[CentOS] Centos 6 Sendmail backup MX Config

Fri Feb 13 18:54:29 UTC 2015
Valeri Galtsev <galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu>

On Fri, February 13, 2015 12:41 pm, Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 12:32 PM, Valeri Galtsev
> <galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>>
>> I stated pure observation on at least two pairs of primary - backup MX I
>> maintain. Still I made backup MXes with greylisting as well (they are
>> separately hit by same bad spammers scripts, at a rate about 10 times
>> smaller than primary MXes are and absolutely independently).
>
> I think that's unusual - spammers often target the secondaries as a
> preference on the premise that they are likely to not be as
> well-configured as the primary.  But it has been a while since I ran
> one so maybe things have changed.

Consider me lucky...

>
>>>> Still, it is good
>>>> to have the same greylisting on backup MX. And all other blows and
>>>> whistles.
>>>
>>> Greylisting would be kind of hard to do right.  You'd have to keep the
>>> known-good senders in sync across the receivers.   But my bigger worry
>>> would be a dictionary-type attack on user names as recipients if you
>>> don't have access to the real user list on the secondary.
>>
>> With standard backup MX based on postix (with rather trivial
>> configuration) you always do have list of legitimate recipients of
>> primary
>> MX on the secondary MX.
>
> Doing greylisting right means you also have to keep the table of
> already-known senders up to date and that may be very dynamic.
>

If you are kind person, yes. Sqlgrey is designed to work simultaneously
for primary, secondary (and tretary maybe - didn't check) MXes. Yet, even
if they are independent, all will work, you are just not being nice to
other servers and make them make 3 delivery attempts (the last is
successful) instead of two (that is: primary MX - "temporary failure",
secondary - "temporary failure", primary after some time - accepted;
instead of primary MX - "temporary failure", secondary - accepted which
will be in nice configuration common for both MXes greylisting engine and
database).

Valeri

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++