Re: [alfa] Auto Reliability

[Richard Welty <rwelty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 27 Nov 2003 12:36:30 -0700 alfacybersite <acs@domain.elided> wrote:

> What's going on? No Alfa Digest sitting on my welcome mat this a.m., no
> cars in the parking lot. You'd think it was a holiday or something.

actually, the server had a challenging day-before-thanksgiving.

one of the web hosting customers installed a script on their web site
that, well, they just plain shouldn't have installed.

the spammers found it, and some 12 hours later i finally figured why the
load average was up over 13 (usually it's 1 or 2) and the log file
partition kept filling up.

i have removed the offending script and purged the mail queues. the
server is much happier now, and the non-spam mail is flowing properly.

there is a possibility that our AOL contingent is cut off right now; the
spam run was targeted almost exclusively at AOL, and they had put
in some blocks to keep it off their network (can't say as i blame them.)
i don't know if those block have been lifted or not yet, i have dropped
a note to their postmaster but haven't heard back.

richard
-- 
Richard Welty                                         rwelty@domain.elided
Averill Park Networking                                         518-573-7592
    Java, PHP, PostgreSQL, Unix, Linux, IP Network Engineering, Security
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