It is _VERY_ important to validate rulebase files with the snf2check utility. The snf2check utility tests the rulebase files in ways that the SNF scanning utility does not (for the sake of speed). If you don't check your downloads with the snf2check utility you run the risk of pressing a corrupt rulebase into service with unpredictable (but probably very bad) results.


My $0.02


_M


On Wednesday, November 9, 2005, 2:58:08 PM, John wrote:


>

We have not  run snf2check on the updates. And it may be a coincidence or bad timing that sniffer appears to be the culprit. But we have stopped sniffer (commented out in the declude global.cfg) for an observed period of time and the mail never stops (and had never stopped before sniffer) and conversely, it only stops when sniffer is running.

We have not gone the extra steps of putting sniffer in persistent mode.

We are looking at moving the imail/declude/sniffer setup to a newer box with more resources.

Currently on a dell 2450 dual 833 and 1 gig of ram and raid 5. Volume of email is less than 10,000 emails per day.

J

 


From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Darin Cox

Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 1:47 PM

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Re[4]: [sniffer] Rash of false positives

 

Are corrupted rulebase files the culprit?   How do you update... and do you run snf2check on the updates?

 

Just wondering if the rulebase file is the problem, if the problem occurs during the update, or if you are running into obscure errors with the EXE itself....


Darin.

 

 

----- Original Message ----- 

From: John Moore 

To: [email protected] 

Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 12:42 PM

Subject: RE: Re[4]: [sniffer] Rash of false positives

 

We had this same thing happen.

It has been happening more frequently recently and we are looking into disabling sniffer as it seems to be the culprit each time.

John Moore

305 Spin

 


From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Richard Farris

Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 11:38 AM

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Re[4]: [sniffer] Rash of false positives

 

This morning my server quit sending mail and my tech said the Dr. Watson error on the server was my Sniffer file...I rebooted and thought it was OK but quit again..I had a lot of mail back logged...so I updated a new rule base but it did not seem to help....I reinstalled Imail and things seem OK but slow since there is such a back log of mail....If things don't get back to normal I will be back..


Richard Farris

Ethixs Online

1.270.247.5555 Office

1.800.548.3877 Tech Support

"Crossroads to a Cleaner Internet"

----- Original Message ----- 

From: Pete McNeil 

To: Darin Cox 

Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2005 3:03 PM

Subject: Re[4]: [sniffer] Rash of false positives

 

On Tuesday, November 8, 2005, 3:25:20 PM, Darin wrote:

 

> 

Hi Pete,

 

There was a consistent stream of false positives over the mentioned time period, not just a blast at a particular time.  They suddenly started at 5pm (shortly after a 4:30pm rulesbase update), and were fairly evenly spread from 5pm - 11pm and 6am - 10am today (not many legitimate emails came in between 11pm and 6am)...spanning 4 other rulebase updates at 8:40pm, 12am, 3am, and 6:20am.  There were a number of different rules involved, and over 45 false positives in that time period.

 

This is highly unusual -- I didn't remove many rules, and normally only one or two would be responsible. If you found that a large number of rules were responsible then something else happend and we need to look at that... I'd need to see your SNF logs from that period since the changes (removals anyway) in the rulebase were very small and unrelated - that just doesn't line up with your description.

 

One thing does-- in the past if snf2check was not used to check a new download then a corrupted rulebase could cause SNF to produce erratic results... since snf2check has been in place we have not seen this. Is it possible that a bad rulebase file got pressed into service on your system? -- probably a look at the logs would help there too since this kind of failure is accompanied by very specific oddities in the logs.

 

Hope this helps,

 

_M

 

This E-Mail came from the Message Sniffer mailing list. For information and (un)subscription instructions go to http://www.sortmonster.com/MessageSniffer/Help/Help.html 

This E-Mail came from the Message Sniffer mailing list. For information and (un)subscription instructions go to http://www.sortmonster.com/MessageSniffer/Help/Help.html

Reply via email to