[Mailman-Users] Postfix error

[Chuq Von Rospach]

On 8/3/01 10:34 AM, "Barry A. Warsaw" <barry at zope.com> wrote:

>   MC> little bit after noon (EST), and you had enable any of the
>   MC> spam blocking features to used mail-abuse.org, than you are
>   MC> not the only one. Apparently, the mail-abuse.org (or part of
>   MC> it) might have been down. At least this is my experience....

> We had the /exact/ same problem on mail.{python,zope}.org.  Mailman
> was basically blocked for about 12 hours then it suddenly started
> flowing again.  I was mightily confused,

On August first, MAPS switched the RBL to the pay-for service. It looks like
they did it by firewalling the DNS except to sites that signed contracts.
What that seems to have done is caused all those sites that forgot to
disable RBL before the switchover to more or less hang. My mail queues went
bonkers, and I couldn't figure out why.

It looks like the cuase, now, was a lot of receiving sites closing down or
turning to sludge because of the MAPs change. And it also looks like MAPS
sometime yesterday went to a plan B that reduced the problem to sites still
trying to access their now-closed service, because I noticed yesterday sites
popping back online as they either pulled the RBL stuff out of their configs
or MAPS stopped acting like a dead DNS (think about it. If you are trying to
DNS lookup every piece of incoming mail through MAPS, and your server has to
wait for all of that to time out because you're blocked, how fast will your
server be?)

This had me going crazy, since I couldn't find a problem on MY site -- turns
out it wasn't my site... But that seems to be what happened, as far as I can
tell. MAPS pulled the free RBL service, and all of the sites attached to it
basically froze until the admins figured it out, or until the 2nd when MAPs
seems to have changed things to minimize that problem (probably by replacing
it with a service that simply returns null data, and moving their paid
customers elsewhere. At least, that's what I would have done).

I could editorialize on lots of this, but I think I'll save you getting
pissed at me... (grin)




-- 
Chuq Von Rospach, Internet Gnome <http://www.chuqui.com>
[<chuqui at plaidworks.com> = <me at chuqui.com> = <chuq at apple.com>]
Yes, yes, I've finally finished my home page. Lucky you.

Someday, we'll look back on this, laugh
nervously and change the subject.