[wplug] FreeBSD help?

[Bill Moran]

terry mcintyre <terrymcintyre at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I know I've seen some FreeBSD afficianados on here.

There's a sister list, wplug-bsd at wplug.org for BSD talk, but I don't think
your situation is FreeBSD (or even BSD) specific.

> Right now, I'm trying to do something about a qmail /
> vpopmail server, running FreeBSD 4.5, which is 
> bogging down rather badly.
> 
> Still trying to get a handle on the situation -
> the system is totally undocumented - five mail 
> servers mount four NFS file servers. Presently, 
> the mail queues exceed 100,000 on each server. 
> More mail comes in than leaves. A great deal of 
> the incoming mail appears to be spam.
> 
> Any pointers, tips, etc. greatly appreciated.

Have a look at those messages to see if a lot of them are bounces and
double-bounces.  If so, it's quite possible that you're accepting mail
for accounts that don't exist, then trying to bounce it back to accounts
that don't exist, thus generating a double-bounce.

If you get a lot of spam with a From address that doesn't exist, to a
nonexistant account on your server, this can bog things down very
quickly, as each one of these spams results in 3 messages going through
the queue (the original, bounce, and finally the double-bounce).

If that's the problem, the best solution is to make sure qmail refuses
to accept mail for accounts that don't exist (instead of accepting it,
then bouncing it).  It's been a while since I've worked with qmail, so
I'm not sure how to configure this, but I know it can be done.

HTH.

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com