds && df -h /var 2021-04-24T04:39:59+00:00 Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/balug-var 6.4G 5.9G 287M 96% /var #
From: "Michael Paoli" <Michael.Paoli@cal.berkeley.edu> Subject: Re: [BALUG-Talk] Possible solution of blankness or editing outline-only on BALUG DokuWiki? Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2021 08:44:22 -0700
Well, not out of the woods yet.
Have done fair bit of compression (even using xz -9) of some moderately older data on /var ... and have grown /var several times, ... yet it filled up again very recently (or exceedingly close - I saw it at 100% again, but that's probably rounded, so at least >99.5%).
So, at present, now have: # df -h /var Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/balug-var 6.4G 5.7G 491M 93% /var # And very recently (only few days back) that was:
df -h /var Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/balug-var 4.9G 4.5G 190M 97% /var Can't just keep growing /var indefinitely. Much of the volume is mail and related - logs, queued mail, bounces & failures, mail to listadmin and postmaster, etc., and mostly lots of other nuisance stuff - fail2ban database takes fair bit of space, but trimming what that holds would increase data in other logs - notably of lots of nuisance failed login/authentication attempts and the like.
And, even if I caught it before completely full, some services (e.g. exim4) will proactively stop processing when the free filesystem space runs too low.
So, yeah, I'll need to do some more work on it. May need to analyze why it's ballooning more than it was in past - what's the nature of the problematic traffic that keeps driving up the storage.
I suspect it's mostly spam (and attempts thereof) and bad bots doing/attempting stuff ... essentially all some type(s) of nefarious unwanted traffic chewing up resources.
So, in only a couple days or so, it's already nearly 1.5 GiB more data, and that's already after having done fair bit of aggressive data data compression on some older data (e.g. some of the older mail data easily compressed from around 200 of MiB to under a few tens of MB ... and I even moved the compressed off of the /var filesystem).
So, ..., yeah, miscreants on 'da Internet ... more work for me to do. :-/
Would also be nice to get some of that /var space back, and not have to give so much of it over to what's basically mostly unintersting crud.
And, have had stuff like this happen before, ... e.g. like bad bots trying to register on wiki - and chewing up huge volumes of space ... that's why there's no self-registration option anymore ... blame it on abusers on 'da Internet. Manual registration only now. Even captcha's weren't really enough for most of that ... bad bots still pounded away and repeatedly filled up log space. Maybe more fail2ban config would help that ... but then that also ends up chewing up additional space with its database ...
# du -x /var | sort -bnr | head -n 12 5866812 /var 2102592 /var/lib 1249060 /var/log 1017624 /var/spool 1015100 /var/mail 932200 /var/spool/exim4 731780 /var/lib/fail2ban 616584 /var/lib/clamav 531456 /var/log/apache2 505952 /var/log/exim4 491980 /var/spool/exim4/input 364892 /var/spool/exim4/msglog #
From: "aaronco36 via BALUG-Talk" <balug-talk@lists.balug.org> Subject: Re: [BALUG-Talk] Possible solution of blankness or editing outline-only on BALUG DokuWiki? Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2021 16:21:14 +0000 (UTC)
Quoting Michael Paoli <Michael.Paoli at cal.berkeley.edu> from [1]: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Thanks for the report, but I'm unable to reproduce the issue. Anyone else able to reproduce it? Are you/anyone seeing the issue at this time? Anyone else also see it earlier?
I've tried the following on: https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php without being able to reproduce the issue: Chromium Chromium incognito mode Firefox Firefox private browsing mode Lynx curl wget Chome on Android from another ISP Chrom icognito mode on Android from another ISP ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Cut-and-pasted a text screen-capture and submitted it as a [BALUG-Test] 'Test of BALUG Wiki pages' posting yesterday morning; see [2]. AFAICT, that "blankness or editing outline-only issue" for BALUG DokuWiki pages [3] and [4] occurred from before 08:00am PDT up through the late morning, and then went away by mid-afternoon yesterday. Probably reloaded both those BALUG DokuWiki pages a half-dozen times or so over the morning time-period using mostly Firefox-ESR standard mode and Firefox-ESR private browsing mode, and maybe once or twice using TOR browser in its [least] Safe mode.
Same results for all browsers used to test those pair of pages during that entire morning time-period.
Quoting Michael Paoli <Michael.Paoli at cal.berkeley.edu> from [5]: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ That may have done it. Looks like I need to add more space to /var and/or clean some more stuff off of it: df -h /var Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/balug-var 4.9G 4.5G 190M 97% /var # ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks much, Michael, for effectively diagnosing and resolving the issue! :-)
Besides considering the issue arising from the DokuWiki site itself or BALUG's device /dev/mapper/balug-var, was also considering the possibility that the issue might have arisen from my own browser client.
Why so?
Well, there was no issue whatsoever with successfully loading BALUG DokuWiki pages [3] and [4] throughout Sunday and Monday of this week. What changed on Tuesday afternoon was upgrading Firefox-ESR to a slightly higher, minor version as per 'less /var/log/apt/history.log' :
Start-Date: 2021-04-20 14:10:03 Commandline: apt upgrade Upgrade: firefox-esr:amd64 (78.9.0esr-1~deb10u1, 78.10.0esr-1~deb10u1) End-Date: 2021-04-20 14:10:15
One or more bugs in the upgraded FF 78.10.0esr could have conceivably rendered text and links in the BALUG DokuWiki incorrectly afterwards, as remote as this possibility might seem to be. It's good to know that this wasn't the case at all, and that this latest Firefox-ESR browser was fine after all :-)
Thanks again Michael!
-Aaron
=========================== REFERENCES =========================== [1]https://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-talk/2021-April/000220.html [2]https://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-test/2021/000048.html [3]https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php [4]https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php?id=balug:offered_wanted_hardware_et... [5]https://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-talk/2021-April/000221.html ===========================
From: "Michael Paoli" <Michael.Paoli@cal.berkeley.edu> Subject: much better now: Re: /var space issues on balug VM, almost certainly from Internet miscreants & their bots Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2021 04:30:18 -0700
So, the much earlier work-around and related text adjustments and such for the email interface to mailman https://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-admin/2017-July/000846.html no longer needed with the problematic eximconfig stuff gone. So, basically reverted those changes (work-around descriptive text in messages, etc., where it was applicable). Much clearer now, and mailman commands can now be done fine in the Subject: header with an empty email body.
So ... much better now. :-) Still more to do, but it's at least "better enough" - things are quite in operation again. I did stop SMTP (exim4) on the balug Virtual Machine (VM) host for a while while dealing with the problem (roughly about 24 hours or so). But at this point, things are back in "normal" operation ... and even better now! (At least for the most part). E.g. ...
And, now with ye olde crufty eximconfig out of the way, which has been doing some of the anti-spam, some drain bamaged anti-spam it had that was causing issues with legitimate mail, is probably quite gone now. E.g., mailed commands to mailman can now be done using just the Subject: header and with an empty body - and that now works fine. Whereas earlier, the eximconfig configuration would mostly reject emails with an empty body as spam. So, I'll also be updating configurations to take out text regarding the workaround for that (include a body with just end in it) - as that's no longer needed at all.
Quoting Michael Paoli (Michael.Paoli@cal.berkeley.edu):
So, yeah, drain bamaged anti-spam ... I recall many moons ago, Rick Moen sent an email which had a http or https url which ended in linuxmafia.com ... probably just https://linuxmafia.com Well, silly rules in eximconfig would look at that and essentially says, oh my gosh, that's a URL to a .COM executable file, must protect those happless Microsoft Windows/DOS users from that, and can't allow that thorough, it's probably some malware binary anyway. Well, anyway, at this point shouldn't be getting tripped up by stuff like that.
Well, what can I say? EximConfig (no longer maintained and too crufty to even be a reasonable point of departure, any more) was in its heyday a large and varied grab-bag of Exim and other rulesets that were aggressive and effective with low system load -- and pioneered innovative spam-evading techniques such as SMTP callouts/callbacks to the delivering IP during the SMTP conversation to check RFC compliance. It was always the case, however, that occasionally you would find that some of the ruleset entries were overaggressive and unwise, so you would comment those few out as you found them. Pretty soon, I'm going to pick your brain on some parts of modern Postfix antispam setup -- assuming you're current on that. I'm fond of exim4, but am thinking it might finally be the right time to bail. Not decided on that. I might instead pick your brain on some parts of modern exim4 antispam setup.
From: "Rick Moen" <rick@linuxmafia.com> Subject: Re: [BALUG-Admin] much better now: Re: /var space issues on balug VM, almost certainly from Internet miscreants & their bots Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2021 10:46:26 -0700
Quoting Michael Paoli (Michael.Paoli@cal.berkeley.edu):
Well, what can I say? EximConfig (no longer maintained and too crufty to even be a reasonable point of departure, any more) was in its heyday
Yep, once-upon-a-time. But alas, that time is gone. Might still possible "mine" it for anti-spam ideas in general, though ... and carefully pick and choose from that - along with considerations of modern, best practices, etc.
It was always the case, however, that occasionally you would find that some of the ruleset entries were overaggressive and unwise, so you would comment those few out as you found them.
Oh yes, (anti-)spam will probably always continue to be an escalation war. And probably never quite be 100%. Yeah, sure, there's always content ... the definitive deciding difference, eh? But even that gets rather dicey, at best. Say you're running a list ... for mail admins, say it's a list that mostly discusses (anti-)spam, and often cites example excerpts - perhaps even sometimes rather to large chunks of such cited examples of spam content. So, I ask those that say, "sure, can always tell by content" - okay, how 'ya gonna do it by content for that case of legitimate vs. illegitimate (spam) mail? But a lot of the simpler cases can be covered by egregious and non-conformant behavior, and lack of adherence to reasonable best practices which are pretty much effectively "required" if one is expecting email sent across The Internet to land in an "inbox".
Pretty soon, I'm going to pick your brain on some parts of modern Postfix antispam setup -- assuming you're current on that. I'm fond of exim4, but am thinking it might finally be the right time to bail. Not decided on that. I might instead pick your brain on some parts of modern exim4 antispam setup.
My brain may likely be more ripe for the pickin' in another week (or two or three or so). Haven't done a huge bit 'o anti-spam yet ... actually current is rather highly minimal. It's presently approximately: o sure as hell don't be a relay o only accept to legitimate domains o reject some cruft that exim doesn't even like by default o most everything else is for mailman, as for lists, it's mostly o not authorized to post, held for moderator (I should reconfirm no backscatter there) o other mailman aliases - mostly handled reasonably (not suitable command or format, or not from subscriber, or lacks subscriber's password ...) o the moderate bit of other target addresses, not so great, but mostly just "deal with it" - for now, e.g. list -owner and postmaster@ and the like probably have lots 'o spam coming in, but for the moment that's tolerable, as it doesn't impact subscribers, and the volume is low enough it's not a systems resource issue. o outbound: SPF & appropriate source IP(s) & "reverse" DNS (and don't relay, etc.) Oh, and one semi-simle(ish) that I want to add, that would make things much less annoying for listadmins (e.g. me), is reject at SMTP attempts to sent to list from those not authorized to post to list - period. And with suitably customized text on the reject error. Should be rather easy to tie a hard whitelist of address(es) in file(s) to exim, and should be easy enough to write program(s) to fill/update those files and have exim pickup any relevant changes thereof. One of the slightly tricker bits I'm presently looking at, is for subscribers, do they or do they not have the moderate(d) flag set (if it's set, don't whitelist 'em). Maybe that gets easier with mailman3? Who knows. But, hopefully soonish, I'll have the anti-spam much better. I'm thinking such that, e.g. postmaster@ email gets down to a (semi-?)reasonable (near) trickle of email ... likewise for other email addresses. Not there yet, but ... hopefully soon? As for exim[4] "vs." Postfix (vs. ... sendmail 8-O ... or what have you). Some year(s) back - and I occasionally check again - where's the critical mass - what seems best (or at least reasonably) supported to e.g. integrate with probable likely or needed stuff, e.g. mailman, anti-spam, dokuwiki, wordpress, ... whatever. The most logical choices seem exim or postfix, after that the numbers dwindle very fast - at least on Debian. Yeah, popcon ... still looks fairly similar: https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=exim4 https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=postfix Also, looking over the more complex (not horribly so, but not exactly trivial) integrations, ... e.g. mailman2. Looks like (at least on Debian) that's mostly oriented towards exim or postfix ... with actually better documentation/examples, etc. for exim than postfix. Not sure about mailman3 yet, though I suspect I'll be finding that out in the not-too-horribly-distant-future. I'd also guestimate, again for Debian, mailman2 very well having documentation for exim/postfix integration, and especially exim, I'd guestimate the documentation/examples for mailman3 will be similar. But ... shall see. So, ... thus far I've been leaning towards exim over postfix ... though postfix seems a strong reasonable contender worthy of consideration, and periodic reevaluation/reconsideration. Can't say exim thrills me, but, given the options/possibilities, for a modern MTA, and one that needs well integrate with other stuff, presently seems to me exim is the "best" (least horrible?) option. No matter what, it'll end up fairly complex. Question is how complex and nasty(?), and how well/reasonably supported/documented ... and/or not. Also seems Debian's wiki could use some more TLC ... notably more current examples, e.g. mailman/mailman3, and exim integration and anti-spam, etc. Maybe I'll end up doing some 'o that. I was already thinking of doing the mailman/exim integration stuff on wiki there, as it seems kind'a not well covered (though relevant documentation is found elsewhere within Debian - notably files within the packages) - but would be good to have wiki page that points that out and gives examples and/or makes relevant recommendations. Oh, and "of course" ... bad bots ... not just SMTP abuse, ... but web too ... if the find any form that can cause an email to be generated, they'll often do so. 332 queued email messages stuck trying to go out (to only 2 target email addresses) were from such web abuse. Sure, subscribe such-and-such email address to the list ... that causes a confirmation email to be sent (attempted to be sent). Well, ... that can be be repeated many times ... at least 332 apparently. Even worse if spammers can abuse the form to at all control the content of what's emailed ... if they can, they'll put their spam message in that. Not sure an easy counter-measure for such. Maybe mailman3 is better on that? There's captcha ... slows or even stops bots, but dang annoying for the humans - many of 'em are to the point where AI can solve 'em better and faster than the humans, so ... AI CPU resource consumption might slow the bots, but won't stop 'em ... and as AI gets better and better and CPU(/GPU) resources faster and cheaper, I think in fairly short order AI is gonna win the captcha wars, so I don't see captcha being all that useful for all that long. So at best captcha is more about throttling, and not so much about stopping. Bot abuse basically killed self-registration for dokuwiki on balug VM, and I think that may be the case for wordpress on that VM too.
participants (2)
-
Michael Paoli
-
Rick Moen