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Re: a newbie needs help...

 

 

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ajp38 at bigfoot

Apr 27, 2002, 4:25 AM

Post #1 of 3 (253 views)
Permalink
Re: a newbie needs help...

On Wed, 24 Apr 2002 admin [at] neteffex wrote:

Can't give a definitive solution (a look at your logs might help). I have
given a few hints below.

Can I also suggest that you take this project in little steps - rather
than try and do it all in one go.
1. Unplug your modem (save embarassing mistakes).
2. Run exim and use something simple like mail (or a telnet connection) to
try and send a local mail. Check that this has been delivered by reading
the mailbox manually. (It's just a text file).
3. Plug the modem in and use fetchmail (not in batch mode to save
embarassing mistakes) to fetch a single test message. Check that this
gets delivered correctly.
4. Then make more complex arrangements like filtering/batch mode/aliasing.

> For the sake of protecting privacy, I was going to send all e-mail to a user "bill".
> You can see my Exim runtime file at:
> http://www.neteffex.com/exim/exim-configure.txt

Doesn't look too bad. local_domains should include neteffex.com and
localhost.

> I set up a .forward file under /home/bill:
> #Exim filter
> if $header_to: contains bill then deliver bill endif

This doesn't do anything, on several counts:
The To: header is not always set for an email.
It is in "bill"'s home directory - therefore everything going through this
filter will be for bill anyway.
It says "if this email is for bill, then deliver it to bill" - this is
kinda pointless since mail for bill should get delivered to him anyway.

The one thing it does do is remove the domain. All matching email is
being delivered to the address "bill" - since you don't specify a domain I
am not sure what exim is doing with it.

I suggest you remove this file for now.

> You have spammed over 2,000 emails through my account in the last 3 days.
> I have done an IP trace, and turned you over to the authorities.
> This is a $2,000 per occurrence fine under Federal Spamming laws,
> and up to a year in Federal Prison.

This begs the question: how did you manage to generate 2000 emails??
Surely you didn't send that many test messages? I suspect all your email
has been going to this guy.


Like I say - take it in little steps and fix things at each stage.
Looking at your logs should give you enough information to work out what
is going on.

HTH

John

--
and then he climbed to the top of his tree and climbed down
again, and then he wondered what Pooh was doing, and went
across the Forest to see.


djc at microwave

Apr 27, 2002, 9:31 AM

Post #2 of 3 (242 views)
Permalink
Re: a newbie needs help... [In reply to]

Without going into too much more detail, its probably something you are
going to have to work out with your ISP.

Its possible they have your domain (neteffex.com) aliased to theirs, and
have arranged for only a specific address to be delivered to your
account. Its also possible that the local-parts for your domain share
namespace with theirs, thus causing bill [at] neteffex and
bill [at] argontech to get delivered to the same mailbox on their server.

If the MX record for neteffex.com does not point at the fixed IP address
of a nailed-up server that is under your control, then you will have to
rely on whoever controls the server it does point at to deliver your
mail. There is more than one way to do this, so (not to belabor the
point, but) - contact the ISP that provides your DNS/mail service.


On Wed, 24 Apr 2002 admin [at] neteffex wrote:

> Well I really screwed up big time. And before I make any further gross errors, I'm seeking the
> advice of those much more learned here on this list. I've studied (but obviously not enough) the
> various help files and thought I was heading the right direction.... but....
>
> I have a dialup access to my isp (argontech.net). I also have a private network with Exim 3.34
> installed on a Linux machine. [See:
> http://www.neteffex.com/exim/network.gif
> for a network layout of the system.]
>
> Currently, all e-mail for the neteffex.com domain is obtained from the hosting server,
> mail.argontech.net. There are no username filters on mail.argontech.net... so if someone
> sends an e-mail to "hey-dummy [at] neteffex" I would receive it.
>
> My desire is to filter out the endless amounts of spam and allow (on the Linux private network)
> multiple user names utilizing Exim, and have those user names visible to the outside world
> (i.e., bill [at] neteffex).
>
> Initially, I was going to have all the neteffex.com e-mail deposited in one directory
> (/var/spool/bill) on the Linux machine. And then after testing things out, I was going to begin
> expanding the Linux local user names.
>
> For the sake of protecting privacy, I was going to send all e-mail to a user "bill".
> You can see my Exim runtime file at:
> http://www.neteffex.com/exim/exim-configure.txt
>
> I set up a .forward file under /home/bill:
> #Exim filter
> if $header_to: contains bill then deliver bill endif
>
> The .fetchmailrc file contains:
> # .fetchmailrc file for backup.neteffex.home
> # set postmaster "admin"
> set daemon 240
> # Run fetchmail as daemon every 4 minutes
> poll mail.argontech.net proto pop3 user "my_user_name" pass "a_big_secret" fetchall
>
> I sent an e-mail out from mail.argontech.net to admin [at] neteffex and I picked up the mail
> at mail.argontech.net using fetchmail.
>
> I couldn't seem to retrieve the e-mail locally out of the Linux box using qpopper and Kmail (but I
> could see the spooled files waiting delivery to a mailbox).... So I tried sending out a few more
> test e-mails, (and meanwhile, I was receiving some spam e-mails). After a few days of trying
> to send out test e-mails, look what I get from bill [at] argontech:
>
>
> ________________________________________________________________
> Return-Path: <bill [at] argontech>
> Received: from billpersonal (ws1-ppp6.argontech.net [63.82.102.6])
> by ns1.argontech.net (8.11.6/8.11.6) with SMTP id g3KLe6t18930
> for <bill [at] neteffex>; Sat, 20 Apr 2002 16:40:06 -0500
> From: "bill \(Argon\)" <bill [at] argontech>
> To: <admin [at] neteffex>
> Subject: RE: time of1051
> Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2002 16:44:05 -0500
> Message-ID: <045a01c1e8b4$7e621900$6401a8c0 [at] billpersona>
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
> boundary="----=_NextPart_000_045B_01C1E88A.958C1100"
> X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
> X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
> X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 8.5, Build 4.71.2232.26
> Importance: Normal
> X-Mimeole: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000
> In-Reply-To: <3CC14812.11506.D52CC7D [at] localhos>
> X-Virus-Scanned: by AMaViS perl-11
> Status: RO
> X-PMFLAGS: 571998592 0 1 P03EE0.CNM
>
> This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
>
> ------=_NextPart_000_045B_01C1E88A.958C1100
> Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
> You have spammed over 2,000 emails through my account in the last 3 days.
> I have done an IP trace, and turned you over to the authorities.
> This is a $2,000 per occurrence fine under Federal Spamming laws,
> and up to a year in Federal Prison.
> ___________________________________________________________________________
>
> I sent an e-mail to bill [at] argontech apologizing profusely and correcting him (gently) about
> his mistaken notion of the existance of spam laws. I assured him that he wouldn't be bothered
> any more and that I was attempting to set up mail configuration files and filters.
>
> My Exim activities, however, are stopped until I can work through what happened... and correct
> the configuration files. Any and all assistance would be greatly appreciated.
>
> - Embarrassed to even call myself an admin,
> mark
> admin [at] neteffex
>
> --
>
> ## List details at http://www.exim.org/mailman/listinfo/exim-users Exim details at http://www.exim.org/ ##
>
>


--


admin at neteffex

May 2, 2002, 9:07 PM

Post #3 of 3 (241 views)
Permalink
RE: Re: a newbie needs help... [In reply to]

My thanks to John Penton for his assistance with my difficulties. Configuring the
local_domains list properly sure helps...

Another thing that helped was reading an FAQ on Fetchmail entitled:
"How can I use fetchmail with exim?"
http://tuxedo.org/~esr/fetchmail/fetchmail-FAQ.html#T3

I hope this might help someone else using Fetchmail.

- Mark Rice
admin [at] neteffex

>From: "John (TJ) Penton" <ajp38 [at] bigfoot>
>To:admin [at] neteffex
>Subject:Re: [Exim] a newbie needs help...
>Datesent: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 11:25:08 +0000 (GMT)
>Copies to: exim-users [at] exim


> Can I also suggest that you take this project in little steps - rather
> than try and do it all in one go.
> 1. Unplug your modem (save embarassing mistakes).
> 2. Run exim and use something simple like mail (or a telnet connection) to
> try and send a local mail. Check that this has been delivered by reading
> the mailbox manually. (It's just a text file).
> 3. Plug the modem in and use fetchmail (not in batch mode to save
> embarassing mistakes) to fetch a single test message. Check that this
> gets delivered correctly.
> 4. Then make more complex arrangements like filtering/batch mode/aliasing.
>
> > For the sake of protecting privacy, I was going to send all e-mail to a user "bill".
> > You can see my Exim runtime file at:
> > http://www.neteffex.com/exim/exim-configure.txt
>
> Doesn't look too bad. local_domains should include neteffex.com and
> localhost.
>
> > I set up a .forward file under /home/bill:
> > #Exim filter
> > if $header_to: contains bill then deliver bill endif
>
> This doesn't do anything, on several counts:
> The To: header is not always set for an email.
> It is in "bill"'s home directory - therefore everything going through this
> filter will be for bill anyway.
> It says "if this email is for bill, then deliver it to bill" - this is
> kinda pointless since mail for bill should get delivered to him anyway.
>
> The one thing it does do is remove the domain. All matching email is
> being delivered to the address "bill" - since you don't specify a domain I
> am not sure what exim is doing with it.
>
> I suggest you remove this file for now.
>
> > You have spammed over 2,000 emails through my account in the last 3 days.
> > I have done an IP trace, and turned you over to the authorities.
> > This is a $2,000 per occurrence fine under Federal Spamming laws,
> > and up to a year in Federal Prison.
>
> This begs the question: how did you manage to generate 2000 emails??
> Surely you didn't send that many test messages? I suspect all your email
> has been going to this guy.
>
>
> Like I say - take it in little steps and fix things at each stage.
> Looking at your logs should give you enough information to work out what
> is going on.
>
> HTH
>
> John
>
> --
> and then he climbed to the top of his tree and climbed down
> again, and then he wondered what Pooh was doing, and went
> across the Forest to see.
>
>
>

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