As I replied to Aaron out of band, I was not having a relay problem with
QMail. The problem was an old sendmail installation. I spend a bit of time
on the road and monitoring a home network is not high on my priorities. When
I finally discovered the sendmail problem, I switched over to QMail and had
things resolved immediatly.
My question was simply "Now that I have the relay hole corked for good, where
do I turn to get my IP removed from the 'this machine allows SPAM relay'
lists?" That question has been answered by a number of helpful folks here on
the qmail list. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.
Tim
"Aaron L. Meehan" wrote:
> Quoting M.B. ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Aaron L. Meehan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> > >
> > > Fascinating. qmail is relay-proof by default, so you almost have to
> > > purposefully mess up, unless doing something really dumb like
> > > allowing percent hack or something, to allow it to relay. Then,
> > > having messed up and knew it, you let it be a "rampant spam relay" for
> > > a month? I hope I'm not reading that correctly--perhaps it
> > > was rampant
> > > for a month and you just happened to not notice and only did *today*.
> >
> > or perhaps he didn't understand the relay control stuff w/ tcpserver
> > and didn't have rcpthosts in place or some such. there have been
> > plenty of people who have innocently not understood that process
> > and removed the file. i would not call it a purposeful breaking of
> > qmail. and if you don't know that the percent hack stuff removal is
> > "dumb", you may do it not knowing any better. inexperienced is not
> > dumb.
>
> Heck, I am being harsh, however "back in the day" when I first tackled
> qmail and then switched our network from sendmail, anti-relay was first
> and foremost in my mind. There was not anything in the way of Dave
> Sill's "Life With qmail." Somehow I managed to muddle through without
> us becoming among the vilified spam relays.
>
> I suppose attention to detail is the key. Understanding your software
> thouroughly *before* making the box available to the Internet-at-large
> is essential. Allowing smtp connections, IMAP connections, POP3
> connections, etc., without understanding the ramifications.. well I
> guess there are just many more inexperienced administrators out there
> nowadays. Disclaimer: I ain't perfect--but I try to pay attention to
> detail :) If you don't, your network has just become a menace to the
> rest.
>
> Aaron
