Re: Pulling my hair out
On Wed, 2009-10-21 at 01:34 -0400, Gene Heskett wrote: On Tuesday 20 October 2009, Martin Gregorie wrote: [getmail] does the same job as fetchmail, but without some of the bugs and with better documentation and easier configuration. A nice touch is that you can use a fetchmail MDA script without any changes - at least that's my experience. My real gripe with fetchmail was the steady build-up of 'seen' mail in my ISP's mailbox as sessions got terminated by their POP3 server and/or line drops. Since I switched to getmail 3 weeks or so ago and got it configured suitably, this no longer happens. I just had yum install it, but the manpage style docs for it are even more sparse than fetchmail's. I didn't think that was possible. Yes, I forgot how sparse that is. Mention was made of their also being html docs. When I am awake next, I'll look for them. The main documentation is here: http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/ and scroll down - the manual is lower down the same page. Mentioned for the benefit of others, since I assume Gene has already found it. Martin
Re: Pulling my hair out
On Wednesday 21 October 2009, Martin Gregorie wrote: On Wed, 2009-10-21 at 01:34 -0400, Gene Heskett wrote: On Tuesday 20 October 2009, Martin Gregorie wrote: [getmail] does the same job as fetchmail, but without some of the bugs and with better documentation and easier configuration. A nice touch is that you can use a fetchmail MDA script without any changes - at least that's my experience. My real gripe with fetchmail was the steady build-up of 'seen' mail in my ISP's mailbox as sessions got terminated by their POP3 server and/or line drops. Since I switched to getmail 3 weeks or so ago and got it configured suitably, this no longer happens. I just had yum install it, but the manpage style docs for it are even more sparse than fetchmail's. I didn't think that was possible. Yes, I forgot how sparse that is. Mention was made of their also being html docs. When I am awake next, I'll look for them. The main documentation is here: http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/ and scroll down - the manual is lower down the same page. Mentioned for the benefit of others, since I assume Gene has already found it. Martin Thanks for the link, I picked up the 4.13 tarball, but its 4.11 installed, and locate just now found the doc/getmail tree, but I'm not up for good yet, its just that good geeks always check their email before going back to bed when they get up to pee. :) -- Cheers, Gene There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) The NRA is offering FREE Associate memberships to anyone who wants them. https://www.nrahq.org/nrabonus/accept-membership.asp The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind. -- E.B. White
Re: Pulling my hair out
At 07:09 PM 10/20/2009, you wrote: That's a reason for not accepting mail from that host, but why would a server refuse to deliver there? I'd have to agree there Let's say you are yourdomain.com, I am mydomain.com . You send mail to m...@mydomain.com . Your server looks up the mx for mydomain.com . Sees that it's example.dyndns.org. Resolves example.dyndns.org, which resolves to 1.2.3.4 . rDNS's 1.2.3.4. Sees that it has rDNS of dynamic.ip.my.ISP . Rejects mail. Sounds a bit far fetched for me...
Re: Pulling my hair out
LuKreme wrote: On 20-Oct-2009, at 17:03, Evan Platt wrote: At 03:58 PM 10/20/2009, you wrote: Domains cost about $10 a year. Static IP addresses depend on your ISP. Some are cheap, some are not, and some won't do it at all. However, you do not have to have a static IP. You can use a service like DynDNS.org , which I think is about $20/year (they have free hosting, but for a mailserver you're not going to be able to use just the free dynamic DNS service). Why wouldn't the free DYNDNS work for a mailserver? Because many mail servers will not talk to you directly on a dynamic IP and will not accept outbound mail from you on a dynamic IP. While I'm no fan of the dydns.org dynamic-is-static thing, I will cry foul on this. We had a customer one time who for nonsensical political and stupid reasons wasn't using us as the circuit provider, and was instead using a dynamically-numbered DSL line from qwest.net. (they used us for webhosting only) They had an exchange server on this line, and they were too cheap even to use dydns.org so what they did is they ran an at job on their exchange server that pinged the qwest nameservers once a minute (to keep the ppp-mode DSL line up) and they would see what IP address qwest assigned then enter this into their DNS zone file on whatever registrar they used. Their IP only changed about once a month or so, whereupon inbound mail would drop off (that's how they knew it changed) they would log back into their registrar, change the IP address, and off they went again. They never had problems sending or receiving mail doing this and I know they weren't relaying through qwest's mailservers. I always dreaded calls from them, as they were the type who cost more in support time than they were worth, fortunately they went away eventually. It's not something I'd do on my own equipment, but I take issue with the claim that it doesn't work - I've seen it work. Ted
Re: Pulling my hair out
On Wed, 21 Oct 2009, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: We had a customer one time who for nonsensical political and stupid reasons wasn't using us as the circuit provider, and was instead using a dynamically-numbered DSL line from qwest.net. They never had problems sending or receiving mail doing this and I know they weren't relaying through qwest's mailservers. Receiving shouldn't be a problem as long as they catch the IP address change fairly promptly, but I wager these days there would be a lot of domains they wouldn't be able to successfully send email to due to DNSBL blocking. Not everybody, but lots. How long ago was this? -- John Hardin KA7OHZhttp://www.impsec.org/~jhardin/ jhar...@impsec.orgFALaholic #11174 pgpk -a jhar...@impsec.org key: 0xB8732E79 -- 2D8C 34F4 6411 F507 136C AF76 D822 E6E6 B873 2E79 --- The world has enough Mouse Clicking System Engineers. -- Dave Pooser --- 12 days since President Obama won the Nobel Not George W. Bush prize
Re: Pulling my hair out
Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: LuKreme wrote: On 20-Oct-2009, at 17:03, Evan Platt wrote: At 03:58 PM 10/20/2009, you wrote: Domains cost about $10 a year. Static IP addresses depend on your ISP. Some are cheap, some are not, and some won't do it at all. However, you do not have to have a static IP. You can use a service like DynDNS.org , which I think is about $20/year (they have free hosting, but for a mailserver you're not going to be able to use just the free dynamic DNS service). Why wouldn't the free DYNDNS work for a mailserver? Because many mail servers will not talk to you directly on a dynamic IP and will not accept outbound mail from you on a dynamic IP. While I'm no fan of the dydns.org dynamic-is-static thing, I will cry foul on this. We had a customer one time who for nonsensical political and stupid reasons wasn't using us as the circuit provider, and was instead using a dynamically-numbered DSL line from qwest.net. (they used us for webhosting only) They had an exchange server on this line, and they were too cheap even to use dydns.org so what they did is they ran an at job on their exchange server that pinged the qwest nameservers once a minute (to keep the ppp-mode DSL line up) and they would see what IP address qwest assigned then enter this into their DNS zone file on whatever registrar they used. Their IP only changed about once a month or so, whereupon inbound mail would drop off (that's how they knew it changed) they would log back into their registrar, change the IP address, and off they went again. They never had problems sending or receiving mail doing this and I know they weren't relaying through qwest's mailservers. I always dreaded calls from them, as they were the type who cost more in support time than they were worth, fortunately they went away eventually. It's not something I'd do on my own equipment, but I take issue with the claim that it doesn't work - I've seen it work. On the other hand, I set up a mail server on my Bellsouth DSL connection a couple of years ago. I tried to send mail direct, but I had too many problems with servers rejecting the mail, so I was forced to relay through Bellsouth's servers. I guess it depends on whether you are lucky enough to get an IP from a block that's not on the blacklists. -- Bowie
Re: Pulling my hair out
John Hardin wrote: On Wed, 21 Oct 2009, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: We had a customer one time who for nonsensical political and stupid reasons wasn't using us as the circuit provider, and was instead using a dynamically-numbered DSL line from qwest.net. They never had problems sending or receiving mail doing this and I know they weren't relaying through qwest's mailservers. Receiving shouldn't be a problem as long as they catch the IP address change fairly promptly, but I wager these days there would be a lot of domains they wouldn't be able to successfully send email to due to DNSBL blocking. Not everybody, but lots. I suspect it mostly depends on whether the ISP reports the numbers as dynamic to the blacklists. How long ago was this? They disappeared about 3 years ago as I recall. I have no clue if they are still doing this trick. Ted
Re: Pulling my hair out
As an admin with two years of CS education... I think Spamassassin is one of the easiest programs to get, install, etc.. The documentation on it's tests is great. There's no voodoo like many anti-spam products. Stopping spam is not simple, and there are no illusions otherwise. SA doesn't make it harder than necessary. On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 04:26:43PM -0700, amadis wrote: I usually think of myself as pretty capable with a computer but Spamassassin and it's website have made me think twice. I took me 20 minutes just to figure out where this forum was. I feel like Apache is trying to weed out dunderheads like me from using their product. I swear I cannot understand 80% of what is written on the how to install page. I've spent three hours now trying to install this program and cannot imagine that this was written for anyone but a computer programmer. I've searched the internet for help elsewhere and every conversation sounds like a foreign language. How is this user-friendly? I'd really like to support OpenSource but I swear if someone doesn't show me a SIMPLE way to work this, I'm dumping SA and Thunderbird and going back to Outlook. -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Pulling-my-hair-out-tp25967420p25967420.html Sent from the SpamAssassin - Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- /* Jason Philbrook | Midcoast Internet Solutions - Wireless and DSL KB1IOJ| Broadband Internet Access, Dialup, and Hosting http://f64.nu/ | for Midcoast Mainehttp://www.midcoast.com/ */
Re: Pulling my hair out
20.10.2009 16:25, jp kirjoitti: As an admin with two years of CS education... I think Spamassassin is one of the easiest programs to get, install, etc.. The documentation on it's tests is great. There's no voodoo like many anti-spam products. Stopping spam is not simple, and there are no illusions otherwise. SA doesn't make it harder than necessary. SpamAssassin *is* extremely hard to get up and running, when one is using a Windows workstation without perl. Even with perl it is hard, as the spamd can not be put up with anything there is. I think even cygwin does not help there. I have tried to compile spamd for cygwin, but could not make it. I would have used it as one spamd instance in my LAN in addition to the working Linux ones, but could not get it working. I did not pull my hair out, though. I just dropped the project ;) I mean, people are used to download a setup.exe, click next-next-next-close. For such person, SA is impossible. SpamAssassin is not meant for users like that. It is a component of an email server, and for an admin used to it, is quite easy to setup. -- http://www.iki.fi/jarif/ The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven; The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change. These signs forerun the death or fall of kings. -- Wm. Shakespeare, Richard II pgpU4H0TtZdJX.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Pulling my hair out
amadis schrieb: I usually think of myself as pretty capable with a computer but Spamassassin and it's website have made me think twice. I took me 20 minutes just to figure out where this forum was. I feel like Apache is trying to weed out dunderheads like me from using their product. I swear I cannot understand 80% of what is written on the how to install page. I've spent three hours now trying to install this program and cannot imagine that this was written for anyone but a computer programmer. I've searched the internet for help elsewhere and every conversation sounds like a foreign language. How is this user-friendly? I'd really like to support OpenSource but I swear if someone doesn't show me a SIMPLE way to work this, I'm dumping SA and Thunderbird and going back to Outlook. your critics is somehow understandable , the spamassassin website is not very user friendly, but i always found what i needed, and 20 minutes are nothing with mail stuff, normally its a full time every day work ( same on exchange etc ) after all it takes me years to find out all bugs of all outlook versions and ther is no real connection/relation beetween outlook,thunderbird and spamassassin some stuff stays heavy ever depending to the deepness of the problem ( here spam filtering ), never trust anybody tells you this is easy going -- Best Regards MfG Robert Schetterer Germany/Munich/Bavaria
Re: Pulling my hair out
On Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:38:14 +0300 Jari Fredriksson ja...@iki.fi wrote: SpamAssassin *is* extremely hard to get up and running, when one is using a Windows workstation without perl. Even with perl it is hard, as the spamd can not be put up with anything there is. I think even cygwin does not help there. To be fair you don't actually need spamd if you are using SpamAssassin client side with a modest amount of mail. I have tried to compile spamd for cygwin, but could not make it. I would have used it as one spamd instance in my LAN in addition to the working Linux ones, spamd is perl, it's spamc that's compiled C, and you wouldn't need that in the scenario you describe.
Re: Pulling my hair out
On Tue, 20 Oct 2009, Karsten Bräckelmann wrote: It is written for, and targeted at admins. SA is not a GUI application aiming for users. It is not even intended to be run on a client machine (even though it works), but a server. Thanks God it's not a GUI. About users ... ...well, when at our institute we switched to SA from the previous hard DNSBL, what I did was to run SA for a few days on my machine under my account using procmail (I was a former procmail user, and still have my own procmail rules on top of the institute-wide SA) to test its performances. If I'd ever retire and have no access to my institute server, I suppose I'll use SA at home (and possibly I'd even start tweaking some rules). I'd never trust a commercial ISP to do proper filtering ! -- Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy) Citizens entrusted of public functions have the duty to accomplish them with discipline and honour [Art. 54 Constitution of the Italian Republic] For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html
Re: Pulling my hair out
20.10.2009 17:27, RW kirjoitti: On Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:38:14 +0300 Jari Fredriksson ja...@iki.fi wrote: I have tried to compile spamd for cygwin, but could not make it. I would have used it as one spamd instance in my LAN in addition to the working Linux ones, spamd is perl, it's spamc that's compiled C, and you wouldn't need that in the scenario you describe. Actually, my scenario is that I have a postfix running on Debian, and it uses two spamd instances one on the same Debian, and another on a RedHat. I would had added 3rd spamd instance to that, using my Windows workstation, as it has some RAM and CPU to spare. I need spamd, as it is the preferred way to use a remote SpamAssassin. But I did't do it, as it was next to impossible. And finally it is best to keep workstation as workstation and not a server.. I can now shut it down for nights ;) -- http://www.iki.fi/jarif/ Save energy: be apathetic. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Pulling my hair out
On Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:12:21 +0300 Jari Fredriksson ja...@iki.fi wrote: 20.10.2009 17:27, RW kirjoitti: On Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:38:14 +0300 Jari Fredriksson ja...@iki.fi wrote: I have tried to compile spamd for cygwin, but could not make it. I would have used it as one spamd instance in my LAN in addition to the working Linux ones, spamd is perl, it's spamc that's compiled C, and you wouldn't need that in the scenario you describe. Actually, my scenario is .. I understood what you were trying to do, but I didn't get what you meant by tried to compile spamd for cygwin, but could not make it - given that spamd is a script.
Re: Pulling my hair out
20.10.2009 18:43, RW kirjoitti: On Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:12:21 +0300 Jari Fredriksson ja...@iki.fi wrote: 20.10.2009 17:27, RW kirjoitti: On Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:38:14 +0300 Jari Fredriksson ja...@iki.fi wrote: I have tried to compile spamd for cygwin, but could not make it. I would have used it as one spamd instance in my LAN in addition to the working Linux ones, spamd is perl, it's spamc that's compiled C, and you wouldn't need that in the scenario you describe. Actually, my scenario is .. I understood what you were trying to do, but I didn't get what you meant by tried to compile spamd for cygwin, but could not make it - given that spamd is a script. Ooops, of course. You are right. It is the spamc which is problem, and as it is quite a simple C program I could probably even fix it for cygwin, as I have years behind as a C programmer. Same head, year after year. Goofy head. That just never popped into the stupid head :( -- http://www.iki.fi/jarif/ Extreme fear can neither fight nor fly. -- William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Pulling my hair out
Gene Heskett wrote: On Monday 19 October 2009, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: amadis wrote: I usually think of myself as pretty capable with a computer but Spamassassin and it's website have made me think twice. I took me 20 minutes just to figure out where this forum was. I feel like Apache is trying to weed out dunderheads like me from using their product. I swear I cannot understand 80% of what is written on the how to install page. I've spent three hours now trying to install this program and cannot imagine that this was written for anyone but a computer programmer. I've searched the internet for help elsewhere and every conversation sounds like a foreign language. How is this user-friendly? I'd really like to support OpenSource but I swear if someone doesn't show me a SIMPLE way to work this, I'm dumping SA and Thunderbird and going back to Outlook. Are you running a mail server? SpamAssassin is a tool intended to be used by people who build mailservers that are used at ISPs and companies. It's not intended to be used by end-users for a single mailbox - although if you had the right kind of account at an ISP you could do that - most people would not. I wonder where that got started? I have experience with 5 ISP's over the years, and currently have accounts with two majors plus the tv station where I was the CE for almost 20 years, now retired. I have never been refused access via a pop3 fetcher such as fetchmail by any of them as long as my scripts had the passwd and crypt protocols set correctly. I pop all 3 of them every 90 seconds on a dsl circuit. Fetchmail hands it off to procmail, procmail then /dev/nulls the known spammers, then hands it of to SA, and anything coming back with more than 4 stars again gets sent to /dev/null. It hands the rest to kmail, which sorts it into folders and hands it to me. As near total hands off once configured as it can be. Since your not the recipient mailserver, (your upstream server is) and I presume that your upstream is NOT running SA or doing any filtering (otherwise you are effectively wearing 2 condoms, on on top of the other, and wasting a lot of CPU on your system scanning mail that has been scanned already) you are effectively telling the spammers that they have a valid e-mail box and encouraging more spam. If you have control of the destination IP address the spammers are sending spam to, (the upstream) you can configure your MTA to issue an error 550 then disconnect when a source IP address on an Internet blacklist attempts to pass you mail. Not only does that save your bandwidth but if the spammer is relaying spams through an open mailserver, that will cause the compromised sending mailserver to bounce the relayed spam to it's administrator's mailbox (assuming that it's properly configured) which might ring the clue phone of the administrator managing the compromised mailserver, or if that doesn't work possibly consume all free disk space on the compromised server, thus causing it to crash and cease being a nuisance to the rest of us on the Internet. SA is useful dealing with the spams that make it past the blacklist, or spams coming from the few servers out there which are legitimate mail senders but are also blacklisted since they send spams as well - and so you have to put them in an exception list and allow them to send their mixed ham and spam to you. But whenever practical you want to not even receive those spams in the first place. Why devote CPU time to scanning them when you already know the sending IP is a spam source? I would submit that the innate fear of a text editor to be used to configure this stuff is a much larger reason a lot of people use a webmailer at their ISP. I would submit that your goofy structuring of your mailstream is causing you to receive thousands of spams which your SA install is then deleting, generating reports of how effective it is, and making you feel like your winning the war against the spammers. ;-) The question then is how do we convince them its ok to set options in a text file instead of a web page controlled by the ISP, where you have to click past 3 web spams per message before you can actually see the message? The question is how do we educate all would-be SA users in best anti-spam practices, and how to get the most mileage out of SA? Ted
Re: Pulling my hair out
On Tuesday 20 October 2009, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: Gene Heskett wrote: [...] Since your not the recipient mailserver, (your upstream server is) and I presume that your upstream is NOT running SA or doing any filtering (otherwise you are effectively wearing 2 condoms, on on top of the other, and wasting a lot of CPU on your system scanning mail that has been scanned already) you are effectively telling the spammers that they have a valid e-mail box and encouraging more spam. They are running a spam filter, some sort of am M$ thing that still lets about 1 to 2 thousand a week through. Gmails is far better than verizons, but I have NDI what they are running for a filter. The tv stations server used to produce 10,000 a week, but is getting better, now maybe 50/wk. If you have control of the destination IP address the spammers are sending spam to, (the upstream) you can configure your MTA to issue an error 550 then disconnect when a source IP address on an Internet blacklist attempts to pass you mail. I can't do that, I'm just pulling whats they miss with fetchmail. Not only does that save your bandwidth but if the spammer is relaying spams through an open mailserver, that will cause the compromised sending mailserver to bounce the relayed spam to it's administrator's mailbox (assuming that it's properly configured) which might ring the clue phone of the administrator managing the compromised mailserver, or if that doesn't work possibly consume all free disk space on the compromised server, thus causing it to crash and cease being a nuisance to the rest of us on the Internet. Verizon has such a compromised server right now, and I have sent several samples of the bogus messages it is sending me 20x a day of, for over a week now, no response and no change. As long as it makes vz money, they don't care. If there was another provider in my area, I'd be gone in a heartbeat. Cable might work, but they want 2x more a month and always have. SA is useful dealing with the spams that make it past the blacklist, or spams coming from the few servers out there which are legitimate mail senders but are also blacklisted since they send spams as well - and so you have to put them in an exception list and allow them to send their mixed ham and spam to you. And its useful to me, causing about 1.5K of these mails to be sent to /dev/null a week. AFAIK I have no bandwidth cap, so if vz wants to waste their bandwidth handling such crap, it no longer bothers me to /dev/null 750 or more bigger penis adds a week along with another 500 phishing scams, and of course maybe 250 419's. But whenever practical you want to not even receive those spams in the first place. Why devote CPU time to scanning them when you already know the sending IP is a spam source? As a pop3 puller only, I have no control over what is placed in my mailbox at vz. I would submit that the innate fear of a text editor to be used to configure this stuff is a much larger reason a lot of people use a webmailer at their ISP. I would submit that your goofy structuring of your mailstream is causing you to receive thousands of spams which your SA install is then deleting, generating reports of how effective it is, and making you feel like your winning the war against the spammers. ;-) Nope, its already, except for the address alias the compromised vz server is sending to, already been through the filtration of the ISP, this is what gets by them. The question then is how do we convince them its ok to set options in a text file instead of a web page controlled by the ISP, where you have to click past 3 web spams per message before you can actually see the message? The question is how do we educate all would-be SA users in best anti-spam practices, and how to get the most mileage out of SA? I think we do, as its a target that can visibly move in 1 hours time based on what we say right here on this list. Remember that whoever invents the better mousetrap is in the long run, responsible for making a better mouse. Ted Thanks Ted, hopefully my explanations will clarify my reasons. -- Cheers, Gene There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) The NRA is offering FREE Associate memberships to anyone who wants them. https://www.nrahq.org/nrabonus/accept-membership.asp You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once. -- Lazarus Long
Re: Pulling my hair out
On Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:57:50 -0700 Ted Mittelstaedt t...@ipinc.net wrote: Now do you see why people don't use fetchmail, and why it's so important to 550 stuff that is sent from blacklisted servers, and to use blacklists? That doesn't mean you need to run your own mail server. The world and his wife use blocklists these days because it saves money - the more common problem is that they are too aggressive. By the look of it so do Verizon. I'm in PBL so I guess they are using at least zen. $ telnet relay.verizon.net smtp Trying 206.46.232.11... Connected to relay.verizon.net. Escape character is '^]'. 571 Email from 87.81.140.128 is currently blocked by Verizon Online's anti-spam system. The email sender or Email Service Provider may visit http://www.verizon.net/whitelist and request removal of the block. 091020 Connection closed by foreign host.
Re: Pulling my hair out
On Tuesday 20 October 2009, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: Gene Heskett wrote: On Tuesday 20 October 2009, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: Gene Heskett wrote: [...] Since your not the recipient mailserver, (your upstream server is) and I presume that your upstream is NOT running SA or doing any filtering (otherwise you are effectively wearing 2 condoms, on on top of the other, and wasting a lot of CPU on your system scanning mail that has been scanned already) you are effectively telling the spammers that they have a valid e-mail box and encouraging more spam. They are running a spam filter, some sort of am M$ thing that still lets about 1 to 2 thousand a week through. Gmails is far better than verizons, but I have NDI what they are running for a filter. The tv stations server used to produce 10,000 a week, but is getting better, now maybe 50/wk. If you have control of the destination IP address the spammers are sending spam to, (the upstream) you can configure your MTA to issue an error 550 then disconnect when a source IP address on an Internet blacklist attempts to pass you mail. I can't do that, I'm just pulling whats they miss with fetchmail. Sure you can, register your own domain name, get a static IP address, setup your own mailserver. Lots of people do. At how much annual cost for that, remembering that I am 75 with little outside income over and above SS for the two of us, and PEIA from the wife's 34 years of teaching elementary music in the local school system. Not only does that save your bandwidth but if the spammer is relaying spams through an open mailserver, that will cause the compromised sending mailserver to bounce the relayed spam to it's administrator's mailbox (assuming that it's properly configured) which might ring the clue phone of the administrator managing the compromised mailserver, or if that doesn't work possibly consume all free disk space on the compromised server, thus causing it to crash and cease being a nuisance to the rest of us on the Internet. Verizon has such a compromised server right now, and I have sent several samples of the bogus messages it is sending me 20x a day of, for over a week now, no response and no change. As long as it makes vz money, they don't care. If there was another provider in my area, I'd be gone in a heartbeat. Cable might work, but they want 2x more a month and always have. Verizon what? fios? DSL? DSL. dydns.org lets you put your dynamic IP on a domain if you are too cheap to get a static IP address. I already do that for my web page: http://gene.homelinux.net:85/gene You can also contract with any other ISP on the Internet that -is- running SA to relay inbound mail for you. Again, raising the nominally $34/mo its costing me for the dsl circuit. SA is useful dealing with the spams that make it past the blacklist, or spams coming from the few servers out there which are legitimate mail senders but are also blacklisted since they send spams as well - and so you have to put them in an exception list and allow them to send their mixed ham and spam to you. And its useful to me, causing about 1.5K of these mails to be sent to /dev/null a week. AFAIK I have no bandwidth cap, so if vz wants to waste their bandwidth handling such crap, it no longer bothers me to /dev/null 750 or more bigger penis adds a week along with another 500 phishing scams, and of course maybe 250 419's. Fine - although nobody behind a mailserver that uses blacklists will get that many spams, not even a tenth of that many. Teach verizon, but it will take a far bigger cluebat than I can swing. But whenever practical you want to not even receive those spams in the first place. Why devote CPU time to scanning them when you already know the sending IP is a spam source? As a pop3 puller only, I have no control over what is placed in my mailbox at vz. Your choosing to be a pop3 puller. True, using the existing facilities. Without additional cost. I would submit that the innate fear of a text editor to be used to configure this stuff is a much larger reason a lot of people use a webmailer at their ISP. I would submit that your goofy structuring of your mailstream is causing you to receive thousands of spams which your SA install is then deleting, generating reports of how effective it is, and making you feel like your winning the war against the spammers. ;-) Nope, its already, except for the address alias the compromised vz server is sending to, already been through the filtration of the ISP, this is what gets by them. The question then is how do we convince them its ok to set options in a text file instead of a web page controlled by the ISP, where you have to click past 3 web spams per message before you can actually see the message? The question is how do we educate all would-be SA users in best anti-spam practices, and how to get the most mileage out of SA? I think we do, as its a
Re: Pulling my hair out
On Tue, 2009-10-20 at 17:53 -0400, Gene Heskett wrote: Slightly off-topic interjection, though it may help other fetchmail users. What can I use to replace fetchmail with then? getmail Fetchmail has such an option according to the comments in .fetchmailrc, but the man page barely mentions it. I just looked this morning. Its not like RMS would actually want to tell somebody how to use that facility. ;) It does the same job as fetchmail, but without some of the bugs and with better documentation and easier configuration. A nice touch is that you can use a fetchmail MDA script without any changes - at least that's my experience. My real gripe with fetchmail was the steady build-up of 'seen' mail in my ISP's mailbox as sessions got terminated by their POP3 server and/or line drops. Since I switched to getmail 3 weeks or so ago and got it configured suitably, this no longer happens. Martin
Re: Pulling my hair out
On 20-Oct-2009, at 15:53, Gene Heskett wrote: On Tuesday 20 October 2009, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: Sure you can, register your own domain name, get a static IP address, setup your own mailserver. Lots of people do. At how much annual cost for that, Domains cost about $10 a year. Static IP addresses depend on your ISP. Some are cheap, some are not, and some won't do it at all. However, you do not have to have a static IP. You can use a service like DynDNS.org , which I think is about $20/year (they have free hosting, but for a mailserver you're not going to be able to use just the free dynamic DNS service). -- Windle shook his head sadly. Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind. --Reaper Man
Re: Pulling my hair out
At 03:58 PM 10/20/2009, you wrote: Domains cost about $10 a year. Static IP addresses depend on your ISP. Some are cheap, some are not, and some won't do it at all. However, you do not have to have a static IP. You can use a service like DynDNS.org , which I think is about $20/year (they have free hosting, but for a mailserver you're not going to be able to use just the free dynamic DNS service). Why wouldn't the free DYNDNS work for a mailserver? That's what I use. (well, ok, technically my mailserver is a anti-spam box, which then relays the mail to my sever) but I did at one point have my home mail server be the direct mail server while running dyndns's free service...
Re: Pulling my hair out
On 20-Oct-2009, at 17:03, Evan Platt wrote: At 03:58 PM 10/20/2009, you wrote: Domains cost about $10 a year. Static IP addresses depend on your ISP. Some are cheap, some are not, and some won't do it at all. However, you do not have to have a static IP. You can use a service like DynDNS.org , which I think is about $20/year (they have free hosting, but for a mailserver you're not going to be able to use just the free dynamic DNS service). Why wouldn't the free DYNDNS work for a mailserver? Because many mail servers will not talk to you directly on a dynamic IP and will not accept outbound mail from you on a dynamic IP. Also, if your connection goes down, or you reboot your machine, having someone acting as backup for you is useful. (well, ok, technically my mailserver is a anti-spam box, which then relays the mail to my sever) Completely different then. but I did at one point have my home mail server be the direct mail server while running dyndns's free service... And I'm sure you missed a lot of mail that way. -- Bishops move diagonally. That's why they often turn up where the kings don't expect them to be.
Re: Pulling my hair out
At 04:25 PM 10/20/2009, you wrote: Because many mail servers will not talk to you directly on a dynamic IP and will not accept outbound mail from you on a dynamic IP. Also, if your connection goes down, or you reboot your machine, having someone acting as backup for you is useful. (well, ok, technically my mailserver is a anti-spam box, which then relays the mail to my sever) Completely different then. but I did at one point have my home mail server be the direct mail server while running dyndns's free service... And I'm sure you missed a lot of mail that way. I'm not aware I ever missed any mail when I had my host set up as the primary DNS. I've never sent direct to MX, I've always used my ISP as a relay host. - Ok, I can't say NEVER. I did for a while when my ISP made some changes and I was having problems. And then, I did see some e-mails bounce since I was on a dynamic IP. But really? A ISP would not send mail just because my mx is named something.dyndns.org?
Re: Pulling my hair out
On 20-Oct-2009, at 17:30, Evan Platt wrote: A ISP would not send mail just because my mx is named something.dyndns.org ? More likely because your IP is in the PBL or because your rDNS fails to match your hostname. -- 'You know me,' said Rincewind. 'Just when I'm getting a grip on something Fate comes along and jumps on my fingers.' --Interesting Times
Re: Pulling my hair out
On Tue, 20 Oct 2009, LuKreme wrote: On 20-Oct-2009, at 17:30, Evan Platt wrote: A ISP would not send mail just because my mx is named something.dyndns.org? More likely because your IP is in the PBL or because your rDNS fails to match your hostname. I don't think _anybody_ checks a domain's MX against a DNSBL or enforces an rDNS sanity check before _sending_ mail... That makes no sense. -- John Hardin KA7OHZhttp://www.impsec.org/~jhardin/ jhar...@impsec.orgFALaholic #11174 pgpk -a jhar...@impsec.org key: 0xB8732E79 -- 2D8C 34F4 6411 F507 136C AF76 D822 E6E6 B873 2E79 --- USMC Rules of Gunfighting #12: Have a plan. USMC Rules of Gunfighting #13: Have a back-up plan, because the first one won't work. --- 19 days since a sunspot last seen - EPA blames CO2 emissions
Re: Pulling my hair out
On Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:39:38 -0600 LuKreme krem...@kreme.com wrote: On 20-Oct-2009, at 17:30, Evan Platt wrote: A ISP would not send mail just because my mx is named something.dyndns.org ? More likely because your IP is in the PBL or because your rDNS fails to match your hostname. That's a reason for not accepting mail from that host, but why would a server refuse to deliver there?
Re: Pulling my hair out
On Tuesday 20 October 2009, Martin Gregorie wrote: On Tue, 2009-10-20 at 17:53 -0400, Gene Heskett wrote: Slightly off-topic interjection, though it may help other fetchmail users. What can I use to replace fetchmail with then? getmail Fetchmail has such an option according to the comments in .fetchmailrc, but the man page barely mentions it. I just looked this morning. Its not like RMS would actually want to tell somebody how to use that facility. ;) It does the same job as fetchmail, but without some of the bugs and with better documentation and easier configuration. A nice touch is that you can use a fetchmail MDA script without any changes - at least that's my experience. My real gripe with fetchmail was the steady build-up of 'seen' mail in my ISP's mailbox as sessions got terminated by their POP3 server and/or line drops. Since I switched to getmail 3 weeks or so ago and got it configured suitably, this no longer happens. Martin I just had yum install it, but the manpage style docs for it are even more sparse than fetchmail's. I didn't think that was possible. Mention was made of their also being html docs. When I am awake next, I'll look for them. Thank you. -- Cheers, Gene There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) The NRA is offering FREE Associate memberships to anyone who wants them. https://www.nrahq.org/nrabonus/accept-membership.asp If Machiavelli were a programmer, he'd have worked for ATT.
Pulling my hair out
I usually think of myself as pretty capable with a computer but Spamassassin and it's website have made me think twice. I took me 20 minutes just to figure out where this forum was. I feel like Apache is trying to weed out dunderheads like me from using their product. I swear I cannot understand 80% of what is written on the how to install page. I've spent three hours now trying to install this program and cannot imagine that this was written for anyone but a computer programmer. I've searched the internet for help elsewhere and every conversation sounds like a foreign language. How is this user-friendly? I'd really like to support OpenSource but I swear if someone doesn't show me a SIMPLE way to work this, I'm dumping SA and Thunderbird and going back to Outlook. -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Pulling-my-hair-out-tp25967420p25967420.html Sent from the SpamAssassin - Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
Re: Pulling my hair out
amadis wrote: I usually think of myself as pretty capable with a computer but Spamassassin and it's website have made me think twice. I took me 20 minutes just to figure out where this forum was. I feel like Apache is trying to weed out dunderheads like me from using their product. I swear I cannot understand 80% of what is written on the how to install page. I've spent three hours now trying to install this program and cannot imagine that this was written for anyone but a computer programmer. I've searched the internet for help elsewhere and every conversation sounds like a foreign language. How is this user-friendly? I'd really like to support OpenSource but I swear if someone doesn't show me a SIMPLE way to work this, I'm dumping SA and Thunderbird and going back to Outlook. Are you running a mail server? SpamAssassin is a tool intended to be used by people who build mailservers that are used at ISPs and companies. It's not intended to be used by end-users for a single mailbox - although if you had the right kind of account at an ISP you could do that - most people would not. If you want to use SpamAssassin I would suggest you find an ISP in your area that provides mailboxes that are scanned by SpamAssassin. And by the way, Thunderbird has nothing to do with SpamAssassin, and people can access SpamAssassin-protected mailboxes just fine with Outlook. Ted
Re: Pulling my hair out
It would help to explain what operating system you are using, at what point you are stuck at the installation, what you've read and what you've tried. Did you look at http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/StartUsing ? At 04:26 PM 10/19/2009, amadis wrote: I usually think of myself as pretty capable with a computer but Spamassassin and it's website have made me think twice. I took me 20 minutes just to figure out where this forum was. I feel like Apache is trying to weed out dunderheads like me from using their product. I swear I cannot understand 80% of what is written on the how to install page. I've spent three hours now trying to install this program and cannot imagine that this was written for anyone but a computer programmer. I've searched the internet for help elsewhere and every conversation sounds like a foreign language. How is this user-friendly? I'd really like to support OpenSource but I swear if someone doesn't show me a SIMPLE way to work this, I'm dumping SA and Thunderbird and going back to Outlook.
Re: Pulling my hair out
All: _IS_ there a Thunderbird plugin for SA? That would seem to be quite useful. 1) install perl for your platform (amadis: the perl language interpreter is required for Spam Assassin) 2) install SA 3) install the (hypothetical) Thunderbird plugin Then you can use SA to augment Thunderbird's build-in Junk detector. Amadis: As far as I've generally used SA, it has been on mail servers, not mail clients. There is an exception to that (for unix users, using something called procmail, but that's off topic from your request. Thunderbird does have built-in junk/spam detection, that you turn on in the Thunderbird preferences. Otherwise, you need to ask your email provider to see about installing Spam Assassin on their server or email-gateway. (if they're using Exchange, to match your desire for Outlook, then they'll need a gateway, as far as I know). JRudd On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 16:26, amadis adrieneama...@comcast.net wrote: I usually think of myself as pretty capable with a computer but Spamassassin and it's website have made me think twice. I took me 20 minutes just to figure out where this forum was. I feel like Apache is trying to weed out dunderheads like me from using their product. I swear I cannot understand 80% of what is written on the how to install page. I've spent three hours now trying to install this program and cannot imagine that this was written for anyone but a computer programmer. I've searched the internet for help elsewhere and every conversation sounds like a foreign language. How is this user-friendly? I'd really like to support OpenSource but I swear if someone doesn't show me a SIMPLE way to work this, I'm dumping SA and Thunderbird and going back to Outlook. -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Pulling-my-hair-out-tp25967420p25967420.html Sent from the SpamAssassin - Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
Re: Pulling my hair out
On Mon, 2009-10-19 at 16:26 -0700, an anonymous Nabble user wrote:
I usually think of myself as pretty capable with a computer but Spamassassin
and it's website have made me think twice. I took me 20 minutes just to
figure out where this forum was. I feel like Apache is trying to weed out
dunderheads like me from using their product. I swear I cannot understand
80% of what is written on the how to install page. I've spent three hours
now trying to install this program and cannot imagine that this was written
for anyone but a computer programmer.
It is written for, and targeted at admins. SA is not a GUI application
aiming for users. It is not even intended to be run on a client machine
(even though it works), but a server.
I've searched the internet for help
elsewhere and every conversation sounds like a foreign language. How is
this user-friendly? I'd really like to support OpenSource but I swear if
someone doesn't show me a SIMPLE way to work this, I'm dumping SA and
Thunderbird and going back to Outlook.
Threats like that never help, and rarely yield any useful responses.
Given your comments, you're trying to install SA on a Windows running
end-user machine?
--
char *t=\10pse\0r\0dtu...@ghno\x4e\xc8\x79\xf4\xab\x51\x8a\x10\xf4\xf4\xc4;
main(){ char h,m=h=*t++,*x=t+2*h,c,i,l=*x,s=0; for (i=0;il;i++){ i%8? c=1:
(c=*++x); c128 (s+=h); if (!(h=1)||!t[s+h]){ putchar(t[s]);h=m;s=0; }}}
Re: Pulling my hair out
SA is only for mail servers?! I wish that had been made clear on the SA website. Even now looking at the homepage and FAQ page I see nothing to that effect. But thank you all who responded for clearing this up. I was beginning to think I must have taken a stupid pill when I woke up this morning. I inferred from Thunderbirds settings "trust junk mail headers set by SA" to mean I needed SA. Apparently not. Not very clear on their part. Thanks to everyone who replied so quickly. Evan Platt wrote: It would help to explain what operating system you are using, at what point you are stuck at the installation, what you've read and what you've tried. Did you look at http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/StartUsing ? At 04:26 PM 10/19/2009, amadis wrote: I usually think of myself as pretty capable with a computer but Spamassassin and it's website have made me think twice. I took me 20 minutes just to figure out where this forum was. I feel like Apache is trying to weed out dunderheads like me from using their product. I swear I cannot understand 80% of what is written on the how to install page. I've spent three hours now trying to install this program and cannot imagine that this was written for anyone but a computer programmer. I've searched the internet for help elsewhere and every conversation sounds like a foreign language. How is this user-friendly? I'd really like to support OpenSource but I swear if someone doesn't show me a SIMPLE way to work this, I'm dumping SA and Thunderbird and going back to Outlook.
Re: Pulling my hair out
At 04:42 PM 10/19/2009, you wrote: Threats like that never help, and rarely yield any useful responses. I love the people who make threats for free software. If you don't fix this, I'm switching to competitor For one, you get more bees with honey Second, you're threatening to take away essentially non existent business. Kind of like a place that gives away free vanilla ice cream. You go in there and rudely demand they start giving away free chocolate ice cream, or you'll stop going there. From the OP: Sent from the SpamAssassin - Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. *sigh* I bet you're right on the End User running Windows guess. :)
Re: Pulling my hair out
On Mon, 2009-10-19 at 16:50 -0700, Adriene Harrison wrote:
SA is only for mail servers?! I wish that had been made clear on the
SA website. Even now looking at the homepage and FAQ page I see
nothing to that effect. But thank you all who responded for clearing
As I said, server-side filtering is the intended use -- but, yes, it
does work client-side, too. Granted, helps a great lot, if your mail
client provides integration glue. And of course, if you're running e.g.
Linux, where installing SA usually is a breeze. But I digress...
this up. I was beginning to think I must have taken a stupid pill
when I woke up this morning. I inferred from Thunderbirds settings
trust junk mail headers set by SA to mean I needed SA. Apparently
This means what the words say -- *trust* the headers, usually injected
somewhere server-side, to have the client act upon it, if there are no
dedicated spam folders on the server, for example. Trust is key here,
because anyone in the chain could have added these headers, and it makes
sense only, if you know you *are* running SA on your server, nearby.
That setting won't work as you hoped for anyway. It doesn't call SA.
not. Not very clear on their part. Thanks to everyone who replied so
quickly.
Another related note: While I do know (from various experiences), that
running SA server-side is much superior to running any light-weight
client spam filter -- SA uses too much resources (most of all pure
time), to be really useful client-side with any substantial amount of
spam or ham messages to scan.
In such a case, if server-side is not an option, I'd recommend to try
some client filters first. Like the Thunderbird built-in one...
--
char *t=\10pse\0r\0dtu...@ghno\x4e\xc8\x79\xf4\xab\x51\x8a\x10\xf4\xf4\xc4;
main(){ char h,m=h=*t++,*x=t+2*h,c,i,l=*x,s=0; for (i=0;il;i++){ i%8? c=1:
(c=*++x); c128 (s+=h); if (!(h=1)||!t[s+h]){ putchar(t[s]);h=m;s=0; }}}
Re: Pulling my hair out
On Monday 19 October 2009, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: amadis wrote: I usually think of myself as pretty capable with a computer but Spamassassin and it's website have made me think twice. I took me 20 minutes just to figure out where this forum was. I feel like Apache is trying to weed out dunderheads like me from using their product. I swear I cannot understand 80% of what is written on the how to install page. I've spent three hours now trying to install this program and cannot imagine that this was written for anyone but a computer programmer. I've searched the internet for help elsewhere and every conversation sounds like a foreign language. How is this user-friendly? I'd really like to support OpenSource but I swear if someone doesn't show me a SIMPLE way to work this, I'm dumping SA and Thunderbird and going back to Outlook. Are you running a mail server? SpamAssassin is a tool intended to be used by people who build mailservers that are used at ISPs and companies. It's not intended to be used by end-users for a single mailbox - although if you had the right kind of account at an ISP you could do that - most people would not. I wonder where that got started? I have experience with 5 ISP's over the years, and currently have accounts with two majors plus the tv station where I was the CE for almost 20 years, now retired. I have never been refused access via a pop3 fetcher such as fetchmail by any of them as long as my scripts had the passwd and crypt protocols set correctly. I pop all 3 of them every 90 seconds on a dsl circuit. Fetchmail hands it off to procmail, procmail then /dev/nulls the known spammers, then hands it of to SA, and anything coming back with more than 4 stars again gets sent to /dev/null. It hands the rest to kmail, which sorts it into folders and hands it to me. As near total hands off once configured as it can be. I would submit that the innate fear of a text editor to be used to configure this stuff is a much larger reason a lot of people use a webmailer at their ISP. The question then is how do we convince them its ok to set options in a text file instead of a web page controlled by the ISP, where you have to click past 3 web spams per message before you can actually see the message? If you want to use SpamAssassin I would suggest you find an ISP in your area that provides mailboxes that are scanned by SpamAssassin. And by the way, Thunderbird has nothing to do with SpamAssassin, and people can access SpamAssassin-protected mailboxes just fine with Outlook. Ted -- Cheers, Gene There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) The NRA is offering FREE Associate memberships to anyone who wants them. https://www.nrahq.org/nrabonus/accept-membership.asp The fortune program is supported, in part, by user contributions and by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Inanities.
