[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> 
> This seems like a rather destructive behavior on the part of
> Qmail-Scanner.
> 
> (I haven't seen a comment about this in the archives - I'll admit I didn't
> go through every month)
> 
> I've seen this happen several times, and the last time was EXTREMELY bad -
> happened for a full day.
> 
> Here's an example
> 
> @40000000405d336b1c406624 tcpserver: ok 19256
> mail.bkwm.com:216.201.150.40:25 c-24-1-180-209.client.co
> mcast.net:24.1.180.209::1992
> @40000000405d33703302307c X-Qmail-Scanner-1.20st:[mail107984982856819257]
> clamuko: corrupt or unknown
> clamd scanner error or memory/resource/perms problem - exit status 2

You could run swatch (perl program that monitors log files) and tell it to
send you an email if it ever sees something like that in your log files again.


> What had happened is that the server's video card had gone out, thus
> taking the machine down.  After replacing the server, and powering back up
> - I didn't get an error message from clamd - it turns out that the /tmp
> file wasn't removed by the script (which it is supposed to do), so clamd
> refused to start up.  Okay - that's acceptable.
> 
> However, what the mail server did is continue to receive messages, and
> instead of leaving the messages in the queue until the error went away -
> it would hit the "can't find clamd" and proceed to throw the message away.

I think you don't understand where qmail-scanner fits in the qmail-smtpd->qmail-queue
pipeline.

Qmail-scanner is called BEFORE the message is queued. The only thing qmail-scanner
can do is CAUSE qmail-smtpd to return a 451 (temporary error code) instead of a
5xx permanent error code. Unfortunately I haven't looked deeply enough at
qmail-scanner's error codes to comment on them. I run ClamAV under the daemontools
package (supervise) which ensures that my clamd is running 24/7. However, even
daemontools can't protect against an improper install. That's why I run a testing
mail server and a production mail server. The testing server sees any changes
before the production server so I can iron out any problems before they hit the
production server.



> It seems like it would be more reasonable for the scan process to go
> 'Process can't work!' and then either feed the mails through (maybe with a
> message to the admin that the program is buggering up), or store them in
> queue, again, with a message to the admin.

I'd rather not send my users viruses, personally. I think it would be sufficient
for qmail-scanner to cause qmail-smtpd to return a 451 code. This way the remote
sending mail server would queue the message and try again later.

My question would be: Does qmail-scanner cause qmail-smtpd to return a 451 if it
detects problems with one of it's scanners? Does it email the admin in this case?

-- 
Jesse Guardiani, Systems Administrator
WingNET Internet Services,
P.O. Box 2605 // Cleveland, TN 37320-2605
423-559-LINK (v)  423-559-5145 (f)
http://www.wingnet.net




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