Topic: qmail queue -messages stuck

[kruhm]

I get about 10 messages a day stuck in the qmail queue, both local and remote. Some messages are spam others are not.

I know I can clear them with qmHandle but I was hoping to track down the problem as to why they are getting stuck there in the first place.

[raem]

kruhm

> I get about 10 messages a day stuck in the qmail
> queue, both local and remote.

Are they really stuck or just scheduled for a retry at delivery. qmail will try to deliver a message for 7 days before giving up, it then sends a undeliverable message to the original sender.
If that is undeliverable as the original message may have come from a fake spammers address, then a "message undeliverable" doublebounce will be sent to admin.
That's where the doublebounce deletion HOWTO or contrib comes in, to delete all those unwanted notifications.

The messages will only be "stuck" messages if they have been in the qmail queue for longer than 7 days.

[gocdo]

Now I know why I have almost 40000 messages in my mail queues - spam is getting returned to the sender.

Is there anyway to disable this functionality. I alrady use the dungog delete double bounce.

Regards
kevin

[raem]

gocdo

> ..spam is getting returned to the sender.

I would suggest you need to implement better spam rejection techniques. Have you enabled RBL's ?


> Is there anyway to disable this functionality.

That's what qmail does, you can't disable it !

qmhandle can also be used at the command prompt. I'm not sure if it supports batch deletion, which is probably what you want, check.

[raem]

gocdo

> Is there anyway to disable this functionality.
>> That's what qmail does, you can't disable it !

You could change the setting for Email to unknown users from Return to Sender to Send to administrator, see server manager email panel. You may not want that though as you (ie the admin) will get all the undeliverable messages ! If your admin address is external you will still have the same bandwidth problem.

I seem to recall that sme 7 has more choices for this setting so that may be an improvement.

I think your real problem is your exposure to spammers.

[gocdo]

Hi Ray,

Thanks for yor comments - think I have tried them all.  I agree the issue is spammers - am not sure how to relieve the problem this time round.

One reason I am using SME as a mail server is so I can do the neat things like RBL. Have RBL configured as per the knudsen site, as well as clam, SA and doublebounce installed on an SME 6.5 server.

I am now running abut 100 email domains on this server with over 1000 delivery accounts (using dungog vdomain). This server currently receives 40000+ messages a day, RBL blocks another 15000 to 20000.

I have been delivering all email with no valid address to a spam account so I wouldn't get bounces etc - maybe this is the problem. Maybe SME gasps with some number of email accounts/domains (shame as this box is way way faster than my 6yr old sendmail server which has no problem with many many more users/domains). As I have reported a few years ago SME effectively stops for days with a large maillist (200+) and an attachment (PDF of say 300KB) - maybe the queues are blocking with maillists.

Interestingly this problem seems to have seriously commenced about 7 days ago - any problems with clam/av etc since then?

Have been working on this problem rather intensely for some days and getting no where, qmHandle and qmqtool aren't helping.

Any ideas will be most appreciated...

Regards
kevin

[raem]

gocdo

> I have been delivering all email with no valid address to a spam account...

It would be better to reject those messages outright. Install the dungog mailblocking contrib & that will reject any message sent to an invalid address on your server.

Look at the various tips here, some may be of use to you.
http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/contribs/rmitchell/smeserver/howto/Mail%20system%20tweaks%20HOWTO%20for%20sme%20server.htm

[gocdo]

Hi Ray,

ALready doing all those. Only thing is I am catching undeliverable email to a spamcatcher account.

I am currently building a new server. I tried 7b5 to check out the alias and could it handle fred@dom.1 and fred@dom.2 to different acounts but the test I did indicated no. Added the pseudonyms but on checking the domain data does display - so even if it does work if it doesn't show the domain details it isn't usable for me with a heap of domains/users.

Sign - looks like usable multi domain support has been dropped since Steve at Dungog isn't supporting vdomain in rel-7. Time to look at a sendmail or postfix server again.

Regards
kevin

[raem]

gocdo

> Only thing is I am catching undeliverable email to a spamcatcher account.

As I said earlier I believe you would be far better to reject those messages outright using the free dungog mailblocking contrib.
Simply installing the contrib will configure the server to reject messages to invalid addresses (accounts), without needing any specific user settings.
The way you are doing it you are adding an additional 40,000 messages to your server's processing load for no real gain.


> I tried 7b5 to check out the alias and could it
> handle fred@dom.1 and fred@dom.2 to different
> acounts but the test I did indicated no.

I believe it should work according to what the developers have said. I haven't tried beta5 yet. The accounts & (virtual) domains must be valid on the server before you can use them in the pseudonym panel.

If it doesn't work then you should post a bug to the sourceforge bug tracker, I'm sure Gordon will want to hear about it, he worked hard to add that functionality.

> Time to look at a sendmail or postfix server again.

I think you are reacting too quickly.

[kruhm]

Back to the original post, I upgraded to the following (i don't know why I didn't have these):
-mailfront-0.91-8es
-e-smith-mailfront-1.5.0-13gr07

And I increased the qmail concurrency local & remote.

This seems to have cleared up the problem for now.