Re: spam.el blackhole check

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Tue, 22 Jul 2003, lanz@fowi.ethz.ch wrote:
> I think spam-use-blackholes is not working correctly on my office
> desktop (under Solaris). It seems that I never find a spam message
> through the spam-check-blackholes function. But there must be many,
> as I get a lot of them (for the same mail boxes) when calling the
> function at home under Linux.
> 
> I tried both spam-use-dig variants (dns.el and dig.el), and a
> typical log output in the *Messages* buffer looks like:
> 
> spam-split: calling the spam-check-blacklist function
> spam-split: calling the spam-check-whitelist function
> spam-split: calling the spam-check-BBDB function
> spam-split: calling the spam-check-blackholes function
> Checking headers for relay addresses
> spam-split: calling the spam-check-bogofilter function

Increase the gnus-verbose to 10 and see if any IP addresses are
getting detected.

> At work I am behind a firewall (I think). How can I test the
> spam-check-blackholes functionality? Do I need a special
> configuration behind a firewall?

You may.  It really depends on your particular setup.  Look up the
query-dig function; try for instance

M-: (query-dig "D.C.B.A.blackhole.server.com")

where A.B.C.D is the IP address you want to check, and
blackhole.server.com is the particular blackhole server you like, for
instance "bl.spamcop.net".

> Under Solaris I find a dig executable but not a dns or lookup
> executable.

First of all, the DNS check is done through the query-dns function,
which uses internal Emacs lookups, or through query-dig, which uses
the "dig" utility.  If you want a external utility for DNS lookups,
it's called "nslookup" in older systems, and "host" in newer ones.
It's not used by query-dns though.

Ted