Re: [9fans] dealing with spam

[john@csplan9.rit.edu]

> On Thu Jan  8 14:59:57 EST 2009, slawmaster@gmail.com wrote:
>> Starting today, my account on my Plan 9 server has been getting tons
>> of "free coupons", "free Dell XPS", "Student loans!" spam, apparently
>> from one operator, since every domainname is in the form
>> <adjective><noun>.com or <noun><adjective>, like eggnavajo.com,
>> rosydeer.com, etc. It's so annoying that I may shut down my server for
>> a bit until I figure out what's up.
>>
>> What are my options for getting rid of this? People who run Plan 9
>> mail servers, what do you do?
>> Thanks
>
> i have had trouble in the past, but my defensive measures
> are now working better than the appliance that coraid uses,
> at least with the current configuration.
>
> this isn't ment to start a flame war, but my opinion is that
> content-based spam filtering doesn't appear to work very
> well.  my dad's email always gets flagged.  silly vendor spam
> gets through just fine.
>
> i've got a number of defensive measures.
> 1. -D.  just waiting for 10 seconds before doing anything
> does a lot to slow spam down.  >50% of connectors to my
> machine give up
>
> 2. i also use a nupas smtpd which is quite strict
> about helo.  the flags i use are "fqDn".  about 80%
> of spam has a helo line with an invalid domain or
> "localhost" or some such nonsense.  dropping this
> mail helps alot.
>
> 3. spf.  included in nupas is moderately helpful.
> nupas includes the hooks for this in validatesender.
>
> 4. i sometimes cheat by using the -k option.  only
> works with nupas smtpd.  this just drops connections
> coming from certain ip addresses.  sometimes a range
> will be too much trouble.
>
> you can use the nupas smtpd without using the rest
> of nupas, though you will need to use the nupas
> validatesender.
>
> - erik


Ok, so a couple questions:

1.  What do I need to do in order to drop nupas into my system?

2.  If I update /mail/lib/blocked, do I have to restart smtpd in order
to get the changes?

3.  What's the best way to restart smtpd?



John