[KLUG Members] Tuning qmail

[members@kalamazoolinux.org]

> > > > 1.) SPAMCop, support for this is built into almost all
> > > > MDA/MTAs.  All it takes is a DNS query per message.  We've
> > > > found this blocks almost all SPAM, and anything that comes
> > > > through can be easily reported. This is Morrison's only
> > > > anti-SPAM mechanism and we get almost none.
> > > What false positive problems have you had with SpamCop? 
> > Zero.
> > > Have you had to whitelist any addresses?
> > No.
> For activities like identifying terrorists or marking spam,
> anecdotes are not all that helpful... it's the statistics that
> matter.

True,  I'm only answering the question I was asked.  I revel in my statistical
insignificance!
 
> SpamCop is run by bullies who think it's clever to block competing
> anti-spam organizations as spammers.  Read more about them:
> http://www.politechbot.com/p-04121.html
> http://www.politechbot.com/p-04128.html
> http://www.politechbot.com/p-04129.html
> http://www.politechbot.com/p-04259.html
> http://www.politechbot.com/p-04261.html
> http://www.politechbot.com/p-04484.html
> http://www.politechbot.com/p-04842.html

I'll read those.  Is there another 'less biased' service?

> > did someone think executing hundreds of lines of perl for every
> > mail message a good idea?  Just dumb.  Hello, my name is "C"!
> Heh... Slashdot executes many thousands of lines of perl for every
> dynamic webpage you hit, and we deliver 30 of those a second
> without breaking a sweat.

True, and there are things like mod_perl in apache that encapsulates the perl
interpreter, etc... You don't fork a "/usr/bin/perl" for every page you serve,
so it's a bit different.  

Now if someone wrote a web-service that ran in Apache (or some other parent) and
listened to the MTA/MDA milter, that would be cool.  I suppose you could write
the service logic in just about anything.

> My two cents is that I run SpamAssassin on my mail server and
> don't have a problem, but then my mail traffic is pretty low, so
> I'm not saying take my word for it.

And our experimentation shows it works fine for us to (with "high" traffic); 
until something really hits the fan, we get mail bombed, etc... then these
things pretty effectively bring a server to its knees.

> And since so much of that is text processing and network activity
> (reverse DNS lookups, DNSBL lookups), C wouldn't help a bit.
> Perl's text manipulation is optimized.

There is the start-up, shutdown, and communication overhead of the processes. 
And I don't doubt that perl's communication (socket, pipes, etc...) efficiency
is MUCH improved.  And a deamonized perl script should work pretty well.  But
for this application why drive an american muscle car when you can have true
european craftmanship.