qmail & greylisting spam control (for v8)

[Thratchen]

For those interested in adding greylisting to version 8, the source has now been made available, from here:
http://kb.swsoft.com/article_22_1161_en.html

Anyone interested in adding this?

Information on how this amazing addition works on a pre v8 machine should look here
http://forum.swsoft.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=28645&perpage=15&pagenumber=1

It really does reduce spam down to a trickle.

[atomicturtle]

I wouldn't say a trickle :P Definitely effective against spammer MTAs that dont retry(which spamhaus or other RBL's get too). Definitely a good idea though.

[faris]

Can you elaborate please Scott?

Are you saying that using xbl-sbl.spamhaus.whatever it is as an RBL is likely to be as effective as using greylisting?

Faris.

[atomicturtle]

Yes indeed, not that greylisting isn't a good idea. A spammer MTA will rarely if ever retry to send the message when it encounters a temporary failure, they'll just drop the message and move on to the next email address. You get the same effect from the RBL's, they'll just drop the message and keep going. Think of a spammer MTA as the Anti-Project Gamera :P The bonus with greylisting is that you get the new spammer MTA's that arent on the RBL's.

For everyone else, spam is coming through MTA's that do retry (open relays, webforms, etc) the messages still have a high likelihood of being delivered. The exception is when the MTA's mail queue is so full that it takes more than 5 days to get back to the message, and it's dropped automatically. Greylisting adds to that burden by stalling the queue. (You can do something like this with firewall rules too, called 'tarpitting'. )

As more people start to implement greylisting it will have a larger and larger impact.

[faris]

Thanks Scott.

Death to the AntiGamera! ;-)

The reason I'm asking is that I'm microns close to implementing greylisting on our live servers, but I'm still hesitant because I've seen some mailing lists not retry in my tests. On the other hand we are likely to get more false positives using RBLs. But the amount os spam coming through to customer accounts is silly. I just don't know what to do really. In the end I'll probably implement both !

Faris.

[atomicturtle]

The only legit mail servers Ive ever seen have trouble with sending to a greylisting box were Lotus Notes boxes. The more modern ones seem to handle it OK these days.

[lpittman]

Scott does your qgreylist work under Plesk 8.0.1/CentOS 4.2?

Luke

[atomicturtle]

Absolutely, just run "yum install qgreylist", and then restart xinetd.

[lpittman]

Originally posted by atomicturtle
Absolutely, just run "yum install qgreylist", and then restart xinetd.

Fantastic, thank you.

I've searched everything I can here, but can't tell if I need to configure anything? Or is it basically just 'install and work, yay'?

I am still new to linux ... so patience is appreciated. :)

Thanks for your time.

Luke

[Garp]

Originally posted by atomicturtle
Absolutely, just run "yum install qgreylist", and then restart xinetd.


Scott,

Does it also work on CentOS 3.8 with psa 7.5.2, running Drweb and psa-spamassassin?

As lpittman also asks; do i need to configure anything?

Can it break anything and if so; can i just remove the package through "yum remove qgreylist", effectively reverting to the 'original' state?

[lpittman]

Well, I've officially gone 1 day now with qgreylist installed as per ATRs instructions.

Normally I would have 25/30 spam emails, this morning I had 1!

I am going to make a few phone calls and see if my customers experienced the same success that I did, making sure it wasn't just a fluke.

I'll post my findings...

Luke

[lpittman]

Could this cause any issues with the outgoing mail on my server?

[atomicturtle]

Excellent, glad to hear its working so good for you! Side note, Im ART, ATR is Axel Thim's RPM archive (www.atrpms.net), who also makes some greylisting packages.

[lpittman]

Ah yes, just a typo, it was infact yours that I used.

It is still continuing to work excellent and I have had nothing but fantastic feedback from my customers.

Thanks so much.

Luke

[Hal9000]

hey what about me, i use debian :(
could someone make the plesk8-patched qmail sources available, as well as the greylisting patch?
so i can compile it on my debian system...
i had this for plesk 7.5, but now i got plesk 8 and dont want to use an old qmail binary which lacks spf support and a series of other things that were added in plesk 8...
PLEEEASEEE i desperatly need greylisting :)

[Thratchen]

Originally posted by Hal9000
hey what about me, i use debian :(
could someone make the plesk8-patched qmail sources available, as well as the greylisting patch?
so i can compile it on my debian system...
i had this for plesk 7.5, but now i got plesk 8 and dont want to use an old qmail binary which lacks spf support and a series of other things that were added in plesk 8...
PLEEEASEEE i desperatly need greylisting :)

This article contains the psa qmail source code

http://kb.swsoft.com/article_22_1161_en.html

[Hal9000]

it only contains the patches.
i was unable to patch/compile successfully however...
anyone?

[euro_gedimas]

Have anybody patch for FreeBSD 6.0? Or maybe can write mini how to, because I want try this, my server have big problem with spam :mad:

[bmeshier]

I've posted a patched qmail+psa8+greylisting here

http://meshier.com/2006/09/18/adding-greylisting-support-to-qmail-on-plesk-8/

[Hal9000]

Great!
However this time i have some trouble compiling:


qmail-smtpd.c: In function `main':
qmail-smtpd.c:1303: warning: return type of `main' is not `int'
./compile spf.c
./compile qmail-spp.c
./load qmail-smtpd rcpthosts.o commands.o timeoutread.o \
timeoutwrite.o ip.o ipme.o ipalloc.o control.o constmap.o \
tls.o ssl_timeoutio.o ndelay.a `cat ssl.lib` \
received.o date822fmt.o now.o qmail.o cdb.a fd.a wait.a \
datetime.a getln.a open.a sig.a case.a env.a stralloc.a strsalloc.o spf.o dns.o qmail-spp.o \
alloc.a substdio.a error.a str.a fs.a auto_qmail.o `cat \
socket.lib` `cat dns.lib`
cat: ssl.lib: No such file or directory
./compile qmail-envelope-scanner.c
./compile local_scan.c
make: *** No rule to make target `/usr/lib/mysql/libmysqlclient.a', needed by `qmail-envelope-scanner'. Stop.
root@fonzie:~/qmail-1.03#


I have Debian Sarge and installed the 'libssl-dev' and 'libmysqlclient14-dev' packages.
Any idea how i can fix this?
Greetings
Hal

[Hal9000]

allright, i replaced '/usr/lib/mysql/libmysqlclient.a' with '`/usr/lib/libmysqlclient.a' in the Makefile and the baby compiled now ;)
will try it out in a few...
hal

[Effektor]

Hey PPL,

I tried to compile the qmail-1.03 using the howto of meshier:

http://meshier.com/2006/09/18/addin...mail-on-plesk-8

I died anything till I got to the compilation.
I used make, after the compilation was finished I
got the first error. Caused by a wrong link in Makefile.

Make tried to use /usr/lib/mysql/libmysqlclient.a instead of
/usr/lib/libmysqlclient.a

I fixed the link in the Makefile.

At the end of the second try there where several errors because
of "main" was no "int".

First of all, mysql-devel and openssl-devel aren't available for Debian Sarge anymore. I install libmysqlclient12 and libmysqlclient12-dev instead of mysql-devel.

Instead of openssl-devel I installed libssl-dev hope anything is right. Now I'm not shure if I should going on with the tutorial.

Whats your oppinion of the error I talked about above?

[Hal9000]

for mysql 4.1 you need libmysqlclient14-dev

[angelone]

./compile spfquery.c
spfquery.c: In Funktion »main«:
spfquery.c:24: Warnung: Rückgabetyp von »main« ist nicht »int«
./load spfquery spf.o ip.o ipme.o ipalloc.o strsalloc.o \
now.o dns.o datetime.a stralloc.a alloc.a str.a substdio.a \
case.a error.a fs.a `cat dns.lib` `cat socket.lib`
h1049571:/home/angelone/installfiles/qmail-1.03#

are these the errors you mean?
you can ignore them, since qmail-smtpd and qmail-envelope-scanner have been correctly built.

just go on with the tutorial.
it worked for me :)

[Effektor]

thanx for help,

greylisting is already running since 26. of september.

I already build up a small statstool using php mysql.

It's still just available in german but I'm thinking about a
translation. :)

Interessted, look...

http://www.efx24.de/greylisting/view.php

[ewtech]

Hi;
I think you can try this,
http://eng.ewtech.com.tw/
May be can solve your problem.
Thanks!

[ghazlewood]

Originally posted by Effektor
I already build up a small statstool using php mysql.

It's still just available in german but I'm thinking about a
translation. :)

Interessted, look...

http://www.efx24.de/greylisting/view.php

Hi Effektor,

Would be interested in a translation of this if you're thinking of making it available.

Cheers

George

[pdreissen]

Originally posted by Effektor
I already build up a small statstool using php mysql.

It's still just available in german but I'm thinking about a
translation. :)


I'm interested in this one also, if you need a translation in Dutch i would be happy to offer my help!

[knocx]

How can you get around SMTP Auth,

i did deployed qgreylist on a pilot server and clients using smtp auth receives smtp reject.

will switching to poplock (POP3 before SMTP) solve the issue?

any comments will be great

knocx

[pdreissen]

Yes that would work, or you could make another instance which you don't use in dns which you communicate to your clients.

We use a different setup (other servers for client smtp traffic) so we don't use smtp auth on plesk servers!

[knocx]

great to hear that POP3 before SMTP works wthout "any" rejections to clients sending outbound SMTP (can you confirm this i really wonder if i get it correct)

what is your deployment btw , do you provide SMTP on a different server? if so how can you integrate it with PSA?

well i cant hide mail.domain.com on DNS all clients use mail.domain.com for SMTP server, they will have to change their smtp servers:) considering we have 10000 clients

[ZeroSixty]

Originally posted by Effektor
thanx for help,

greylisting is already running since 26. of september.

I already build up a small statstool using php mysql.

It's still just available in german but I'm thinking about a
translation. :)

Interessted, look...

http://www.efx24.de/greylisting/view.php
I'd be interested in an English version :)

[euro_gedimas]

Originally posted by Effektor
thanx for help,

greylisting is already running since 26. of september.

I already build up a small statstool using php mysql.

It's still just available in german but I'm thinking about a
translation. :)

Interessted, look...

http://www.efx24.de/greylisting/view.php

Can you give a source of this statistic?

[euro_gedimas]

I have try to compile but:

./compile qmail-envelope-scanner.c
./compile local_scan.c
local_scan.c:15:25: mysql/mysql.h: No such file or directory
local_scan.c:33: error: syntax error before '*' token
local_scan.c: In function `mysql_query_wrapper':
local_scan.c:37: error: `mysql' undeclared (first use in this function)
local_scan.c:37: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
local_scan.c:37: error: for each function it appears in.)
local_scan.c:37: error: `sqltext' undeclared (first use in this function)
local_scan.c: At top level:
local_scan.c:64: error: syntax error before '*' token
local_scan.c: In function `checkWhiteListIP':
local_scan.c:66: error: `MYSQL_RES' undeclared (first use in this function)
local_scan.c:66: error: `myres' undeclared (first use in this function)
local_scan.c:67: error: syntax error before "myrow"
local_scan.c:79: error: `mysql' undeclared (first use in this function)
local_scan.c:81: error: `myrow' undeclared (first use in this function)
local_scan.c:93: error: `action' undeclared (first use in this function)
local_scan.c: At top level:
local_scan.c:107: error: syntax error before '*' token
local_scan.c: In function `checkWhiteListDomain':
local_scan.c:109: error: `MYSQL_RES' undeclared (first use in this function)
local_scan.c:109: error: `myres' undeclared (first use in this function)
local_scan.c:110: error: syntax error before "myrow"
local_scan.c:115: error: `i' undeclared (first use in this function)
local_scan.c:121: error: `mysql' undeclared (first use in this function)
local_scan.c:123: error: `myrow' undeclared (first use in this function)
local_scan.c:135: error: `action' undeclared (first use in this function)
local_scan.c: At top level:
local_scan.c:170: error: syntax error before '*' token
local_scan.c: In function `checkGreylist':
local_scan.c:172: error: `MYSQL_RES' undeclared (first use in this function)
local_scan.c:172: error: `myres' undeclared (first use in this function)
local_scan.c:173: error: syntax error before "myrow"
local_scan.c:179: error: `i' undeclared (first use in this function)
local_scan.c:180: error: `mysql' undeclared (first use in this function)
local_scan.c:182: error: `myrow' undeclared (first use in this function)
local_scan.c:197: error: `action' undeclared (first use in this function)
local_scan.c: In function `local_scan':
local_scan.c:223: error: `MYSQL' undeclared (first use in this function)
local_scan.c:223: error: `mysql' undeclared (first use in this function)
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/home/gediminas/qmail-1.03.


On FreeBSD 6.0 machine

[CyberTech]

can't find openssl-devel for freebsd 4.9.
Need to intall on Plesk 7.5.4
Please help!