New year’s maintenance
Not really surprising: there is little to mention….
PMAS statistics for December
Total messages : 1519 = 100.0 o/o
DNS Blacklisted : 0 = .0 o/o (Files: 0)
Relay attempts : 251 = 16.5 o/o (Files: 31)
Accepted by PMAS : 1268 = 83.4 o/o (Files: 31)
Handled by explicit rule
Rejected : 571 = 45.0 o/o (processed), 37.5 o/o (all)
Accepted : 288 = 22.7 o/o (processed), 18.9 o/o (all)
Handled by content
Discarded : 179 = 14.1 o/o (processed), 11.7 o/o (all)
Quarantained : 194 = 15.2 o/o (processed), 12.7 o/o (all)
Delivered : 36 = 2.8 o/o (processed), 2.3 o/o (all)
The number of messages that need to be handled is still low. Especially around Chrismas, the number dropped significantrly. Just on two successive days show really large amounts of SMTP access from one address (several messages a minute) but the address has been blocked when I noticed it.
I saved all 2013 files in the usual location – now startring 2014!
10-Dec-2013
Database corrupted?
It looked as if the previous entry (02-Dec-2013) wasn’t complete when accessed, it missed the beginning showing the mail stats vor November. Text was all bol and green. Not as I entered it….
It makes a difference in what mode the edit form showed up. In Visual mode, the first part didn’t show either, all text bolded; swithing to HTML mode shows <strong><span> and </strong></span> tags around the text. If the edit form comes up in HTML mode, it’s all Ik – except when swithing to Visual mode, and the same thing happened…
Fount the cause: a missing double quote in the header:
<strong><font color=”red> doesn’t work.<strong><font color=”red”> does 🙂
Lessons learned:
Nothing new. I know I should have….
02-Dec-2013
Abusing mailservers down, or blocked?
Since I blocked a number of mail servers – open relay, or hacked – the number of spam messages has dropped significantly:
PMAS statistics for November
Total messages : 1085 = 100.0 o/o
DNS Blacklisted : 0 = .0 o/o (Files: 0)
Relay attempts : 78 = 7.1 o/o (Files: 30)
Accepted by PMAS : 1007 = 92.8 o/o (Files: 30)
Handled by explicit rule
Rejected : 303 = 30.0 o/o (processed), 27.9 o/o (all)
Accepted : 256 = 25.4 o/o (processed), 23.5 o/o (all)
Handled by content
Discarded : 196 = 19.4 o/o (processed), 18.0 o/o (all)
Quarantained : 219 = 21.7 o/o (processed), 20.1 o/o (all)
Delivered : 33 = 3.2 o/o (processed), 3.0 o/o (all)
This is really is the amount for November…Exactly a year ago, the total number was almost 10 times as high. At the beginning of November, I blocked one site (67.53.119.2) that caused malfunction of mail – sending a massive amount of messages in a short time. At least. it looked that way, but it turned out is was merely a matter of bad requests, since after I did, there were a number of messages from the router telling me something was blocked – It wasn’t even mail. Just a bogus message. I just wondered why it passed the filter first, DoS protection is enabled so it shouldn’t have passed.
After that, trouble was over with above result.
Few relay attempts as well. None of the files exceeds 4 blocks (2KB), possibly for the same reason.
Found a few web abusers – and blocked them.
07-Nov-2013
Another update – and what is to come
The main workstation (Helena: Intel I7, 8Gb (for now)) started out with Windows7Pro64, was updated early this year to Windows8Pro64 – without a problem. And now it’s updated to 8.1 – again, without a problem. So far.
Next should be WP: the same way I’ve always done it: into a directory of itself, and just referring the blog directories to their own location (holding the configuration and other local files) and the appropriate WP version file. Moving on in the recommended way – max two stapes at a time – is time consuming in installing all these versions properly, updating the basic version first and when that succeeds, the blogs. Keeping a database backup at hand, just in case. If all goes well, it should be able to do the upgrade in a day or so. That is: both blogs.
And there are PHP (upgrade to 5.3, which is already installed but caused problems; these may have been solved with the new version of WordPress; and there is the update to VMS 8.4, to be done.
cURL port support rejected – somewhat
I have been asked – a few weeks ago – to take over the VMS maintenance on cURL; I know it was dome pereviously – years ago – by Marty Kuhrt, but he handed things over to other people. But the time required may be too much, especially when the cURL guyswant to update in a monthly cycle, if it has to be combined with a regular, 40-hour job and lots of other things to do. So I’m glad that someone else. No problem to be involved – but not on my own.
05-Nov-2013
The usual actions on the first of the month
revealed nothing special. Mail stats are not a real surprise:
PMAS statistics for October
Total messages : 1934 = 100.0 o/o
DNS Blacklisted : 738 = 38.1 o/o (Files: 19)
Relay attempts : 44 = 2.2 o/o (Files: 26)
Accepted by PMAS : 1152 = 59.5 o/o (Files: 31)
Handled by explicit rule
Rejected : 373 = 32.3 o/o (processed), 19.2 o/o (all)
Accepted : 342 = 29.6 o/o (processed), 17.6 o/o (all)
Handled by content
Discarded : 152 = 13.1 o/o (processed), 7.8 o/o (all)
Quarantained : 236 = 20.4 o/o (processed), 12.2 o/o (all)
Delivered : 49 = 4.2 o/o (processed), 2.5 o/o (all)
The absolute number is pretty low – compared to what it used to be – but that is part of last month’s problems.
The only day with a somewhat higher amount of relay attempts has been 1-Oct-2013, the file is 6 blocks in size so the number is sure not dramatic: just 25 lines, same source, same destination, once an hour; a day earlier, the same addresses, once every 30 minutes of so.