Spam Filter and Imail Coexistence
Printed From: LogSat Software
Category: Spam Filter ISP
Forum Name: Spam Filter ISP Support
Forum Description: General support for Spam Filter ISP
URL: https://www.logsat.com/spamfilter/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=5909
Printed Date: 28 December 2024 at 6:43pm
Topic: Spam Filter and Imail Coexistence
Posted By: answerman
Subject: Spam Filter and Imail Coexistence
Date Posted: 08 December 2006 at 6:25pm
|
Hey all... In my third day of evaluating Spam Filter, and mostly lovin' it. Had a glitch today, however, and was wondering if this had happened to anyone else. My setup: running Spam Filter on IP xxx.xxx.xxx.2 (DNS A record "mail2") and Imail 8.15 on IP xxx.xxx.xxx 1 (DNS A record "mail"). Both are running on port 25. My monitor told me this morning that "mail" was not responding. No new mail was coming in, and users could not send mail. In looking into it, it appeared that Imail's SMTP service was running just fine, but wasn't accepting any connections. The Spam Filter logs showed that it was receiving mail, dealing with the bad stuff, and then attempting to forward the good stuff to Imail's SMTP but receiving a "not available" message, so it was queued for later delivery. After a few hours of mucking around with it, I finally ran FPort and it told me that the only program running on port 25 was SpamFilterSvc. Even though Imail told me that it was running on port 25, it apparently was not. What I *think* solved it was to stop both services, start Imail SMTP, and then start SpamFilterSvc. After I did that, both services showed up in FPort, and everything seemed to fix itself. My guess is that Imail's SMTP service stopped for some reason (it happens occasionally) and when it attempted to restart it found that since Spam Filter was already running on port 25, it saw a conflict and did not bind to the port. As I understand it, there should not be a problem running both SpamFilter and Imail on the same port as long as they are on different IP addresses. Do I have that correct? Is there an issue with the order in which the services start... i.e. does Imail need to be running before Spam Filter starts? Or am I way off base here? (Something else I thought of... do I need to "delete" the IP address used for Spam Filter from Imail? It appears that I can do that) |
Replies:
Posted By: jerbo128
Date Posted: 08 December 2006 at 7:02pm
|
answerman, We run the same setup, and after tweaking a bit, have found it to be very stable and reliable. Both services start automatically without and issues. You may know this already... In order to have imail bind to only one ip, you have to set the option in the imail manager. We also had to change a few registry keys to point our primary and virtual hosts to the ip that we wanted. We found the methods and corresponding keys on ipswitch's KB. Once we stumbled through that, all was happy. My only complaint with the setup is this: You cannot limit imail to accept external smtp traffic from only from the spamfilter. If you do, your customers will not be able to send mail out, even if authenticated to imail. Because we can not restrict imail to receiving from only a single source, some spammers have figured out to send mail to the "mail.domain.com" and bypass the spamfilter. We removed all "mail.domain.com" host records from our customers dns records, and directed each customer to an alternate mail server name. This keeps spammers from quering dns for "mail.domain.com" and has helped with the filter bypass |
Posted By: LogSat
Date Posted: 08 December 2006 at 7:13pm
|
Also, make sure you configure SpamFilter as well to listen only on xxx.xxx.xxx.2. You can do this on the "Settings - Configuration" tab, under the "SMTP Listener Socket". That way, even if the xxx.xxx.xxx.1 IP becomes available when Imail stops, SpamFilter won't try to bind to it. As a side note, SpamFilter will only bind to IPs upon startup. Once it's running (and configured to bind to all IPs) it won't use an IP even if it frees up. ------------- Roberto Franceschetti http://www.logsat.com" rel="nofollow - LogSat Software http://www.logsat.com/sfi-spam-filter.asp" rel="nofollow - Spam Filter ISP |
Posted By: answerman
Date Posted: 09 December 2006 at 1:36pm
Since it's Windows 2000 Server, and since it's 30 miles away, I can't see the GUI through Terminal Services. I am admininstering Spam Filter by editing SpamFilter.ini (which seems to be working fine for me... don't really need the GUI). I see two entries: "ListenIP" and "ListenFQDN". I do have "ListenIP" set to xxx.xxx.xxx.2, but I am not sure what to do with "ListenFQDN" (there is nothing about it in the *.ini comments) so I have it set to the FQDN of the server. Should it be set to mail2.domain.com, or left blank, or do I have it set properly? I am also looking through the Ipswitch KB to find out what to do with the Imail IP binding issue a couple of posts back, so we can hopefully consider that issue closed. |
LogSat wrote:Posted By: answerman
Date Posted: 09 December 2006 at 1:46pm
Mmm... what version of Imail are you running? According to the Imail KB article I am looking at, it appears as though that option only exists in +v8.2, and I am running v8.15. Another option I am looking at is to make the SpamFilterSvc dependent on the Imail SMTP svc, so that if Imail restarts, it will force SpamFilter to restart also. If all else fails... |
Posted By: LogSat
Date Posted: 09 December 2006 at 2:05pm
|
You have both settings correct. "ListenIP" is the IP you want SpamFilter to bind to. If it's blank, it will bind to all free IPs. The FQDN is the Fully Qualified Domain Name diplayed in the welcome banner. As a side note, the ListenIP, ListenPort, and ListenFQDN are the *only* three parameters that will require a restart of SpamFilter to take effect, as they are directly related the socket bindings. ------------- Roberto Franceschetti http://www.logsat.com" rel="nofollow - LogSat Software http://www.logsat.com/sfi-spam-filter.asp" rel="nofollow - Spam Filter ISP |
Posted By: jerbo128
Date Posted: 12 December 2006 at 9:00pm
|
I am running Imail 8.22. I wasn't aware that older versions did not support the single IP. Good luck - They'll want an arm and a leg for an upgrade. |
Posted By: answerman
Date Posted: 16 December 2006 at 2:36am
And I am keeping all my limbs.  Purchased SmarterMail Pro mailserver today and plan on migrating this weekend. Seems like Spam Filter in front of SmarterMail should be a winning combination. |
Posted By: kfries
Date Posted: 18 December 2006 at 2:45pm
|
mstsc -console type that into the run box and you get the console of rdp, which then you will have the gui when using terminal services. |