On Thu, 24 Jan 2008, Lyle - CosmicPerl.com Support wrote:
My server has been having problems recently with email, I've been
trying for weeks to sort it out, but to no avail :(
There has been an overall increase in spam volume.
It got so bad that my server was churning on DSN's....
It turned out that I had failed to clean up my /etc/aliases file
for the last several months worth of deleted users, and so rather
than catching the 'unknown address' at SMTP time, the messages were being
accepted and then 'bounced', and the bounces were all pointing to
mail servers that refused the connections, resulting in timeouts.
I cleaned up my aliases file, the problem pretty much stopped.
It seems that any mail destined for an account on my server that
doesn't exist (i.e spam) is being sent to procmail with -d root to put
it in the root mailbox. Procmail seems to deliver these to root VERY
slowly and end up clogging up the system like this...
Have you checked the content of what is being delivered to the root
mailbox? Are the messages the original spam, or are they 'notices' to root
about undeliverability? This is the fallback behaviour of some MTA's when
it can't send DSN's to the 'original sender'. The solution, may be the
same as mine: Clean up the aliases.
agghhhhhh, god damn spammers I hate them :'(
Ditto.
- Charles
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