[Tech] Filesystem /var full of spam!

[Edmund R. MacKenty]

Daniel Melnechuk writes:
>We also have another problem... the IP net block our address is in is  
>now listed as follows:

Yeah, I saw your email about that too.  Thanks for getting the fix for that
in progress.

>As for spam, our spamassassin is installed but it is not really  
>working i think. So upgrading it and making it work is a great idea.  
>MacK, have you done that before?

Actually, I'm in the process of learning how to do that on my system, which
I'm setting up as a virtual mailbox host.  Haven't gotten it working yet,
though.  I found a good "cookbook" page on integrating SpamAssassin with
PostFix: http://onetforum.com/fourm/viewtopic.php?p=63#63
It's a bit of a hack, but what they have there works for UNIX accounts.  If
G-R.org is doing virtual mailboxes it's a bit more complex, and I haven't
figured it out yet.  I should know by mid-December.

The tricky part is getting it to discard spam instead of just marking it
with headers and delivering it.  The script at that URL attempts to do it,
but doesn't do it well.

What I've always tried to do is have my SMTP daemon filter the mail and
return a "No such user" error for spam messages.  I know how to do that
with SendMail, but not with PostFix.  It also has to be a site-wide thing,
it's hard to do that with per-user SpamAssassin configurations.

I'll see what I can do after Thanksgiving, but we need to drain that queue
before then or /var will keep filling up.  There's 10365 messages in it
now!
	- MacK.
-----
Edmund R. MacKenty

Why do we say something is out of whack? Are some things "in whack"?