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RBL kills SMTP - and the radio star

mparadis

Regular Pleskian
What gives? For many many many versions now, any time I enable RBL on plesk, SMTP soon stops running. Sometimes it can last days, weeks, other times, enabling RBL instantly kills SMTP server.

Anyone know why this is a problem with such a mature app?

Mike
 
There is at least one quite extensive thread on this topic in the forum somewhere. If you use the search function and look out for threads that have more than just a few replies you should find it eventually.

I don't recall the exact cause of the original poster's problem, but I think it was one of two things:

1) The one that I think is most likely was the use of a dead dnsrbl. It had been retired. I don't recall how this could have caused smtp to fall over, but it did.

2) I think there may also have been an issue of how multiple dnsrbls should be entered in the box in Plesk. Something about using spaces or not, or semi-colons or not or something like that.

All this was ages ago though .. Plesk 5 or possibly 7.

Faris.
 
Wow, I do recall that also now that you mention it. Weird thing is, doing a search on RBL gives not even one return in these forums.

Mike
 
DNS problems in /etc/resolv.conf could cause that too. Make sure youve got nameserver 127.0.0.1 listed in there somewhere at the very least.
 
I found it. I searched for spamhaus (just a guess).
The keyword I should have used was MAPS. I forgot we used to call it that.

Anyway:

http://forum.swsoft.com/showthread.php?t=37332

However I'm not completely sure if if will help. The suggestion was to make sure relays.ordb.org wasn't in the list (which is long gone). But I'll bet you don't have that.

I think Scott is probably on the best track. Something to do with DNS lookups.
I wonder if there's something in Plesk's DNSRBL checks that bogs down when it doesn't get an answer? But that would be mad :)

Faris.
 
DNS problems in /etc/resolv.conf could cause that too. Make sure youve got nameserver 127.0.0.1 listed in there somewhere at the very least.

You mean for local DNS resolve? I don't use the DNS server on plesk so don't have 127.0.0.1 in my resolv.conf.

Mike
 
I'm trying a test by putting only one RBL in my list. So far, it's been running. I'll keep it going and see how things go.

Mike
 
Yeah that will do it all right, Ive seen this happen before. If your DNS servers in /etc/resolv.conf dont respond to your query at all (or fast enough) you'll have this happen. This can be a big problem if its a more popular DNS server since spamhaus for example will limit the maximum queries per day for non-subscribers.
 
Yeah that will do it all right, Ive seen this happen before. If your DNS servers in /etc/resolv.conf dont respond to your query at all (or fast enough) you'll have this happen. This can be a big problem if its a more popular DNS server since spamhaus for example will limit the maximum queries per day for non-subscribers.

Sorry, I'm out of sync here :). Were you replying to the mention of DNS possibly being overloaded or that I'm trying one RBL provider for testing? So far, it held overnight, the SMTP server didn't shut down. The thread that was posted in this thread is correct then. It's an old bug about plesk's SMTP server dying if an RBL provider is no longer available but in your list.

That's kinda nuts. How does one keep track of RBL providers? Plesk is just one of dozens of servers/applications/'insert long list here' that I need to maintain. Now I'm going to have to suffer spam from plesk unless I stay on top of the RBL list?

I guess an external spam server really is the solution.

Mike
 
In reference to DNS. RBL's are all about DNS and DNS performance. So anything you can do to accelerate that is going to make a mountain of difference. You'll see a big difference with a lot of things, like spamassassin for example. Processing time could drop by half or more.

In terms of RBL's, the important one at the SMTP layer is zen.spamhaus.org. The others are nice, but you're better off implementing those inside of spamassassin. Odd's are you'll find that someone else already has (zen for example, is enabled in spamassassin), the other advantage is that Spamassassin always fails safe (open) so if you do run into an RBL cutting you off, it wont cause the outage that you're experiencing.
 
I raised it to bl.spamcop.net;sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org;cbl.abuseat.org and the SMTP is dying again. Seems it can only handle one RBL safely?

I've added your suggestion so not it's zen.spamhaus.org;bl.spamcop.net;sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org;cbl.abuseat.org.

However, are you saying it's best to only have one in the mail settings and the rest in spamassassin settings?

Mike
 
>In reference to DNS. RBL's are all about DNS and DNS performance. So anything you can do to accelerate that is going >to make a mountain of difference. You'll see a big difference with a lot of things, like spamassassin for example. >Processing time could drop by half or more.

How does one test the throughput of a DNS server? For example, my internal DNS servers only process outgoing resolves, they have no other services running but named and of course required services. There's no load what so ever on these machines. But it would be nice to get a sense of throughput.

>In terms of RBL's, the important one at the SMTP layer is zen.spamhaus.org.

Ok, so just the one in the mail settings.

>The others are nice, but you're better off implementing those inside of spamassassin. Odd's are you'll find that >someone else already has (zen for example, is enabled in spamassassin), the other advantage is that Spamassassin >always fails safe (open) so if you do run into an RBL cutting you off, it wont cause the outage that you're >experiencing.

I'm willing to give this a try, it sounds very plausible. However, I'm not touched spamassassin outside of the panel so might you have some suggestions on how I go about this?

Mike
 
Grr parallels!

They changed things again, can't buy anything individually, gotta buy the whole bloody package for $299.00. What a waste of money. I already paid for SpamAssassin and Application Pack, don't need Helpdesk, ColdFusion or PostgreSQL, I simply wanted to add Tomcat to my server. Man I'm frustrated.

Just venting :). Wish someone would write a nice little add on that would let users add their own add ons, in my case, all I need is tomcat.

Mike
 
We have, Ive done ASL and atomic-yum, lvalics has done power toys, and haggybear did the greylisting and application installer mods.

If you want some source code to look at: http://3es.atomicrocketturtle.com/packages/atomic-yum/

I appreciate the code but I'm not a programmer :). Is there someone who sells the tomcat app on it's own? Paying $299.00 for this silly bundle when I've already paid for two of the items and don't want the rest is unreal. What the hell is parallel thinking?

Mike
 
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