As you may remember from past problems with joe-jobs, TTLLP still has a few (maybe only one left?) qmail servers rattling around. The comments on spam-filtering suggested a few possibilities for easing matters.
As I wrote I would, I gave spamdyke a go. Maybe the out-of-the-box configuration isn’t right for me and maybe I didn’t configure it correctly, but it only cut a bit of load down and didn’t really work for me. MagicSpam seemed like a bad idea, partly because I want to slowly move people out of Plesk, not tie them into it and I hate surrendering autonomy to black boxes.
So, I installed qpsmtpd, as suggested by the legendary Steve Kemp. I found this guide to Installing qpsmtpd on SuSE 10.0 with Plesk 8.0 helpful (even though I wasn’t installing on SuSE or Plesk) and got plugins » auth » auth_imap from the qpsmtpd wiki to get SMTP AUTH working again.
The main lines of defence on the Exim servers remain a fun mix of IP-based throttling formulae and greylisting. The Postfix ones only really use greylisting, as far as I can remember. Those servers are much older than the qmail-using one, but still seem to cope.
Have you had to step-up your anti-spam systems recently? Is qmail that much worse, or is that soon-to-be-replaced 2-year-old server simply inadequate now?
[…] Published qpsmtpd Improved Things http://www.news.software.coop/qpsmtpd-improved-things/683/ […]
“Legendary” ?!
Still I’m pleased it worked out for you. I find that adding just a couple of plugins makes are real difference. Even basic ones that wold drop connections that use unqualified HELOs, etc.
The good thing about qpsmtpd is that it is almost too easy to write plugins, to the extent that I’ve got a lot installed on my machines – even just private ones.
I got bored just linking the site to your name every time!