Monthly maintenance
Nothing weird noticed by the automated job. Even spam statistics aren’t reason for concern:
PMAS statistics for February
Total messages : 1150 = 100.0 o/o
DNS Blacklisted : 0 = .0 o/o (Files: 0)
Relay attempts : 145 = 12.6 o/o (Files: 28)
Accepted by PMAS : 1005 = 87.3 o/o (Files: 28)
Handled by explicit rule
Rejected : 458 = 45.5 o/o (processed), 39.8 o/o (all)
Accepted : 211 = 20.9 o/o (processed), 18.3 o/o (all)
Handled by content
Discarded : 163 = 16.2 o/o (processed), 14.1 o/o (all)
Quarantained : 142 = 14.1 o/o (processed), 12.3 o/o (all)
Delivered : 31 = 3.0 o/o (processed), 2.6 o/o (all)
Of course there have been some attempts but since 163.com (a notorious Chinese source of spam, relay-attempts and hacking attempts – both web and FTP) has been denied access alltogether (it won’t even get passed the router) there haven’t been many. Plus some other (mainly Chinese) sources…
The number of quarantained and discarded messaged – based on rule, are to be considered valid, so I could lat them pass. It requires some action for which I don’t take always time to enter the data into the filter; maybe I should.
08-Feb-2015
Maintenance log
Last maintenance log revealed nothing specical, except for an unusual amount of relay attempts:
PMAS statistics for January
Total messages : 5004 = 100.0 o/o
DNS Blacklisted : 0 = .0 o/o (Files: 0)
Relay attempts : 3766 = 75.2 o/o (Files: 31)
Accepted by PMAS : 1238 = 24.7 o/o (Files: 31)
Handled by explicit rule
Rejected : 633 = 51.1 o/o (processed), 12.6 o/o (all)
Accepted : 232 = 18.7 o/o (processed), 4.6 o/o (all)
Handled by content
Discarded : 148 = 11.9 o/o (processed), 2.9 o/o (all)
Quarantained : 180 = 14.5 o/o (processed), 3.5 o/o (all)
Delivered : 45 = 3.6 o/o (processed), .8 o/o (all)
most of them on Jan 5th, from address 112.90.37.237 – sent by xiaonanzi11162@163.com. There is a lot of spam comining in from that domain so I blocked it in PMAS already, but it seems to be worthwhile to block if from accessing anything. IOt means two more entries in the router’s object table.
Today I also finished archiving all 2014 logs.
A new testbed
Microsoft has made the successor of Windows 6.1 available for testing. Since the old Windows7 machibe from the living room is actually obsolete (Rita now uses a tablet for browsing the web and handling her email – in fact the only real activity on the net – I could install the Windows-10 preview on that machine – after a thourough cleanup. The system started remarkably slowly, not a real surprise when the system disk is 8% fragmented…
One big reason why I decided to give it a try: Update hyung while one program: CheckSUR.exe, ran for hours, generating an output of well over 100KB. I stopped installation, had to reboot a few times (once into safe mode) to have the installation rolled back, next attempt I disabled this update and it did finish.. Now I could finish the clean-up and defragmetation – and after that, I booted the Windows10-preview (ISO was downloaded and burned onto DVD). I would prefer to install it aside Windows 7 but that wasn’t possible – or I would habe to use another disk. There is one available but I don’t have the power-block to connect it….
No big deal, anyway. It’s used mainly for testing, and if I need particular software, it’s easy to install.
04-Dec-2014
Regular maintenance
No problems:
PMAS statistics for November
Total messages : 1530 = 100.0 o/o
DNS Blacklisted : 0 = .0 o/o (Files: 0)
Relay attempts : 293 = 19.1 o/o (Files: 30)
Accepted by PMAS : 1237 = 80.8 o/o (Files: 30)
Handled by explicit rule
Rejected : 609 = 49.2 o/o (processed), 39.8 o/o (all)
Accepted : 319 = 25.7 o/o (processed), 20.8 o/o (all)
Handled by content
Discarded : 128 = 10.3 o/o (processed), 8.3 o/o (all)
Quarantained : 119 = 9.6 o/o (processed), 7.7 o/o (all)
Delivered : 62 = 5.0 o/o (processed), 4.0 o/o (all)
except that on one day, the number of relay attempts was hig – mainly from one address: smtp1949@sina.com. Checking this address revealed three possible servers:
= freemx1.sinamail.sina.com.cn (202.108.3.242 (202.108.0.0/18, /17)
= freemx2.sinamail.sina.com.cn (218.30.115.106 (218.30.96.0/19))
= freemx3.sinamail.sina.com.cn (60.28.2.248 (60.28.0.0/15))
To be excluded access in the router.
WordPress upgrade
To test (and possibly execute) an upgrade of the blogs, I created a Linix machine, and here I will test the upgrade. It that succeeeds, it may be a matter of restoring that database on the main server (after, of course, activation of PHP 5.3 and getting WP to work – a separate activity) so I’ll be up and running the latest – and in that matter, it willl be easier to keep the whole lot up-to-date.
29-Oct-2014
Power outage
We’ve been warned that yesterday, between 8:00 and 11:00, there would be a power outage, because some maintenance was scheduled on the power grid.
Because my job brings me too far away to easily handle ths situation, I shut down all systems before leaving home, intending to restore services when I got back. So it was one day where all Internet access to and from my home was – deliberately – impossible.
Functionality ceased just before 7:00, all hardware not just shut down but also powered off. It is something of a gamble because you never know if the drives start to spin (they are of a reasonable age…) and wethter the battery of NVRAM and TOY clock have sufficient energy to keep these subsystems warm. But it would shut down anyway, and I considered it a good idea to have control over both shutdown and restore.
But it proved to be no problem at all. Just before 19:00 I repowered the disks and all stated spinning. Next I switched the DS10 back to life and booted. Ans as was to be expected, nothing went wrong; The system was up and running within a few minutes, and started reading in email that had been delivered during the day (and was stored at my ISP’s backup server).
One thing I found today: the text on the homepage was not restored; that was taken care of right away.
02-Oct-2014
No surprises
The saving of logs worked like a charm – as always. Nothing strange in that logfile.
Number of messages still pretty low compared to the past:
PMAS statistics for September
Total messages : 2203 = 100.0 o/o
DNS Blacklisted : 0 = .0 o/o (Files: 0)
Relay attempts : 246 = 11.1 o/o (Files: 30)
Accepted by PMAS : 1957 = 88.8 o/o (Files: 30)
Handled by explicit rule
Rejected : 1257 = 64.2 o/o (processed), 57.0 o/o (all)
Accepted : 309 = 15.7 o/o (processed), 14.0 o/o (all)
Handled by content
Discarded : 139 = 7.1 o/o (processed), 6.3 o/o (all)
Quarantained : 209 = 10.6 o/o (processed), 9.4 o/o (all)
Delivered : 43 = 2.1 o/o (processed), 1.9 o/o (all)
Number of relay attempts as well: the amount was notable on 5 days only (where the logfile was over 5 blocks in size but not as big as in previous months: just a few block more. There has been quite some internet traffic though; the router logs in a SYSLOG daemon, and the logfile is cycled when it’s over 25000 blocks – 12 Mb – and this happened every 3 days or so. Well, not too bad…
A few days ago there has been an attempt breaking the DNS server for quite some time – I was at the console when it started and could block the offendig addresses (two in the same netwoirk) in the router. Nothing heard from them since 🙂
Travel posts
I’m working on the week-long trip of last year’s fall – time to finish the data on the Lahnsteig trail we followed that week. I finished glueing together whatever was to be combined, dumped the tracking data onto maps, still have to do the projection on GoogleEarth and picture that as well. Putting it all into a presentation (which usually takes some time as well…) before it can be published. However, there is an additional problem: The logical disk I defined for Trips, Tracks and Travels is quite full: just 3% is now free – being 919136 blocks – less than 500 Mbytes. Way too small to hold this album. But it can be extended – there is stiill little over 10 Gb available on that (physical) disk. Or use another, totally free 32 Gb disk that is still in the system and move all of the images to that location….
This is a better solution anyway, since I also need to finish the Corfu trip of this year, and the journal of this year’s Long Distance Footpath (not totally finished yet, two more legs to go…).
I can do so without downing the site – the advantage of VMS’s abilities 🙂