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nospam.list at unclassified

Feb 4, 2008, 2:44 AM

Post #1 of 14 (1861 views)
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Delay when connecting to send mail

Hello,

for some time now I've noticed that every time my e-mail programme
should connect to my mail server to send a message, it takes a few
seconds while it says "Connecting...". I have no idea what this could
come from. It happens every time, also when sending mail several times
in a few minutes. Sending the message itself goes reasonable fast once
it is connected. Any ideas where to start? Could it be a DNS issue? How
could I find out?

Here's my environment and configuration:
Exim version: 4.62 (built from source)
OS: Debian Linux 3.0
DB backend: MySQL 5.0 (local server)
Transport security: TLS
MUA: Thunderbird 2.0, Windows XP, no firewall, DSL with NAT
Spam filter: SpamAssassin, but not for authenticated mail like this

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Yves Goergen "LonelyPixel" <nospam.list [at] unclassified>
Visit my web laboratory at http://beta.unclassified.de

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eximX1211 at linuxwan

Feb 4, 2008, 3:58 AM

Post #2 of 14 (1813 views)
Permalink
Re: Delay when connecting to send mail [In reply to]

Yves Goergen wrote:
> Hello,
>
> for some time now I've noticed that every time my e-mail programme
> should connect to my mail server to send a message, it takes a few
> seconds while it says "Connecting...". I have no idea what this could
> come from. It happens every time, also when sending mail several times
> in a few minutes. Sending the message itself goes reasonable fast once
> it is connected. Any ideas where to start? Could it be a DNS issue? How
> could I find out?
>
> Here's my environment and configuration:
> Exim version: 4.62 (built from source)
> OS: Debian Linux 3.0
> DB backend: MySQL 5.0 (local server)
> Transport security: TLS
> MUA: Thunderbird 2.0, Windows XP, no firewall, DSL with NAT
> Spam filter: SpamAssassin, but not for authenticated mail like this
>

10 to 1 says it's one of the following options:
host_lookup, rfc1413_hosts, rfc1413_query_timeout


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P.A.Chambers at exeter

Feb 4, 2008, 6:24 AM

Post #3 of 14 (1811 views)
Permalink
Re: Delay when connecting to send mail [In reply to]

On Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:44:26 +0100 Yves Goergen <nospam.list [at] unclassified>
wrote:

> Hello,
>
> for some time now I've noticed that every time my e-mail programme
> should connect to my mail server to send a message, it takes a few
> seconds while it says "Connecting...". I have no idea what this could
> come from. It happens every time, also when sending mail several times
> in a few minutes. Sending the message itself goes reasonable fast once
> it is connected. Any ideas where to start? Could it be a DNS issue? How
> could I find out?
>
> Here's my environment and configuration:
> Exim version: 4.62 (built from source)
> OS: Debian Linux 3.0
> DB backend: MySQL 5.0 (local server)
> Transport security: TLS
> MUA: Thunderbird 2.0, Windows XP, no firewall, DSL with NAT
> Spam filter: SpamAssassin, but not for authenticated mail like this

There is an ACL modifier 'delay' which can be used to make exim deliberately
put a delay in before an SMTP response. This is an anti-spam measure to
prevent pipelining when it has not been negotiated.

One would normally make the setting conditional on the calling host's IP
address so that it is not applied to connections from your own network.
Perhaps in your case the delay is not conditional.

Phil.
---------------------------------------
Phil Chambers (postmaster [at] exeter)
University of Exeter


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nospam.list at unclassified

Feb 4, 2008, 6:39 AM

Post #4 of 14 (1806 views)
Permalink
Re: Delay when connecting to send mail [In reply to]

On 04.02.2008 12:58 CE(S)T, Ted Cooper wrote:
> 10 to 1 says it's one of the following options:
> host_lookup, rfc1413_hosts, rfc1413_query_timeout

Good guess. :) I have added "rfc1413_query_timeout = 0s" to not make it
use ident calls which usually won't work anyway. Now it is much faster.

--
Yves Goergen "LonelyPixel" <nospam.list [at] unclassified>
Visit my web laboratory at http://beta.unclassified.de

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mh+exim-users at zugschlus

Feb 5, 2008, 12:28 AM

Post #5 of 14 (1806 views)
Permalink
Re: Delay when connecting to send mail [In reply to]

On Mon, 04 Feb 2008 15:39:37 +0100, Yves Goergen
<nospam.list [at] unclassified> wrote:
>On 04.02.2008 12:58 CE(S)T, Ted Cooper wrote:
>> 10 to 1 says it's one of the following options:
>> host_lookup, rfc1413_hosts, rfc1413_query_timeout
>
>Good guess. :) I have added "rfc1413_query_timeout = 0s" to not make it
>use ident calls which usually won't work anyway. Now it is much faster.

The Debian docs say that it is a much better idea to configure the
firewall "protecting" the client to reject the ident calls instead of
dropping them. I still think that is a better idea.

Greetings
Marc

--
-------------------------------------- !! No courtesy copies, please !! -----
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Mannheim, Germany | Beginning of Wisdom " | http://www.zugschlus.de/
Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fon: *49 621 72739834

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nospam.list at unclassified

Feb 5, 2008, 3:32 AM

Post #6 of 14 (1800 views)
Permalink
Re: Delay when connecting to send mail [In reply to]

On 05.02.2008 09:28 CE(S)T, Marc Haber wrote:
> The Debian docs say that it is a much better idea to configure the
> firewall "protecting" the client to reject the ident calls instead of
> dropping them. I still think that is a better idea.

Well, say that to all of the Windows or NAT users out there. ;)

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Visit my web laboratory at http://beta.unclassified.de

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mh+exim-users at zugschlus

Feb 5, 2008, 4:14 AM

Post #7 of 14 (1806 views)
Permalink
Re: Delay when connecting to send mail [In reply to]

On Tue, 05 Feb 2008 12:32:31 +0100, Yves Goergen
<nospam.list [at] unclassified> wrote:
>On 05.02.2008 09:28 CE(S)T, Marc Haber wrote:
>> The Debian docs say that it is a much better idea to configure the
>> firewall "protecting" the client to reject the ident calls instead of
>> dropping them. I still think that is a better idea.
>
>Well, say that to all of the Windows or NAT users out there. ;)

A lot of NAT devices can be configured that way.

Greetings
Marc

--
-------------------------------------- !! No courtesy copies, please !! -----
Marc Haber | " Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header
Mannheim, Germany | Beginning of Wisdom " | http://www.zugschlus.de/
Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fon: *49 621 72739834

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graeme at graemef

Feb 5, 2008, 4:25 AM

Post #8 of 14 (1801 views)
Permalink
Re: Delay when connecting to send mail [In reply to]

To coin the approach of one W.B.Hacker...

On Tue, 2008-02-05 at 13:14 +0100, Marc Haber wrote:
> A lot of NAT devices can be configured that way.

Can be. Aren't. Won't be.

[sorry, Bill!]

In this case, Yves was experiencing a single problem with a single user
(himself), and had some control over the SMTP part of the equation -
there's no telling (and we don't want to know, Yves!) whether or not
similar levels of control over all possible devices in the chain
existed.

Given that the vast majority of people running an MUA wouldn't know what
RFC1413 or the instructions for their firewall were if you printed them,
rolled them up and hit them with the resulting nice bundle of paper,
getting mass participation in the "play nicely and reject" scenario just
isn't going to happen.

I appreciate that the advice exists, but there's (usually) a much wider
remit when providing an SMTP server than simply one person connecting to
use it as an outbound relay. Setting the appropriate options in Exim's
config makes it not do the lookup in the first place which, considering
(a) the reduction in auth/ident services being run, and (b) the
increasing number of devices which either block or reject ident calls
outright, is the best place to do it. In my opinion.

Graeme


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renaud at llorien

Feb 5, 2008, 4:48 AM

Post #9 of 14 (1798 views)
Permalink
Re: Delay when connecting to send mail [In reply to]

Marc Haber wrote:
> On Tue, 05 Feb 2008 12:32:31 +0100, Yves Goergen
> <nospam.list [at] unclassified> wrote:
>> On 05.02.2008 09:28 CE(S)T, Marc Haber wrote:
>>> The Debian docs say that it is a much better idea to configure the
>>> firewall "protecting" the client to reject the ident calls instead of
>>> dropping them. I still think that is a better idea.
>> Well, say that to all of the Windows or NAT users out there. ;)
>
> A lot of NAT devices can be configured that way.
>

In fact some software firewalls for windows and some SOHO routers do it
that way by default, but it is not the most common ones.

I have also already seen a firewall appliance at a medium company which
was detecting ident call, and then blocking further connection for some
minutes.
They were trying to send my client a mail, thus connecting to port 25
then exim sent the ident probe
then their firewall was cutting all existing port 25 connections because
exim accessed an "unauthorized port"
So they were not able to send my client a mail and told the exim server
was broken.
Attachments: smime.p7s (3.23 KB)


wbh at conducive

Feb 5, 2008, 11:08 AM

Post #10 of 14 (1801 views)
Permalink
Re: Delay when connecting to send mail [In reply to]

Graeme Fowler wrote:
> To coin the approach of one W.B.Hacker...
>
> On Tue, 2008-02-05 at 13:14 +0100, Marc Haber wrote:
>> A lot of NAT devices can be configured that way.
>
> Can be. Aren't. Won't be.
>
> [sorry, Bill!]

No apology needed.. Part of the 'appliance-ization' of technology.

>
> In this case, Yves was experiencing a single problem with a single user
> (himself), and had some control over the SMTP part of the equation -
> there's no telling (and we don't want to know, Yves!) whether or not
> similar levels of control over all possible devices in the chain
> existed.
>
> Given that the vast majority of people running an MUA wouldn't know what
> RFC1413 or the instructions for their firewall were if you printed them,
> rolled them up and hit them with the resulting nice bundle of paper,
> getting mass participation in the "play nicely and reject" scenario just
> isn't going to happen.
>
> I appreciate that the advice exists, but there's (usually) a much wider
> remit when providing an SMTP server than simply one person connecting to
> use it as an outbound relay. Setting the appropriate options in Exim's
> config makes it not do the lookup in the first place which, considering
> (a) the reduction in auth/ident services being run, and (b) the
> increasing number of devices which either block or reject ident calls
> outright, is the best place to do it. In my opinion.
>
> Graeme
>
>

Too many old standards (perhaps 80%?) have NOT kept up as well as they
need to with shifting use, bending of rules - and originally unforseen
abuse.

smtp has lagged - but nowhere near as badly as ident.

Reality dictates that the 'general case' is to no longer support it, nor
expect it to be supported by others. Anywhere.

Bill

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nospam.list at unclassified

Feb 7, 2008, 10:20 AM

Post #11 of 14 (1789 views)
Permalink
Re: Delay when connecting to send mail [In reply to]

On 05.02.2008 13:14 CE(S)T, Marc Haber wrote:
> On Tue, 05 Feb 2008 12:32:31 +0100, Yves Goergen
>> Well, say that to all of the Windows or NAT users out there. ;)
>
> A lot of NAT devices can be configured that way.

I know what ident is, and still I cannot see any use in it. Also, it's
not only me. We're running a webhosting service and our users are
usually far less computer-savvy than I am. I don't know whether they
would have experienced that delay, too. Probably depends on their DSL
router. But I do what I can to avoid such useless delays.

--
Yves Goergen "LonelyPixel" <nospam.list [at] unclassified>
Visit my web laboratory at http://beta.unclassified.de

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exim-users at spodhuis

Feb 13, 2008, 5:08 PM

Post #12 of 14 (1744 views)
Permalink
Re: Delay when connecting to send mail [In reply to]

On 2008-02-05 at 12:25 +0000, Graeme Fowler wrote:
> Given that the vast majority of people running an MUA wouldn't know what
> RFC1413 or the instructions for their firewall were if you printed them,
> rolled them up and hit them with the resulting nice bundle of paper,
> getting mass participation in the "play nicely and reject" scenario just
> isn't going to happen.
>
> I appreciate that the advice exists, but there's (usually) a much wider
> remit when providing an SMTP server than simply one person connecting to
> use it as an outbound relay. Setting the appropriate options in Exim's
> config makes it not do the lookup in the first place which, considering
> (a) the reduction in auth/ident services being run, and (b) the
> increasing number of devices which either block or reject ident calls
> outright, is the best place to do it. In my opinion.

Only just read this thread, sorry for the delay.

Personal stance: rfc1413 is there for the ability to include the data
when making a complaint to a remote site. Which doesn't happen so often
any more, with the sheer volume of abuse, but it's still occasionally
useful, where actually supported and used.

For submission service, where legitimate users are using their
mail-clients to inject mail and delays are user-visible and where
there's a high likelihood of firewalls or obnoxious host-based packet
filters, rfc1413 doesn't make sense. Require that senders be
authenticated instead.

For port 25, where you're tracing back inbound mail and where any MUA
using that port directly is misconfigured, rfc1413 is still occasionally
useful.

Hence I have:

rfc1413_hosts = ${if =={$received_port}{25}{*}{}}

Purely by coincidence, I only put that in last weekend, after this
thread. I was tracking down which delays were caused by a lack of
reverse DNS in the 2002::/16 IPv6 space and which were other causes and
I decided that this rfc1413_hosts setting was an appropriate tradeoff.
It was also most of the delay.

(I also fixed the lack of reverse DNS for my 2002::/16 address but
that's another issue)

Similarly, I also constrain the pre-HELO delay to be dependent upon
being port 25 with an ACL condition; I've had that for a bit longer and
the reasoning is much the same -- don't impose delays for something in
the user-interaction loop for message submission where I require
authentication for relaying anyway.

Regards,
-Phil

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paul at kenyaweb

Feb 12, 2010, 1:32 AM

Post #13 of 14 (1313 views)
Permalink
Re: Delay when connecting to send mail [In reply to]

I had the same problem for a week now and i just figured out something that
may be you can try and see if it works.

If you are using vexim check the vexim-acl-check-rcpt.conf file for the
valid dnslists URLs. The zen.spamhaus.org:list.dsbl.org seems to be invalid
if you have it specified in that conf file. Deactivate it and see if your
problem is solved.


Bugzilla from eximX1211 [at] linuxwan wrote:
>
> Yves Goergen wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> for some time now I've noticed that every time my e-mail programme
>> should connect to my mail server to send a message, it takes a few
>> seconds while it says "Connecting...". I have no idea what this could
>> come from. It happens every time, also when sending mail several times
>> in a few minutes. Sending the message itself goes reasonable fast once
>> it is connected. Any ideas where to start? Could it be a DNS issue? How
>> could I find out?
>>
>> Here's my environment and configuration:
>> Exim version: 4.62 (built from source)
>> OS: Debian Linux 3.0
>> DB backend: MySQL 5.0 (local server)
>> Transport security: TLS
>> MUA: Thunderbird 2.0, Windows XP, no firewall, DSL with NAT
>> Spam filter: SpamAssassin, but not for authenticated mail like this
>>
>
> 10 to 1 says it's one of the following options:
> host_lookup, rfc1413_hosts, rfc1413_query_timeout
>
>
> --
> The Exim Manual
> http://www.exim.org/docs.html
> http://www.exim.org/exim-html-current/doc/html/spec_html/index.html
>
> --
> ## List details at http://lists.exim.org/mailman/listinfo/exim-users
> ## Exim details at http://www.exim.org/
> ## Please use the Wiki with this list - http://wiki.exim.org/
>
>

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addw at phcomp

Feb 12, 2010, 6:52 AM

Post #14 of 14 (1314 views)
Permalink
Re: Delay when connecting to send mail [In reply to]

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 01:32:23AM -0800, Paul Mwiu wrote:
>
> I had the same problem for a week now and i just figured out something that
> may be you can try and see if it works.

Delays like that are often symptomatic of DNS problems.
Does the reverse lookup of your IP address stall ?


>
> Bugzilla from eximX1211 [at] linuxwan wrote:
> >
> > Yves Goergen wrote:
> >> Hello,
> >>
> >> for some time now I've noticed that every time my e-mail programme
> >> should connect to my mail server to send a message, it takes a few
> >> seconds while it says "Connecting...". I have no idea what this could
> >> come from. It happens every time, also when sending mail several times
> >> in a few minutes. Sending the message itself goes reasonable fast once
> >> it is connected. Any ideas where to start? Could it be a DNS issue? How
> >> could I find out?
> >>
> >> Here's my environment and configuration:
> >> Exim version: 4.62 (built from source)
> >> OS: Debian Linux 3.0
> >> DB backend: MySQL 5.0 (local server)
> >> Transport security: TLS
> >> MUA: Thunderbird 2.0, Windows XP, no firewall, DSL with NAT
> >> Spam filter: SpamAssassin, but not for authenticated mail like this
> >>
> >
> > 10 to 1 says it's one of the following options:
> > host_lookup, rfc1413_hosts, rfc1413_query_timeout

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