qmail Digest 18 Jul 2000 10:00:01 -0000 Issue 1066

Topics (messages 44855 through 44906):

special quota problem
        44855 by: Patrick Müller

Re: this user has no $HOME/Maildir
        44856 by: Davide Giunchi
        44857 by: Jia Rong

Re: Autorespond & Forward Problem
        44858 by: Dave Sill

Re: and yet another NEWBIE question
        44859 by: "Próspero, Esteban"

so much qmail-smtpd activity, so little qmail-send activity...
        44860 by: Dave Kitabjian
        44862 by: Chris Johnson

Re: qmail accepting mails for unknown rcpt to
        44861 by: Charles Cazabon

Re: questions about performance and setup
        44863 by: Austad, Jay
        44864 by: markd.bushwire.net
        44865 by: markd.bushwire.net
        44866 by: Austad, Jay
        44872 by: John White
        44875 by: Jason Murphy
        44889 by: Jason Haar
        44892 by: Steve Wolfe
        44894 by: Bruce Guenter
        44895 by: Oliver White

MTA bounce message codes
        44867 by: Thomas Duterme
        44885 by: Magnus Bodin

Mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
        44868 by: Ryan Hayle
        44874 by: Dave Sill
        44878 by: Ben Beuchler

Save A Copy Of All messages
        44869 by: Christopher Tarricone
        44871 by: Brian Johnson

Re: Vpopmail - Installation - questions
        44870 by: Ken Jones

Re: OK, I've install vpopmail, where is DJB test.delivertest.recieve...
        44873 by: Ken Jones

Re: bounce management
        44876 by: Aaron L. Meehan

qmail-date-localtime.patch
        44877 by: grant.stephenson.cc
        44882 by: Magnus Bodin

Re: Qmail is *NOT* reliable with ReiserFS
        44879 by: Bruce Guenter
        44881 by: Greg Hudson
        44883 by: Bruce Guenter
        44884 by: Greg Hudson
        44886 by: Michael Babcock
        44887 by: Greg Hudson
        44888 by: Bruce Guenter

how to check if mails queued in ~alias
        44880 by: michael.renner.gmx.de

SMTP Question
        44890 by: Martin Searancke
        44891 by: Rogue Eagle
        44893 by: Magnus Bodin

mail filters
        44896 by: Matthias Henze
        44898 by: Magnus Bodin
        44901 by: Chris, the Young One

Certify your skills online at Brainbench
        44897 by: support.brainbench.com

RBL list
        44899 by: TAG

IPCHAINS and slow POP/SMTP access
        44900 by: Doug Oucharek

fastforward and alternative alias file
        44902 by: Petr Novotny
        44903 by: Chris, the Young One

urgent help required
        44904 by: reach_prashant.zeenext.com
        44905 by: Brett Randall

Updated location for qmail spam patches ?
        44906 by: Marc ter Horst

Administrivia:

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        [EMAIL PROTECTED]


----------------------------------------------------------------------


Hi all

I'm running the qmail package for some time now and I got now a special
error when sending a message to a user in my virtualdomains (vpopmail):

"
Hi. This is the qmail-send program at turkey.rogatec.ch.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.

<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
User is over quota email returned
"

I haven't installed a quota or something like that! The user uses now 52MB
Harddisk space with his mails (we use imap). How can I increase his quota,
so the error doesn't occurrs?

Thanks for your help

PAt





Hi all
I'm trying to use vpopmail to allow user that autenticate via pop3 the
user of smtpd. 
I create a user with  vadduser e vaddpasswd  then i try to connect
to the qmail-pop3d   telnet localhost pop-3 i insert:
user prova      or user prova%virtualdomain
pass prova       
-ERR this user has no $HOME/Maildir

I get this error if i try with a /etc/passwd users such as a virtual 
user.
Here it's my inetd.conf startup line for pop3

...
/var/qmail/bin/qmail-popup rtsystem.com /home/vpopmail/bin/vchkpw 
/var/qmail/bin/qmail-pop3d Maildir
....

Thanks for help.








----- Original Message ----- 

>Hi all
>I'm trying to use vpopmail to allow user that autenticate via pop3 the
>user of smtpd. 
>I create a user with  vadduser e vaddpasswd  then i try to connect
>to the qmail-pop3d   telnet localhost pop-3 i insert:
>user prova      or user prova%virtualdomain
>pass prova       
>-ERR this user has no $HOME/Maildir
>
>I get this error if i try with a /etc/passwd users such as a virtual 
>user.
>Here it's my inetd.conf startup line for pop3
>
>.....
>/var/qmail/bin/qmail-popup rtsystem.com /home/vpopmail/bin/vchkpw 
>/var/qmail/bin/qmail-pop3d Maildir
                           ~~~~~~~~
                          ./Maildir/ &
                               
>......
>
>Thanks for help.


           
            [EMAIL PROTECTED]





wolfgang zeikat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>|/var/qmail/alias/autorespond 10000 100 /var/tmp/autor.txt
>/var/tmp/autorespond/no-mailbox
>
>(that is one line, no matter how your email client wrapped it here)

Actually, your e-mail client wrapped it. Mine doesn't wrap, and it
came in on two lines.

-Dave




Try vpopmail in www.inter7.com for virtual accounts. All your accounts are
reached through one entry in /etc/passwd


Esteban Javier Próspero



> -----Original Message-----
> From: çééí äìôøï [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Saturday, July 15, 2000 11:36 AM
> To:   Paul Jarc; Qmail
> Subject:      RE: and yet another NEWBIE question
> 
> Hello
> OK, i dont want the users to be system accounts, but how else can i
> configure this to work?
> where will i store the usernames and passwords if not in the /etc/passwd?
> 
> for the pop3 test - what i did is:
> telnet mailer.domain.com 110
> user user
> pass pass
> where the actual password for user user is pass
> it says authorization failed
> when i try this on the linux box directly to qmail-pop3d with the
> checkpassword it works
> please help... im getting very frustrated with this... :-(
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul Jarc [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Saturday, July 15, 2000 1:23 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: and yet another NEWBIE question
> 
> 
> > now, i dont want to have /home/dom1-sales/Mailbox and
> > /home/dom2-sales/Mailbox but instead have /mailuser/dom1-sales/Mailbox
> > and /mailuser/dom2-sales/Mailbox
> > is this possible and if so, how?
> 
> You can make entries for these addresses in /var/qmail/users/assign,
> and let the homedir field be /mailuser/dom1-sales, etc.  Or if these
> addresses have system accounts (which doesn't necessarily sound like
> the best way to do it, but it seems that's what you're doing), then
> you can let /mailuser/dom1-sales be the actual home directory for the
> dom1-sales user.  (How to change an account's home directory depends
> on the kind of system you have; check your system documentation, we
> won't necessarily be able to help you.)
> 
> > also, i inserted the command for pop3 as described in life with
> > qmail into the inetd.conf
> > when i test is as instructed on the machine itself it works great
> > but when i telnet to 110 from another machine, the authentication always
> > doesnt accept the password...
> 
> What exactly did you do to test it?  What exactly are you doing when
> it fails?
> 
> 
> paul




I recently started monitoring qmail-smtpd's activity via "tcpserver -v",
and at the moment it's burning through a steady 15-20 concurrencies,
scrolling by beyond readability.

Meanwhile, as I "tail -f maillog" for qmail-send's activity, it sits
predominantly idle, with an occasional message to process. Now,
regardless of whether it's local or remote, it should get picked up by
qmail-send, right? 

So the question then is, if it's not receiving mail, what is qmail-smtpd
doing? Is it receiving connections from known spammers on my tcp.smtp
list, and dropping them? A quick scan of IP's doesn't jibe with that
theory; plus there's no "access denied" message shown. I'm suspicious of
all the:

        2000-07-17 09:55:44.476546500 tcpserver: end 99787 status 256

Looking at tcpserver.c, I can't tell what this means. I looks like it
has something to do with the wait() function. Can one of you Unix/C
gurus lend a hand?

Thanks :)

Dave




On Mon, Jul 17, 2000 at 10:43:09AM -0400, Dave Kitabjian wrote:
> I recently started monitoring qmail-smtpd's activity via "tcpserver -v",
> and at the moment it's burning through a steady 15-20 concurrencies,
> scrolling by beyond readability.
> 
> Meanwhile, as I "tail -f maillog" for qmail-send's activity, it sits
> predominantly idle, with an occasional message to process. Now,
> regardless of whether it's local or remote, it should get picked up by
> qmail-send, right? 
> 
> So the question then is, if it's not receiving mail, what is qmail-smtpd
> doing? Is it receiving connections from known spammers on my tcp.smtp
> list, and dropping them? A quick scan of IP's doesn't jibe with that
> theory; plus there's no "access denied" message shown. I'm suspicious of
> all the:
> 
>       2000-07-17 09:55:44.476546500 tcpserver: end 99787 status 256

The "status 256" is an abnormal exit code; qmail-smtpd has rejected the message
and the message isn't being queued.

My guess is that some dopey Windows mail server is sending you a message with
bare linefeeds. Your server rejects the message (with a 4xx code) which the
dopey Windows server sees as an invitation to try to deliver the message again
immediately. I've seen Windows hosts try to send the same message tens of
thousands of times in a day.

It could be something else altogether, but I've seen the above happen many
times.

Chris




[EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
>    qmail server is accepting mails for unknown users, users who do not exists
>    on my mail server   ( users whose entries r not there in  my LDAP
>    directory server )  
[...] 
>   i cant understand why to accept mail for unknow users ( just to bounce
>   ??????)  

This is in the documentation, FAQ, etc.  qmail-smtpd doesn't know anything
about users.  It knows about domains.  If a mail is addressed to
anything@acceptable_domain, qmail-smtpd accepts and queues it.

Charles
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles Cazabon                            <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
GPL'ed software available at:  http://www.qcc.sk.ca/~charlesc/software/
Any opinions expressed are just that -- my opinions.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------




With all of the emails I recieved, I get the impression that I'm going to
I/O bound instead of processor or memory bound.  How much disk will be
sufficient for the queue?  1GB?  More?

I'm just grasping here to figure out the best solution, so bear with me...
What if I only needed a 1GB queue, and what if that queue was a 1GB ramdisk
(I can put 2GB of ram in the box)?  Linux has support for making a disk in
memory, putting a filesystem on it and mounting it.  Wouldn't this take care
of I/O problems?

Jay

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Oliver White [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Monday, July 17, 2000 12:34 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: questions about performance and setup


We're in a similar situation at the moment.  However, we want to send out
100,000 UNIQUE emails per day, expanding to 500,000 or more in the near
future.  Also, our send window is only actually a couple of hours.

I'm trying to work out the best settings for the concurrencyremote and
conf-split parameters.  Our system is a HP Netserver 2000r PIII-667 RAID5
running Linux.  Are there any problems in setting conf-split to a very large
value?  Is it necessary on a Linux system, assuming a queue size of, say
100,000?  Any information appreciated.

 - Oliver.

"Austad, Jay" wrote:

> Non-unique emails will most likely be generated by other machines and send
> the box running mini-qmail via smtp.  Non-unique emails will be a small
> percentage of what gets sent out, for now.
>
> Jay
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Saturday, July 15, 2000 12:10 AM
> To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
> Subject: Re: questions about performance and setup
>
> On Fri, Jul 14, 2000 at 07:01:46PM -0500, Austad, Jay wrote:
> > >Then have the script that does the mailing call randomly
> > >on of the /var/qmail#/bin/qmail-inject. This will emulate round robin
> > >without any patching.
> >
> > Won't this way be a performance hit though?  I admit, it is an easy
> solution
>
> No. My experience is that the cost of running a script to inject the mail
> in a way similar to that mentioned above, is pretty small compared to the
> queue injection cost and the delivery cost. sh or perl will be fine.
>
> > and would work excellent, but I have to think about efficiency also.  C
> code
> > is much faster than shell or perl, and I'd like to set it up once and
not
> > have to ever worry about again, or at least for a long, long time.
> >
> > As I said, we're doing 50 million emails a month right now, but this is
> > increasing substantially each month, and as we rollout new subscription
> > services, we'll have even more load.  Sending 10 times this amount by
the
> > same time next year is a good possibility, possibly sooner as we seem to
> > underestimate the rate at which we're growing much of the time...
>
> You may also need to look at the scalability of the generation of the
> emails. One system I recently looked at claimed to be able to generate
> nicely unique emails at a targetted database, but it burned CPU like
> it was free - just in generating the content.
>
> Mark.
>
> >
> > Jay
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: JuanE [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> > Sent: Friday, July 14, 2000 5:55 PM
> > To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
> > Subject: Re: questions about performance and setup
> >
> >
> >
> > Jay,
> >
> > That's the beauty of having multiple instances, not having to patch
qmail.
> > All you need to do is install qmail once per machine (ie, /var/qmail1,
> > /var/qmail2,...). Then have the script that does the mailing call
randomly
> > on of the /var/qmail#/bin/qmail-inject. This will emulate round robin
> > without any patching.
> >
> > JES
> >
> > Austad, Jay writes:
> >
> > > Where would I start in the code to modify the QMQP servers list so
that
> it
> > > would load balance between all of the servers in the list instead of
> just
> > > using the first one it can contact?  This would be very useful to me.
I
> > > assume qmail-qmqpc.c is one of them, are there others I would need to
> play
> > > around with?
> > >
> > > Jay
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> > > Sent: Friday, July 14, 2000 3:55 PM
> > > To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
> > > Subject: Re: questions about performance and setup
> > >
> > >
> > > On Fri, Jul 14, 2000 at 02:29:06PM -0500, Austad, Jay wrote:
> > > > I already have Mandrake Linux 7.0 and 7.1 running on multiple Dell
> boxes
> > > > with no trouble, some of them took work to get going, but it runs
> well.
> > I
> > > > have a few Crystal PC's here also that I may use instead, dual PIII
> > 550's
> > > > with 512MB ram and 9 or 18GB 10000rpm drives.  I'll probably use
these
> > for
> > > > testing.
> > >
> > > I agree with the earlier poster that more spindles for your queue
> > > (c/- raid) is a good thing in general.
> > >
> > > > The bulk of the messages will be the same content to many rcpt's.
> > > However,
> > > > once in awhile we'll have 100,000 different messages go out to
100,000
> > > > different people.
> > > >
> > > > Since the QMQP support under mini-qmail doesn't load balance, can I
> feed
> > > it
> > > > a hostname with multiple dns entries (round-robin dns)?  Or better
> yet,
> > > how
> > > > easy would it be to modify the qmail code to just load balance
between
> > > them?
> > >
> > > The manpage for qmail-qmqpc tells us that they have to be IP addresses
> > > in qmqpservers so a RR DNS won't help. If all of the messages are
> > generated
> > > on one machine, then I'd be inclined to go for a much simpler solution
> > > than modifying qmail. I'd have an instance of qmail for each outbound
> > > server with the appropriate qmqpservers entry, then have your queue
> > > insertion script do a round-robin itself by simply cycling thru
> > > the qmail-inject command associated with each instance.
> > >
> > > for instance in 1 2 3 4 5
> > > do
> > >     getnext_message_details()
> > >     /var/qmail{$instance}/bin/qmail-inject currentmessage .... details
> > > done
> > >
> > > Or some such.
> > >
> > >
> > > Alternatively, if you have money to burn, maybe a layer four switch
> > > with load-balancing skills.
> > >
> > >
> > > Mark.
> > >
> > >
> > > >
> > > > Jay
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > -----Original Message-----
> > > > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> > > > Sent: Friday, July 14, 2000 2:09 PM
> > > > To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
> > > > Subject: Re: questions about performance and setup
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > > Here's what I need to know:
> > > > >
> > > > > 1.  How well does qmail take advantage of multiple processors?
How
> > much
> > > >
> > > > Indreectly, quite well as it forks many processes, thus if the OS
> takes
> > > > good advantage of your CPUs, then qmail inherits that advantage.
> > > >
> > > > > memory and disk will I need?  (we're at 50 million messages per
> month
> > > now,
> > > >
> > > > Are these message unique per target address or the same. If unique,
> your
> > > > requirements are vastly different and very queue/disk intensive. If
> they
> > > > are the same and you take advantage or VERP support on qmail, then
> > > > your load will mainly be sending related which will benefit from
> > > > more memory, multiple instances, etc.
> > > >
> > > > > and we only send out monday-friday, so that's over 2 million
> messages
> > > per
> > > > > day, and it's only going up)
> > > > >
> > > > > 2.  How many messages per day would one estimate that each of
these
> > > > servers
> > > > > could do?
> > > > >
> > > > > 3. I read about mini-qmail and how it's about 100 times faster
> > blasting
> > > > out
> > > > > email to QMQP servers.  Since you can specify multiple QMQP
servers,
> > if
> > > I
> > > > > have a fourth machine running mini-qmail and managing the actual
> > mailing
> > > > > list, can I add the other 3 as QMQP servers and have it load
balance
> > > > between
> > > > > all 3 for sending out mail?  (this way I could add more servers
> easily
> > > if
> > > > I
> > > > > needed to)
> > > >
> > > > The qmqp support doesn't load balance. It simply takes the first one
> > > > it can connect to.
> > > >
> > > > > 4. Can I easily make qmail run an external script for each bounced
> > mail?
> > > >
> > > > Absolutely.
> > > >
> > > > > 5.  Anything else I should know?
> > > >
> > > > That all hinges on whether your emails are unique for each recipient
> or
> > > > not. Or more importantly, the average number of recipients per
unique
> > > > email.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Regards.
> > >
> >
> >




> > In other words you'll need to pump out 5+ megabits per second, which
> > means a connection of around double that, say 10 Mbits per second.
> >
> > Is that what you have available?
> 
> In theory, yes.  In practice... remains to be seen.
> I did some similar calculations and came up with a similar result, which
> shocked me at first, but it must be possible, because there are
> companies out there that do it!

Right. One I've was helping a little while ago had 20+ systems
dedicated to the task and they were co-lo'd with plenty of
connectivity. Once you started getting into large scale you need
to consider multiple systems to at least ensure that you have some
sort of redundancy strategy.


Regards.




On Mon, Jul 17, 2000 at 10:29:03AM -0500, Austad, Jay wrote:
> With all of the emails I recieved, I get the impression that I'm going to
> I/O bound instead of processor or memory bound.  How much disk will be
> sufficient for the queue?  1GB?  More?
> 
> I'm just grasping here to figure out the best solution, so bear with me...
> What if I only needed a 1GB queue, and what if that queue was a 1GB ramdisk
> (I can put 2GB of ram in the box)?  Linux has support for making a disk in
> memory, putting a filesystem on it and mounting it.  Wouldn't this take care
> of I/O problems?

The I/O cost is simply there to protect again machine failure, reboots,
power-loss, OS bugs, that sort of thing. Your memory file system will
be ok if it's battery-backed up and running on a system as reliable as
a hard-disk. Otherwise you increase the chances of losing part of your
queue at some point.


Having said that, you may find the trade-off acceptable. That is putting
the queue in a memory file system and accepting a total queue loss once
every now and and again. If eg, it's advertising email and occassional
losses are tolerable, then this may be a perfectly acceptable
cost/reliability trade-off for you.


Regards.




It's all newsletter subscription email so an occasional loss of the queue
would be fine.  It won't be pumping out mission critical email or anything
like that.  I'm benchmarking a ramdisk filesystem right now, unfortunately
the only thing I have to compare it to is an IDE disk because I can't take
down our other machines to increase the ramdisk size during the day.  Even
then, I'd only be able to test on a 10,000 rpm scsi disk, no RAID.

Jay

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Monday, July 17, 2000 10:37 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: questions about performance and setup


On Mon, Jul 17, 2000 at 10:29:03AM -0500, Austad, Jay wrote:
> With all of the emails I recieved, I get the impression that I'm going to
> I/O bound instead of processor or memory bound.  How much disk will be
> sufficient for the queue?  1GB?  More?
> 
> I'm just grasping here to figure out the best solution, so bear with me...
> What if I only needed a 1GB queue, and what if that queue was a 1GB
ramdisk
> (I can put 2GB of ram in the box)?  Linux has support for making a disk in
> memory, putting a filesystem on it and mounting it.  Wouldn't this take
care
> of I/O problems?

The I/O cost is simply there to protect again machine failure, reboots,
power-loss, OS bugs, that sort of thing. Your memory file system will
be ok if it's battery-backed up and running on a system as reliable as
a hard-disk. Otherwise you increase the chances of losing part of your
queue at some point.


Having said that, you may find the trade-off acceptable. That is putting
the queue in a memory file system and accepting a total queue loss once
every now and and again. If eg, it's advertising email and occassional
losses are tolerable, then this may be a perfectly acceptable
cost/reliability trade-off for you.


Regards.




On Mon, Jul 17, 2000 at 10:29:03AM -0500, Austad, Jay wrote:
> With all of the emails I recieved, I get the impression that I'm going to
> I/O bound instead of processor or memory bound.  

Ahhh... someone who gets it.

> How much disk will be sufficient for the queue?  1GB?  More?

What if you did your entire queue injection with your network
connection down?  I'd budget for a significant portion of that 
plus growth and safety.
 
> I'm just grasping here to figure out the best solution, so bear with me...
> What if I only needed a 1GB queue, and what if that queue was a 1GB ramdisk
> (I can put 2GB of ram in the box)?  Linux has support for making a disk in
> memory, putting a filesystem on it and mounting it.  Wouldn't this take care
> of I/O problems?
 
I'd read up on ramdisks first.  They aren't instant i/o.

Alternatively, Quantum has a line of solid state disks which might do
the trick for you.  Pretty pricey, though.

http://www.zdnet.com/etestinglabs/stories/main/0,8829,2352381,00.html

John





I overlooked that when I posted this message; I totally forgot about the
write penalty. Sorry about that.



-----Original Message-----
From: John White [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Friday, July 14, 2000 7:08 PM
To: qmail mailing list
Subject: Re: questions about performance and setup


On Fri, Jul 14, 2000 at 12:21:57PM -0700, Jason Murphy wrote:
>  The machine I built contains a DPT SmartRAID V SCSI RAID 0/1/5
controller
> with 5 10000RPM 9.1 gig drives. The thing I notice about RAID 5 in the
> right configuration is that you can throw tons of IO at it and you will
> see little decrease in performance. Our Database server (Ya, I know, its
> not MAIL SERVER) gets tons of IO and its nothing to it; just eats it up
> and continues on its way.

A massive mail injection, especially if the content is unique to the
user, can overwhelm a disk subsystem.

This is reccomending the exact -wrong- kind of disk system.  RAID 5
has a write penalty, as it has to calculate parity for each write,
and write to multiple spindles.

The best type of RAID for small block writes is RAID 10 or RAID 1+0
(not to be confused with RAID 0+1).  Even better is to use a disk
system with write-back cache.  Ideally, you need at least seven
spindles.

I've seen great things with the Infortrend controller.

A great setup would be 1U pc's connected to an external RAID.

John

smime.p7s





On Mon, Jul 17, 2000 at 09:51:22AM -0700, John White wrote:
> > (I can put 2GB of ram in the box)?  Linux has support for making a disk in
> > memory, putting a filesystem on it and mounting it.  Wouldn't this take care
> > of I/O problems?
>  
> I'd read up on ramdisks first.  They aren't instant i/o.

Indeed. I haven't played around with ramdisks for a couple of years now, but
last time I benchmarked them, they didn't appear to run much faster than a
harddisk FOR READS as buffer caches on harddisks made them act very
similarly.... Writes would be a different prospect of course...

-- 
Cheers

Jason Haar

Unix/Network Specialist, Trimble NZ
Phone: +64 3 9635 377 Fax: +64 3 9635 417
               






> With all of the emails I recieved, I get the impression that I'm going to
> I/O bound instead of processor or memory bound.  How much disk will be
> sufficient for the queue?  1GB?  More?

  It's not so much a matter of disk size (I don't think you'll have a 1 gig
queue!), but of throughput.  For example, a single IDE drive will get you a
couple of megabytes of throughput per second, at a very high CPU cost.  SCSI
will yield more, with a lower CPU utilization, and with RAID arrays, you can
move up to hundreds of megabytes per second if you want to.

> I'm just grasping here to figure out the best solution, so bear with me...
> What if I only needed a 1GB queue, and what if that queue was a 1GB
ramdisk
> (I can put 2GB of ram in the box)?  Linux has support for making a disk in
> memory, putting a filesystem on it and mounting it.  Wouldn't this take
care
> of I/O problems?

   That's about as good of I/O as you can get, I would imagine. ; )  As
another author stated, the largest gain would be in writes, but that's where
the largest expenditure is anyway.   Just make dang, dang sure that your
machine is NOT going to have any hiccups or lose power while the queue is
full, or you'll instantly lose it all.

steve





On Mon, Jul 17, 2000 at 10:24:53PM -0600, Steve Wolfe wrote:
> > With all of the emails I recieved, I get the impression that I'm going to
> > I/O bound instead of processor or memory bound.  How much disk will be
> > sufficient for the queue?  1GB?  More?
>   It's not so much a matter of disk size (I don't think you'll have a 1 gig
> queue!), but of throughput.  For example, a single IDE drive will get you a
> couple of megabytes of throughput per second, at a very high CPU cost.  SCSI
> will yield more, with a lower CPU utilization, and with RAID arrays, you can
> move up to hundreds of megabytes per second if you want to.

Not entirely true.  With UDMA mode, modern IDE drives get high
throughput with low CPU utilization.  On my Celeron PC, I could get well
over 10MB/sec at well under 20% CPU, and it's hardly performance
hardware (5400RPM spindle).  With a 10K RPM spindle and a faster chipset
(mine's a VIA) this will rival or beat fast SCSI disks in raw streaming
bandwidth.  However, the majority of mail queues are not even bandwidth
bound -- they're seek bound, which is where SCSI disks still beat IDE.
The faster seek time, the better (which is the motivation behind DJB's
ingenious zeroseek proposal).  Also, RAID5 arrays (the most common one
for large capacities) suffer a significant write penalty due to
recalculation and rewiting of the parity, and the mail queue is mostly
written (and subsequently cached).  A RAID1+0 array works better, but
uses more disks.
-- 
Bruce Guenter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>                       http://em.ca/~bruceg/

PGP signature





Steve Wolfe wrote:

> > With all of the emails I recieved, I get the impression that I'm going to
> > I/O bound instead of processor or memory bound.  How much disk will be
> > sufficient for the queue?  1GB?  More?
>
>   It's not so much a matter of disk size (I don't think you'll have a 1 gig
> queue!),

You could quite easily get a 1 Gig queue, even if you don't run into the
obvious problem of temporary loss of network connectivity.  Say you've
got 200,000 subscribers and you generate your messages twice as fast
as qmail can send them, then when you've finished generating the
messages you've still got 100,000 in the queue.  If the messages are
10Kb each, that's 1 Gb.

> > (I can put 2GB of ram in the box)?  Linux has support for making a disk in
> > memory, putting a filesystem on it and mounting it.  Wouldn't this take
> > care of I/O problems?
>
>    That's about as good of I/O as you can get, I would imagine. ; )  As
> another author stated, the largest gain would be in writes, but that's where
> the largest expenditure is anyway.   Just make dang, dang sure that your
> machine is NOT going to have any hiccups or lose power while the queue is
> full, or you'll instantly lose it all.

What if you put the 2 Gb RAM in the box, but let Linux use it as a disk cache?
I'm not sure how the disk caching under Linux works, but if you create a file
and then delete it before it actually gets written to disk, is there any disk
activity required?
Sure, the disks will be thrashing away, trying to keep up, but would the I/O
actually block if there was still room in the disk cache?

 - Oliver.






Hi everyone,

Anyone know where there's a list of standard MTA bounce messages?  I have
70,000 bounced messages which have been sitting on an imap account and
gathering dust over the past 2 months.  My job: to sort these through and
get an approximate picture of which are fake, which are due to relaying
problems, etc.

I've got a script built which goes through each message and based on the
error, will parse it to an appropriate folder: ie ../delete, ../noaction,
../default, ../investigate, etc.  From there, I'll be building other
scripts to access the DB to delete members if needed and do other cleansing
actions.

I've been manually going through the email messages and see that all MTA's
seem to produce their own type of error messages and I was wondering if
there's a compiled list anywhere (perhaps I missed the right RFC) for the
most popular MTA bounce messages.  This would make life MUCH easier when
doing regex stuff.  Anyway, here's what I've got so far:

To delete:
------------
Invalid User
Sorry, I couldn't find any host named dddffgtdddf.comn. (#5.1.2)
Unknown mailbox
Unable to find alias user!
User xunying711 is not found in Server.
The recipient name is not recognized


No Action
-------------
Quota exceed the hard limit

unclassified
---------------
Remote host said: 553 To <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, message blocked.
Remote host said: 550 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: Invalid User
Remote host said: 550 <yujielian29>, No such user.

Also, I noticed that every message directed at 21cn.com domain bounces with
the same error: ie message blocked.  What does this signify?

TIA,
Thomas




On Tue, Jul 18, 2000 at 12:07:52AM +0000, Thomas Duterme wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> Anyone know where there's a list of standard MTA bounce messages?  I have
> 70,000 bounced messages which have been sitting on an imap account and
> gathering dust over the past 2 months.  My job: to sort these through and
> get an approximate picture of which are fake, which are due to relaying
> problems, etc.

Check out these RFC:s

http://rfc2852.x42.com/ 
2852 Deliver By SMTP Service Extension. D. Newman. June 2000. (Format:
     TXT=29285 bytes) (Updates RFC1894) (Status: PROPOSED STANDARD)

http://rfc1894.x42.com/ 
1894 An Extensible Message Format for Delivery Status Notifications.
     K. Moore & G. Vaudreuil. January 1996. (Format: TXT=77462 bytes)
     (Updated by RFC2852) (Status: PROPOSED STANDARD)

http://rfc1893.x42.com/ 
1893 Enhanced Mail System Status Codes. G. Vaudreuil. January 1996.
     (Format: TXT=28218 bytes) (Status: PROPOSED STANDARD)

http://rfc1892.x42.com/ 
1892 The Multipart/Report Content Type for the Reporting of Mail
     System Administrative Messages. G. Vaudreuil. January 1996. (Format:
     TXT=7800 bytes) (Status: PROPOSED STANDARD)

http://rfc1891.x42.com/ 
1891 SMTP Service Extension for Delivery Status Notifications. K.
     Moore. January 1996. (Format: TXT=65192 bytes) (Status: PROPOSED
     STANDARD)

/magnus

--
http://x42.com/




-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hi, I'm using qmail 1.03 on a Debian 2.1 system with the
vchkpw/vpopmail programs.  Whenever I try to send mail to
user@localhost, qmail interprets this as [EMAIL PROTECTED],
which is not in the DNS at all.  Is there a way to fix this? 
"localhost" is the first entry in both my control/locals and
rcpthosts files.  This isn't -that- important, I only noticed it
since bigbrother was trying to send emails there, and I found 200
bounced messages in my (postmaster) box over the weekend! :)  I can
change this email address, however, I thought I would try to find the
solution to the bug first.

Thanks,
Ryan Hayle



For reference, qmail-showctl:

qmail home directory: /var/qmail.
user-ext delimiter: -.
paternalism (in decimal): 2.
silent concurrency limit: 120.
subdirectory split: 23.
user ids: 64010, 64011, 64015, 0, 64016, 64014, 64013, 64012.
group ids: 65534, 64010.

badmailfrom: (Default.) Any MAIL FROM is allowed.

bouncefrom: (Default.) Bounce user name is MAILER-DAEMON.

bouncehost: (Default.) Bounce host name is artemis.savvynet.net.

concurrencylocal: (Default.) Local concurrency is 10.

concurrencyremote: (Default.) Remote concurrency is 20.

databytes: (Default.) SMTP DATA limit is 0 bytes.

defaultdomain: Default domain name is savvynet.net.

defaulthost: (Default.) Default host name is artemis.savvynet.net.

doublebouncehost: (Default.) 2B recipient host: artemis.savvynet.net.

doublebounceto: (Default.) 2B recipient user: postmaster.

envnoathost: (Default.) Presumed domain name is artemis.savvynet.net.

helohost: (Default.) SMTP client HELO host name is
artemis.savvynet.net.

idhost: (Default.) Message-ID host name is artemis.savvynet.net.

localiphost: (Default.) Local IP address becomes
artemis.savvynet.net.

locals: 
Messages for localhost are delivered locally.
Messages for artemis.savvynet.net are delivered locally.

me: My name is artemis.savvynet.net.

percenthack: (Default.) The percent hack is not allowed.

plusdomain: Plus domain name is savvynet.net.

qmqpservers: (Default.) No QMQP servers.

queuelifetime: (Default.) Message lifetime in the queue is 604800
seconds.

rcpthosts: 
SMTP clients may send messages to recipients at localhost.
SMTP clients may send messages to recipients at artemis.savvynet.net.
SMTP clients may send messages to recipients at savvynet.net.

morercpthosts: (Default.) No effect.

morercpthosts.cdb: (Default.) No effect.

smtpgreeting: (Default.) SMTP greeting: 220 artemis.savvynet.net.

smtproutes: (Default.) No artificial SMTP routes.

timeoutconnect: (Default.) SMTP client connection timeout is 60
seconds.

timeoutremote: (Default.) SMTP client data timeout is 1200 seconds.

timeoutsmtpd: (Default.) SMTP server data timeout is 1200 seconds.

virtualdomains: 
Virtual domain: savvynet.net:savvynet.net

users: I have no idea what this file does.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.3 for non-commercial use <http://www.pgp.com>

iQA/AwUBOXMyH7aqFtd/dElTEQIy3QCgk5T6+J1XsZDa/5oliAXpgMELvRYAn30V
fk9XxwIpriZQ+p458P+bnMpN
=dIpe
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----




Ryan Hayle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>Hi, I'm using qmail 1.03 on a Debian 2.1 system with the
>vchkpw/vpopmail programs.  Whenever I try to send mail to
>user@localhost, qmail interprets this as [EMAIL PROTECTED],
>which is not in the DNS at all.  Is there a way to fix this? 

Don't send mail to user@localhost. :-) Instead, send to "user" and let 
qmail-inject supply the defaulthost/defaultdomain.

>For reference, qmail-showctl:

Cool. Someone actually supplied sufficient data to answer their
question. :-)

-Dave




On Mon, Jul 17, 2000 at 12:56:25PM -0400, Dave Sill wrote:

> >Hi, I'm using qmail 1.03 on a Debian 2.1 system with the
> >vchkpw/vpopmail programs.  Whenever I try to send mail to
> >user@localhost, qmail interprets this as [EMAIL PROTECTED],
> >which is not in the DNS at all.  Is there a way to fix this? 
> 
> Don't send mail to user@localhost. :-) Instead, send to "user" and let 
> qmail-inject supply the defaulthost/defaultdomain.
> 
> >For reference, qmail-showctl:
> 
> Cool. Someone actually supplied sufficient data to answer their
> question. :-)

Is that a first?  Should we declare today a holiday in celebration?  I'm
fully prepared to take the rest of the day off and drink...

Ben

-- 
Ben Beuchler                                         [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Hostmaster/Postmaster                                 (612)-321-9290 x101
Bitstream Underground                                   www.bitstream.net




Is there a way that you can setup of the server to allow the user to
check all of thier messages and then go to another location and then
check them again? What I would like to happen is this.. A person sends
me an e-mail when I check it that message stays on the server. If I were
to check it gain It would not come down as new mail but If I were to
goto another location and check for new mail it would put down all of
the messages that I have checked at the other loacation. This will allow
me to check mail at home and at the office so that I can duplicates of
all messages that are sent to me.

I am using vpopmail along with qmail





On Mon, Jul 17, 2000 at 12:39:38PM +0000, Christopher Tarricone wrote:
> Is there a way that you can setup of the server to allow the user to
> check all of thier messages and then go to another location and then
> check them again? What I would like to happen is this.. A person sends
> me an e-mail when I check it that message stays on the server. If I were
> to check it gain It would not come down as new mail but If I were to
> goto another location and check for new mail it would put down all of
> the messages that I have checked at the other loacation. This will allow
> me to check mail at home and at the office so that I can duplicates of
> all messages that are sent to me.
> 
> I am using vpopmail along with qmail
> 
---end quoted text---

set-up a second pop account for yourself, and in the .qmail file for the
account you have now put:

./Maildir/
&otherpopaddress@server

then qmail will deliver a copy of each message to each box, then check one
only at home, and one only at work...
-- 
Brian Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
---




"Steven M. Klass" wrote:
> 
> Hey all
> 
>         I just started working with vpopmail and I am in need of answers.
> 
> 1.  The install guide recommends that all domains be set up as virtual
> domains.  In the qmail/control/locals file I have my domain already
> defined.  How can I convert that to a virtual domain?  Should I?

The vadddomain program will automatically remove it from the locals file
and add it to virtualdomains for you.

> 2.  The option enable-default domain = mydomain   Does this mean it will be
> a virtual domain.  The instructions aren't clear on this.

It means the vpopmail authentication code will append mydomain to any
user
authentication request that doesn't include a domain name.

> 3.  The option enable-ucspi-dir   I installed this per qmail
> instructions.  I was not aware that a compiled directory existed.  I
> thought only tcpserver was placed in ../bin

If you install ucspi-tcp as per it's instructions, you do not need to
set a vpopmail --enable-ucspi-dir option.

> 4.  What is Option enable-apop.  What is apop?

I recommend against using apop. 

> 5.  What happens to my existing default .qmail files for postmaster, etc.

vpopmail is not destructive on installation. It will not remove any of
your
files.

> 6.  How can I map several names to one address.  With .qmail files it's
> easy (I think).

Yes. You can do it with .qmail-user files

> 7.  What tools are needed for vpopmail to work correctly.  I currently have
> installed qmail, uscpi, and daemontools. Anything else.

That should be enough.

> 8.  Should I install qmailadmin before or after vpopmail.

After, qmailadmin uses vpopmail's library. 

> 9.  At what point do I enable options ..  I am assuming the following
> command will work?
>         make --enable-roaming=y --enable-default-domain=andigilog.com

those options are for the configuration script. you may want to re-read
the INSTALL file. If you are starting from a fresh unpack of a tar ball:
./configure [with your options, like --enable-roaming-users=y]
make
make install-strip
done.

> 
> That's all and thanks a lot.

Good luck ;]
Ken Jones

> 
> Steven M. Klass
> Systems Administrator
> 
> Andigilog Inc.
> 7404 W. Detroit Street, Suite 100
> Chandler, AZ 85226
> Ph: 602-940-6200 ext. 18
> Fax: 602-940-4255
> 
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://www.andigilog.com/




"Steven M. Klass" wrote:
> 
> Does anyone know how I can test a vpopmail installation.  I know this may
> probably be trivial, but I like DJB's instructions, especially since he
> always allows provisions for testing..
> 
> Thanks
> Steven M. Klass
> Physical Design Engineering Manager
> 
> Andigilog Inc.
> 7404 W. Detroit Street, Suite 100
> Chandler, AZ 85226
> Ph: 602-940-6200 ext. 18
> Fax: 602-940-4255
> 
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://www.andigilog.com/

Here is what I do to test a new virtual domain:

1) create the domain
~vpopmail/bin/vadddomain test.com test

2) Send email to the postmaster user
 echo "to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]" | /var/qmail/bin/qmail-inject

3) authenticate with pop
telnet 127.0.0.1 110
user [EMAIL PROTECTED]
pass test
list

You should see one message listed.

Then it works

Ken Jones




Quoting Thomas Duterme ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):
> I'm new to managing bounces, so please bear with me.  I've had a very tough
> time finding any good documentation which could guide me to building some
> scripts to parse through my bounces and semi-automate them.  I do fairly
> large mailings at a time, and I'd like to properly manage my bounces.
> Basically, I'm curious to what everyone else is doing for managing bounces
> and if anyone has any good online documentation they could point me to.

Man, don't even worry about parsing all those different bounces.
Another poor soul on this list has said he needs to parse 70,000 or so
of them--that sounds awfully painful.

Use the method that djb pioneered to handle bounces: VERP.  Details at
http://cr.yp.to/proto/verp.txt.  Set QMAILINJECT="r" in your
environment when sending the mail to generate VERP return paths (see
the return path of this list message to see what VERP does to the
return address).  See qmail-inject's man page for details on the
QMAILINJECT environment variable.

Aaron




I have a question about the qmail-date-localtime patch written by John 
Saunders.
What files does this patch modify exactly?
I have a rpm based install, and would like to see if it's possible to 
just replace the files that this patch modifies..
any help would be appricaited

thanks

Grant







On Mon, Jul 17, 2000 at 07:31:22PM +0000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I have a question about the qmail-date-localtime patch written by John 
> Saunders.
> What files does this patch modify exactly?

exactly the one www.qmail.org states; date822fmt.c

$ grep "^+++" qmail-date-localtime.patch 
+++ qmail-1.03/date822fmt.c     Fri Apr 18 00:39:41 1997

/magnus

--
http://x42.com/




On Sun, Jul 16, 2000 at 06:55:21PM +0200, Jedi/Sector One wrote:
>   ReiserFS does not commit link() synchronously (mounting with "sync"
> doesn't change anything). Therefore, if there is a power outage during
> the Maildir delivery or if qmail-smtpd answered the final "queued"
> message without actually commiting the link in queue/todo, the message
> will not be processed by qmail-send.

Actually, qmail is not "reliable" on any Linux FS.  This was discussed
to death a while back.  It is DJB's view that all directory operations
(creating, removing, linking, etc.) sould be synchronous, just like BSD
does.  It is Linus' view that this is a significant performance penalty
with little gain, since applications that require synchronous directory
operations also tend to require synchronous file operations and other
special file handling.  I agree.

There is also the discussion of ordered meta-data updates (OMDU) vs
unordered (UMDU).  Linux (with the exception of newer journalled file
systems) does UMDU.  With OMDU, the file meta-data (inode, indirect
blocks, etc) is written in an ordered fashion, typically before the
data.  This means FWIR that you can have good meta-data pointing to bad
data in the case of a crash.  With UMDU, you can have bad meta-data but
good data, which is something that a fsck will detect.

Since crashes are so rare, and journalling file systems becoming more
populous, this is rapidly becoming a non-issue.

I wrote a source file that replaces libc's open, link, rename, and
unlink routines with my own that sync the appropriate directory after
executing the syscall but before completing.  Simply linking with it
causes all directory operations executed by the program to become
synchronous.

It is available at http://em.ca/~bruceg/syncdir/  I include it in my
patched qmail RPMs.
-- 
Bruce Guenter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>                       http://em.ca/~bruceg/

PGP signature





> It is DJB's view that all directory operations (creating, removing,
> linking, etc.) sould be synchronous, just like BSD does.

For the record, FFS with soft-updates does not guarantee synchronous
directory operations; you have to open and fsync() the file you just
moved to be sure the operation has been committed to disk.  See
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/current-users/2000/06/19/0011.html for a
little more information.

Based on the patch, it sounds like ReiserFS agrees with
FFS+softupdates in semantics; that is, if you want to ensure that a
directory operation has completed, you open and fsync the directory
entry you care about.  This behavior is different from ext2fs, where
you have to open and fsync the directory containing the entry you care
about.




On Mon, Jul 17, 2000 at 03:59:00PM -0400, Greg Hudson wrote:
> > It is DJB's view that all directory operations (creating, removing,
> > linking, etc.) sould be synchronous, just like BSD does.
> 
> For the record, FFS with soft-updates does not guarantee synchronous
> directory operations; you have to open and fsync() the file you just
> moved to be sure the operation has been committed to disk.  See
> http://mail-index.netbsd.org/current-users/2000/06/19/0011.html for a
> little more information.

Then I was confused.  I assumed FFS was like UFS on Solaris, where you
can "feel" the synchronous directory operations by doing a "rm -rf" of
anything larger than a few files.

> Based on the patch, it sounds like ReiserFS agrees with
> FFS+softupdates in semantics; that is, if you want to ensure that a
> directory operation has completed, you open and fsync the directory
> entry you care about.

But qmail already does this.  In fact, it is very careful to do this in
all the places it is necessary.  If ReiserFS behaved identically to
FFS+softupdates, it would not need any qmail patches.  (I have deleted
the original message which we are discussing, and I don't remember what
exactly it patched)

> This behavior is different from ext2fs, where
> you have to open and fsync the directory containing the entry you care
> about.

Which to me seems to be a more logical mode of operations: if you want
the file data sync'd to disk, call fsync on the file; if you want the
directory, fsync the directory.
-- 
Bruce Guenter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>                       http://em.ca/~bruceg/

PGP signature





Apologies for not catching this in my first reply to Bruce's message.

> There is also the discussion of ordered meta-data updates (OMDU) vs
> unordered (UMDU).  Linux (with the exception of newer journalled
> file systems) does UMDU.  With OMDU, the file meta-data (inode,
> indirect blocks, etc) is written in an ordered fashion, typically
> before the data.  This means FWIR that you can have good meta-data
> pointing to bad data in the case of a crash.  With UMDU, you can
> have bad meta-data but good data, which is something that a fsck
> will detect.

You have ODMU backwards.  Any sane ordered write scheme will write out
a block X before writing out a block (inode or directory entry) which
points to block X.  FFS, with or without soft updates, should never
encounter a case where an inode points to bad data.  (Of course, if
you disk controller reorders write operations you'll lose no matter
what.  Unfortunately, you have to choose both your hardware and your
software somewhat carefully if you really care about filsystem
consistency.)

Linux ext2fs has no write ordering whatsoever.  If the system goes
down uncleanly, you can get metadata pointing to bad data or data not
pointed to by metadata.  A recently created file might exist but
contain blocks from an old copy of /etc/shadow instead of the data you
wrote to it.  It's really ugly.  fsck cannot correct all of the
possible problems which can arise, no matter how clever or thorough it
is.  People have tried to justify this state of affairs in lots of
ways, but the only potentially correct and convincing justification
is, "who cares?"  Which is great unless you're one of the (admittedly,
relatively few) people who does care.

Note that write ordering is different from synchronous
vs. asynchronous operations.  Write ordering is about filesystem
consistency, which is mostly irrelevant to qmail's operation because
of the way qmail works.  ext2fs is also a little odd with respect to
synchronous operations (as discussed in my last piece of mail), but
it's certainly possible to work around that.




The 'sane' response would be to buy high-end power protection equipment
and use redundant drive configurations (RAID) and only worry about whether
the kernel writes out data consistently or not (and good journalling takes
care of many performance issues here).

Reliability of gigabytes per minute of data is not just a case of
demanding synchronous writes (which is silly in many cases).  Power faults
can be protected against as can many cases of hardware failure.
Performance should not be sacrificed for the cases where someone has a
high case of failure potential (high being relative).

Greg Hudson wrote:

> (Of course, if
> you disk controller reorders write operations you'll lose no matter
> what.  Unfortunately, you have to choose both your hardware and your
> software somewhat carefully if you really care about filsystem
> consistency.)
>
> Linux ext2fs has no write ordering whatsoever.  If the system goes
> down uncleanly, you can get metadata pointing to bad data or data not
> pointed to by metadata.  A recently created file might exist but
> contain blocks from an old copy of /etc/shadow instead of the data you
> wrote to it.  It's really ugly.  fsck cannot correct all of the
> possible problems which can arise, no matter how clever or thorough it
> is.  People have tried to justify this state of affairs in lots of
> ways, but the only potentially correct and convincing justification
> is, "who cares?"  Which is great unless you're one of the (admittedly,
> relatively few) people who does care.
>
> Note that write ordering is different from synchronous
> vs. asynchronous operations.  Write ordering is about filesystem
> consistency, which is mostly irrelevant to qmail's operation because
> of the way qmail works.  ext2fs is also a little odd with respect to
> synchronous operations (as discussed in my last piece of mail), but
> it's certainly possible to work around that.





>> For the record, FFS with soft-updates does not guarantee synchronous
>> directory operations; you have to open and fsync() the file you just
>> moved to be sure the operation has been committed to disk.  See
>> http://mail-index.netbsd.org/current-users/2000/06/19/0011.html for a
>> little more information.

> Then I was confused.  I assumed FFS was like UFS on Solaris, where
> you can "feel" the synchronous directory operations by doing a "rm
> -rf" of anything larger than a few files.

Soft updates are a recent thing.  UFS on Solaris does not have them.
Without soft updates, FFS does have synchronous directory operations,
and yes, you will feel the resultant performance limitations.

> If ReiserFS behaved identically to FFS+softupdates, it would not
> need any qmail patches.

I can't really address this issue; I don't know qmail well enough.

> Which to me seems to be a more logical mode of operations: if you
> want the file data sync'd to disk, call fsync on the file; if you
> want the directory, fsync the directory.

Perhaps.  There are arguments for either model being simplest, and
history should not be ignored when picking between the two.  The
Single Unix Spec v2 also appears to mandate the FFS model, for those
who care about that standard:

        The fsync() function forces all currently queued I/O
        operations associated with the file indicated by file
        descriptor fildes to the synchronised I/O completion
        state. All I/O operations are completed as defined for
        synchronised I/O file integrity completion.

        [and:]

        synchronised I/O file integrity completion - Identical to a
        synchronised I/O data integrity completion with the addition
        that all file attributes relative to the I/O operation
        (including access time, modification time, status change time)
        will be successfully transferred prior to returning to the
        calling process.

        [and:]

        synchronised I/O data integrity completion - [...] The write
        is complete only when the data specified in the write request
        is successfully transferred and all file system information
        required to retrieve the data is successfully transferred.




On Mon, Jul 17, 2000 at 04:39:01PM -0400, Greg Hudson wrote:
> > Which to me seems to be a more logical mode of operations: if you
> > want the file data sync'd to disk, call fsync on the file; if you
> > want the directory, fsync the directory.
> 
> Perhaps.  There are arguments for either model being simplest,

I didn't say simplest.  It's a little more complicated to have to
remember to sync the directory as well as the file.

> and history should not be ignored when picking between the two.

Exactly the point that Linus has made about this (and many other issues)
before.
-- 
Bruce Guenter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>                       http://em.ca/~bruceg/

PGP signature





Hello,
I want to write a simple script to check if
mails are queued in /var/qmail/alias/pppdir/new
to decide, wheter the PC should go online or not.
Is there a spezial command like 'qmail-queue' to
decide if the computer should dial (isdn) to the
provider and send the queued mails using maildirsmtp?

Of cource, I can check this with
# if ls var/qmail/alias/pppdir/new then;
but maybe there is an other way?

Thanks
-- 
|Michael Renner      E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]    |
|D-72072 Tuebingen   Germany                          |
mail -s "get pgp key" [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null
mail -s "get gpg key" [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null
|Don't drink as root!                            ESC:wq




Most mail packages have the ability to let a user log in when sending mail.
(Outlook for example.) I was looking at this and had a couple of
questions...
Is this part of the SMTP standard?
Can this be used to let authorised people relay through a server?

Thanks
Martin

Martin Searancke
CommSoft Group Ltd.
Level 8, CommSoft House
90 Symonds St
Auckland, New Zealand

[EMAIL PROTECTED]
+64 21 778592







--- Martin Searancke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Most mail packages have the ability to let a user
> log in when sending mail.
> (Outlook for example.) I was looking at this and had
> a couple of
> questions...
> Is this part of the SMTP standard?

No.

> Can this be used to let authorised people relay
> through a server?
> 
> Thanks
> Martin

There are mods to qmail that allow users who have been
authenticated through pop to then send out mail
through your SMTP server.  I have  no experience with
this, but I remember seeing it on www.qmail.org.  

Steve

> 
> Martin Searancke
> CommSoft Group Ltd.
> Level 8, CommSoft House
> 90 Symonds St
> Auckland, New Zealand
> 
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> +64 21 778592
> 
> 


=====
---Someone told me that if you play a windoze NT CD backwards, it will play satanic 
messages.
---That's NOTHING!! If you play it forwards, it will install windoze NT!!!!!

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get Yahoo! Mail – Free email you can access from anywhere!
http://mail.yahoo.com/




On Tue, Jul 18, 2000 at 11:04:26AM +1200, Martin Searancke wrote:
> Most mail packages have the ability to let a user log in when sending mail.
> (Outlook for example.) I was looking at this and had a couple of
> questions...
> Is this part of the SMTP standard?

It is not part of the original rfc821, but it's documented in a "standard"
document from last year:

It's often called "SMTP AUTH". 

http://rfc2554.x42.com/
2554 SMTP Service Extension for Authentication. J. Myers. March 1999.
     (Format: TXT=20534 bytes) (Status: PROPOSED STANDARD)

> Can this be used to let authorised people relay through a server?

Yes.
Look for "Mrs. Brisby" and "Krzysztof Dabrowski" on www.qmail.org. 


/magnus

--
http://x42.com/




hi,

i've looked around the doc's and the net and i was not able to find sonme 
good docs on mail filtering. what i want sounds simple: i want to filter 
messages for one user to different folders in the maildir depending on 
headers or what ever.
Matthias Henze

MH458-RIPE


MHC SoftWare GmbH          voice: +49-(0)9533-92006-0
Fichtera 17                  fax: +49-(0)9533-92006-6
96274 Itzgrund/Germany    e-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----------------------------------------------------
-------------  http://www.mhcsoftware.de  -----------





On Tue, Jul 18, 2000 at 09:12:03AM +0200, Matthias Henze wrote:
> 
> i've looked around the doc's and the net and i was not able to find sonme 
> good docs on mail filtering. what i want sounds simple: i want to filter 
> messages for one user to different folders in the maildir depending on 
> headers or what ever.

If you search on "filter" http://on www.qmail.org/
then you'll find at least two packages for this. 

You can do simple filtering with perl and .qmail-files. 

Tips: 
 * procmail supports Maildir
 * MrSam:s maildrop works nice with Maildir
   http://www.flounder.net/~mrsam/maildrop/
 * mailagent (Perl)
   http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=mailagent
 * Kagent (Perl)   
   http://patriot.net/~kurt/kagent/

Filtering Mail FAQ
  http://www.faqs.org/faqs/mail/filtering-faq/ 

/magnus

--
http://x42.com/




On Tue, Jul 18, 2000 at 09:12:03AM +0200, Matthias Henze wrote:
! i've looked around the doc's and the net and i was not able to find sonme 
! good docs on mail filtering. what i want sounds simple: i want to filter 
! messages for one user to different folders in the maildir depending on 
! headers or what ever.

What do you mean by ``for one user''? Do you mean you share a POP
mailbox with someone else and you want to tell whether a message
was for you or that someone else? Or do you simply mean that you
want to filter depending on where the message is _from_?

In the former case, fetchmail has a multidrop mode; read the manual
page, fetchmail(1), for more info.

In the latter case, look into procmail; qmail has a script that
delivers mail through procmail by default at /var/qmail/boot/proc+df.
All the help you need in writing the filters are in the procmailrc(5)
and procmailex(5) man pages.

If you're delivering to a Maildir, as you suggested above, make sure
that the folder specified in the procmail recipe ends with a slash.

fetchmail: http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/fetchmail/
procmail: http://www.procmail.org/

Hope it helps,
        ---Chris K.
-- 
 Chris, the Young One |_ Never brag about how your machines haven't been 
  Auckland, New Zealand |_ hacked, or your code hasn't been broken. It's 
http://cloud9.hedgee.com/ |_ guaranteed to bring the wrong kind of 
 PGP: 0xCCC6114E/0x706A6AAD |_ attention. ---Neil Schneider 




Ramy Hassan at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
thought you might be interested in having your skills
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If you don't know Ramy Hassan, please disregard
this note or forward it to mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
(originating IP: 163.121.43.69).






Hi,

Is there a way of keeping a local copy of the RBL lists and using those
instead of trying to get it from the remote site - should this not speed
things up - I also know that the list is updated all the time - but can
some of you peoples please comment...

Thanks

Tonino




Hello,

I've searched the archives on this topic and though there are a lot of
people who have reported this issue, I have not really seen a solution yet.

I have a Linux box (Redhad 5.?) which I use as a firewall/server/NAT
machine.  One ethernet card is connected to an ADSL modem and has a fixed IP
address.  The other ethernet card is connected to a mini-hub and has the
address of 192.168.1.1.  I have a set of Mac's connected to the hub with
addresses 192.168.1.100 and up.

I've got Qmail running just great for both SMTP and POP!!  However, as soon
as I activate my firewall (using ipchains), sending or receiving email from
a local machine takes over 3 minutes!!

In the archives, some people have speculated that this is a DNS issue or a
problem with auth.  I have TCP port 113 (auth) opened to the world (local
and internet) and am still having a problem.  I suspect that there must be
some other port I need to open up.  Does anyone have a suggestion of where I
can go from here?  I am a bit new to Qmail and not too familiar with the
debugging tools.

By the way, I do not have DNS active on my Linux box and am relying on my
ISP's DNS server (they have my domain name set up in their server).

Doug





-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hi,

I must be missing something: I want to have an alternative aliases 
file to be used by a user controlling a few virtual domains.

I know how I would _use_ such a file:
$cat ~user/.qmail-default
|fastforward -d ./alternative-aliases.cdb
$

The question is: How do I _create_ such a file? According to the 
manpage, newaliases has /etc/aliases hardcoded in it. What's the 
alternative? (Except, of course, creating the file as /etc/aliases.cdb 
and then moving it somewhere; I don't want to give that used write 
permissions into /etc, obviously.)

Thanks

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Version: PGP 6.0.2 -- QDPGP 2.60 
Comment: http://community.wow.net/grt/qdpgp.html

iQA/AwUBOXQPwlMwP8g7qbw/EQIwnQCeORvGlI6+AP3VGfQzCa6d1iFuz5MAoIeU
OiW7IlDMEOLberNbqu5rR/hS
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--
Petr Novotny, ANTEK CS
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.antek.cz
PGP key ID: 0x3BA9BC3F
-- Don't you know there ain't no devil there's just God when he's drunk.
                                                             [Tom Waits]




On Tue, Jul 18, 2000 at 11:05:22AM +0200, Petr Novotny wrote:
! The question is: How do I _create_ such a file?

setforward appears to be the closest I've seen to doing that.

        ---Chris K.
-- 
 Chris, the Young One |_ but what's a dropped message between friends? 
  Auckland, New Zealand |_ this is UDP, not TCP after all ;) ---John H. 
http://cloud9.hedgee.com/ |_ Robinson, IV  
 PGP: 0xCCC6114E/0x706A6AAD |_ 





  hello list 

     i have installed redhat linux 6.1  , with sendmail 8.9.3  from rpms 
(redhat cd)
   i want to remove sendmail and install qmail on this system ,

  please tell me exactly how can i do this 


  thanks & regards 
  Prashant Desai 





OK, first - untar or install the qmail files. THEN read REMOVE.sendmail and
then if you have any further questions, ask on the list. The docs are
usually a good place to start, as 95% of these questions are answered
there...

Brett
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tuesday, July 18, 2000 7:39 PM
Subject: urgent help required


>
>  hello list
>
>     i have installed redhat linux 6.1 , with sendmail 8.9.3  from rpms
>(redhat cd)
>   i want to remove sendmail and install qmail on this system ,
>
>  please tell me exactly how can i do this
>
>
>  thanks & regards
>  Prashant Desai
>
>





Hi,

I noticed the ftp location for the updated (to 1.03) anti-spam 
patches from Ras/Lionel/Lindsay doesn't allow anon access 
anymore (it's a buggy wu-ftpd version ?). Anyway, can anyone 
point me to a new location, update the web site, or send me a 
copy ?

Thanks,

Marc
 
Marc J.J. ter Horst        P.O. Box 930      Phone   : +31 318 557237
Manager ICT             3900 AX Veenendaal   fax     : +31 318 550485
Nucletron                 The Netherlands    Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
  



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