bbs.spamgourmet.com

There currently seems to be a reliability problem with spamgourmet.
(www.spamgourmet.com)

1. There are performance problems with the sp mail server:

- Mails sent to own accounts come in after a day or two

- MAILER-DAEMON messages:
>Warning: could not send message for past 12 hours
>Will keep trying until message is 5 days old

- connection time outs: gourmet.spamgourmet.com
[216.218.230.146] 25 (smtp) : Connection timed out

2. Some mails seem to not be delivered at all


If these problems are well known, a big hint on the starting page of spamgourmet.com would be fine.

Hope this can be solved.

Best regards.

A sendmail vulnerability was published a few days back, and we upgraded the server right away -- we haven't had any issues since, as far as I can tell. The problems we had before that are consistent with failed attempts to compromise the server based on the older version of sendmail. Speculation, yes, but it fits.

Messages are getting lost all the time. Maybe I should make a test and try how many % of messages get lost. I'm sure that rate is quite high like 10-20%.

I made a test with 5 minute interval. My server connected spamgourmet server every five minutes for 24 hours. It seems that 35% of connections during that day got rejected. So there is a major problem.

I sent five test messages to my self and only one of those got trough in three hours. And it's message number four. So something is really badly wrong.

I've had the problem of lost email as well. I registered on two forums last night and still didn't get confirmation email. I registered on one about an hour ago, and the email is also lost!

I wonder why admins are so passive.

Anyway. I think that Spamgourmet should use backup servers like trashmail.net does. It's basicly very very good idea to have backup servers. It'll remove problem of sudden high load or temporary downtime.

Most of mailservers delete messages very quicky if they can't get those delivered to destination. Backup-server(s) are the only solution to this problem.

Admins are passive because they have day jobs that need all their time and then some. I am moving and starting a new job right now, and I am completely swamped. Josh is very busy too.

If someone could kindly step forward and create a commercial version of this site, using all the code and so on, and get paid with the subscriptions, people who require high reliability would have an opportunity to use a spamgourmet-like service without the half-baked free support we can provide.

As it is, Josh and I are too busy to be administering the site more than a few hours a week, if that.

Apologies, folks.

I opened up the upstream mail server a bit, so it'll handle more connections. The real fix is better hardware, which we'll get at some point.

Backup servers would be great - got any? Seriously, if you know anyone who'd be interested in donating a service like that, we'd seriously consider it. It's a DBMS driven application, so merely adding a backup server adds a big load to keep them in synch.

Let's hope it now works...

I just got this. But message might got expired just before you made your changes.

The original message was received at Sun, 4 Jun 2006 16:05:33 -0700
from localhost [127.0.0.1]

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
<test.de552@spamgourmet.com>
(reason: )

----- Transcript of session follows -----
<test.de552@spamgourmet.com>... Deferred
Message could not be delivered for 1 day
Message will be deleted from queue

Btw. Is spamgourmet being attacked by spammers? Or is ist just general increasement in email traffic which causes these problems?

de552,

It's both. From time to time, an idiot tries to swamp sg. But also, the regular traffic increases.