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* [TUHS] Testing...
@ 2019-06-25  1:17 Dave Horsfall
  2019-06-26  0:26 ` [TUHS] Testing... Or, Why I Did It My Way (tm) Dave Horsfall
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 6+ messages in thread
From: Dave Horsfall @ 2019-06-25  1:17 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

Sorry for the noise, but this list is awfully quiet.

-- Dave

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Testing...  Or, Why I Did It My Way (tm)
  2019-06-25  1:17 [TUHS] Testing Dave Horsfall
@ 2019-06-26  0:26 ` Dave Horsfall
  2019-06-26  2:50   ` [TUHS] Testing Mail Connectivity Warren Toomey
  2019-07-09  0:53   ` [TUHS] Testing... Or, Why I Did It My Way (tm) Dave Horsfall
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 6+ messages in thread
From: Dave Horsfall @ 2019-06-26  0:26 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Tue, 25 Jun 2019, Dave Horsfall wrote:

> Sorry for the noise, but this list is awfully quiet.

OK, here's the story...  Oh, Arthur, your SPF rejected me due to what is 
likely a YATS (Yet Another Telstra Screwup); I've since removed the record 
(it was just a place-holder anyway) but I forgot to update the TTL first.

First, for the non-Aussies here, a simple glossary:

NBN: National Broadband Network.  Also known as No Brain Network, it's our 
national network infrastructure, powered (if that's the right word) by an 
ugly mix of technologies, viz: FTTP (which I have), FTTN (which most 
people have - sort of ADSL on steroids), FTTC (a new innovation), HFC (for 
those with cable), and for all I know tribal drums.  Supposed to be FTTP 
to everyone, until the incoming conservative government decided that FTTP 
everywhere was far too good for the sheeple.

Telstra: Technically Telstra BigPond, it's the biggest ISP in the country, 
one of the most expensive, and likely the worst, service-wise.  Fondly 
known as T$, Helstra etc, I think the only reason I stick with them is 
Stockholm Syndrome (that, and a 2 year contract).

Now, you cannot contact NBN directly; you have to go through your ISP (in 
my case T$) i.e. speak to the monkey, not the organ-grinder.

OK...  Full story for the morbidly interested available on request as a 
redacted version of my complaint to Telstra; hell, if I'm in an ugly 
enough mood I'll put it on my web page (it's an RTF file).

My NBN service was cut off on 25th March, when NBN themselves not only 
sliced through my fibre cable at the adjacent pit but for good measure 
also disconnected it from the concentrator in the next pit; they are yet 
to explain just why, but they couldn't've done a better job of sabotaging 
my service if they'd tried.

After much to-ing and fro-ing with T$'s helldesk (broken promises to turn 
up, return calls, etc), I finally had service restored on 20th May; that's 
57 days (yes, I received a credit for lack of service, but not for the 
mobile (ObUS: cellular) calls that I had to make on a competing service).

A nice new wireless router was supplied with automatic (I think) 4G backup 
(naturally with little documentation), but I realised that the port 
forwarding rules were the same as my old router (a Technicolor F@st 5355).

Of course I got auto-unsubscribed from various mailing lists; the trick 
was to figure out which ones...  FreeBSD-ports didn't notice my absence, 
and neither did Krebs on Security; I've since tracked down a few more and 
re-subscribed.

Now, this is where TUHS comes in.  Hmmm...  Awfully quiet, yet it's 
supposed to be an active list.  Am I still subscribed?  Quickest way to 
find out is to post to it, and a well-run mailing list will return a 
snotty-gram along with an URL.

Did I get one?  Nope.  Was it accepted?  Apparently so...

So, why isn't any traffic coming my way?  And for the smart-arses (ObUS: 
smart-asses) out there who think I must be blocking it, nope, I watch my 
mail reject log like a hawk (I have all sorts of reporting scripts) and 
Minnie was definitely not there.

Are you still here, Warren?  I did email you, but no reply so far (and no 
reject either, otherwise I would've spotted *that* too).

If anyone has a better way to determine list membership other than by 
posting to it then I'm all ears/eyes; there are just too many ways to 
subscribe these days (not everyone uses Mailman, and some are by 
invitation only).

Happy, now?

Hours spend on this sh1t so far, and hours yet to go...

-- Dave

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Testing Mail Connectivity
  2019-06-26  0:26 ` [TUHS] Testing... Or, Why I Did It My Way (tm) Dave Horsfall
@ 2019-06-26  2:50   ` Warren Toomey
  2019-06-26  4:07     ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
  2019-07-09  0:53   ` [TUHS] Testing... Or, Why I Did It My Way (tm) Dave Horsfall
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 6+ messages in thread
From: Warren Toomey @ 2019-06-26  2:50 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dave Horsfall; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 10:26:31AM +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> Are you still here, Warren?  I did email you, but no reply so far (and no
> reject either, otherwise I would've spotted *that* too).

All, sorry for the off-topic reply and query. I'm posting this here
so that Dave can read it in the web archive. I'm guessing the problem is
the one Dave identified earlier:

> You need to grok Sendmail's log format (and SMTP in general), but it means
> that Minnie connected to my server, waited the requisite time for the greeting
> banner, and then shat herself when she saw my ginormous banner and dropped the
> connection without so much as a good-bye...

i.e.a multiline response to the HELO/EHLO which meets the RFC specs.

> That simple measure, along with the greeting pause and some simple RFC DNS
> checks, block a lot of the crap.

I've just subscribed to the Postfix mailing list, and I'll ask on there
if there is a configuration change I can make to allow my Postfix client
to deal properly with Dave's multiline HELO/EHLO response. And why it can't
at present.

But if someone here already knows, could they let me know?!

Thanks! Warren

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Testing Mail Connectivity
  2019-06-26  2:50   ` [TUHS] Testing Mail Connectivity Warren Toomey
@ 2019-06-26  4:07     ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 6+ messages in thread
From: Grant Taylor via TUHS @ 2019-06-26  4:07 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

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On 6/25/19 8:50 PM, Warren Toomey wrote:
>> You need to grok Sendmail's log format (and SMTP in general), but it means 
>> that Minnie connected to my server, waited the requisite time for the greeting 
>> banner, and then shat herself when she saw my ginormous banner and dropped the 
>> connection without so much as a good-bye...
> 
> i.e.a multiline response to the HELO/EHLO which meets the RFC specs.
> 
>> That simple measure, along with the greeting pause and some simple RFC DNS 
>> checks, block a lot of the crap.

The greet pause seems longer than I'd choose, but I think it's less than 
60 seconds.  Any reasonable mail server should handle that.  So that 
shouldn't be an issue.

> I've just subscribed to the Postfix mailing list, and I'll ask on there 
> if there is a configuration change I can make to allow my Postfix client 
> to deal properly with Dave's multiline HELO/EHLO response. And why it can't 
> at present.

I'd be surprised if Minnie had a problem with the multi-line greeting.

I think Postfix (if that's what Minnie is running) has been dealing with 
multi-line greetings for a while.  There's also the fact that—I 
suspect—Minnie has been successfully delivering THUS to Dave's server 
for a while.  So unless Dave's multi-line greeting is new....

> But if someone here already knows, could they let me know?!

Do you have errors in your log?

Dave, Warren, feel free to reply to me (both of us) directly if you want 
to discuss this further off list.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die


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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Testing...  Or, Why I Did It My Way (tm)
  2019-06-26  0:26 ` [TUHS] Testing... Or, Why I Did It My Way (tm) Dave Horsfall
  2019-06-26  2:50   ` [TUHS] Testing Mail Connectivity Warren Toomey
@ 2019-07-09  0:53   ` Dave Horsfall
  2019-07-09  2:02     ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 6+ messages in thread
From: Dave Horsfall @ 2019-07-09  0:53 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Wed, 26 Jun 2019, Dave Horsfall wrote:

> So, why isn't any traffic coming my way?  And for the smart-arses (ObUS: 
> smart-asses) out there who think I must be blocking it, nope, I watch my 
> mail reject log like a hawk (I have all sorts of reporting scripts) and 
> Minnie was definitely not there.

Well, it turned out that I *was* blocking Minnie, but her name was not in
the logs; it was just an IP address that ended up on my woodpecker list...

I just saw my first message from TUHS :-)

Sorry for the noise.

-- Dave

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Testing... Or, Why I Did It My Way (tm)
  2019-07-09  0:53   ` [TUHS] Testing... Or, Why I Did It My Way (tm) Dave Horsfall
@ 2019-07-09  2:02     ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 6+ messages in thread
From: Grant Taylor via TUHS @ 2019-07-09  2:02 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

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On 7/8/19 6:53 PM, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> Well, it turned out that I *was* blocking Minnie, but her name was not in 
> the logs; it was just an IP address that ended up on my woodpecker list...

Oops!

> I just saw my first message from TUHS :-)
> 
> Sorry for the noise.

So you were truly channeling the the spirit of Unix.  Things 
occasionally break in an unexpected way, and then we fix them.  :-)

Welcome back.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die


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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2019-07-09  2:03 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 6+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2019-06-25  1:17 [TUHS] Testing Dave Horsfall
2019-06-26  0:26 ` [TUHS] Testing... Or, Why I Did It My Way (tm) Dave Horsfall
2019-06-26  2:50   ` [TUHS] Testing Mail Connectivity Warren Toomey
2019-06-26  4:07     ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2019-07-09  0:53   ` [TUHS] Testing... Or, Why I Did It My Way (tm) Dave Horsfall
2019-07-09  2:02     ` Grant Taylor via TUHS

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