One of the main tools in this new anti-spam system is DSPAM and I must say I quite enjoy it, it’s filtering has been more dead-on than SA, not saying SA can’t be tuned, but just out of the box this seems (thus far) to be doing a lot better, for example…
My dad’s Spam Stats for the last 24 hours, my dad’s email has become a spam-trap (actually that’s my moms) - but all in all, this has done great, some mini-false positives here and there but the DSPAM WebUI is wonderful for managing the Quarantine of spam, and re-training the system what is good, what is bad.
So for the last 12 hours I have moved TN to this filter, and so far so good, like 2 marked as spam that were not, but now it has been trained they are good. So I am thinking if TN looks good tomorrow, FH will follow suit and get anti-spam’d long-term I want to work to really re-configure the system to work off domain, not per-user-account created, I want to make it simple as a pass-through spam proxy, so I can migrate entire servers to this anti-spam solution and give everyone a more robust solution against spam, and in the end, help take some load of SA on the server side of each server.
So this week I am hoping to really push some sales, get some finances in check, and first and foremost get some bills paid off, secondly get monthly revenues up, so I could definitely use some prayers - I want to continue to raise profits, and get things even more streamlined, but it just seems things keep holding me back, but this week my hope is some of the projects pay off, and things can continue to grow and expand and allow me to get my own place, get a stable/steady monthly budget, so hopefully this week will enter a few good things like a new Credit Card processing system including Discover and AMEX, but also expansion into the new billing system and getting folks all up-to-date in their billing, so I know where I really stand on some things - so lift a few up for me, and if you have some spare cash just lying around, feel free to send it to me 
Anywhoo - this night seems to be dragging on and on, a tad bored really, though at 10:30pm I suppose I should be sleeping… who knows maybe soon, for now though, I’ll say good night and take care!
So for the record, I didn’t die. It may of seemed like it, but the truth of the matter is - I got fed up with SPAM, so of course, I do what any good server nerd would do…. start testing everything I can get my hands on - and I came across some great tutorials, some great software, and sort of did a mix of them all to see what I could come up with, and I think I made myself a pretty nice proxy for mail, basically the way mail flows now is as such:
Outside World -> Filter -> (if clean) -> Server
So it’s pretty nice, reduces the load of servers a bit, but the catch to the system as-is, there was no front-end to manage users in the system, so in other words, I unlike my other option (which wasn’t supported by most Datacenters) which was easy simply add the domain, it did the rest, this one requires each… user… for…. each…. domain….. to… be… added. So the original method was using phpMyAdmin to manage a database layer which managed users, which while was handy, for adding say, oh I don’t know 350 users, would be a pain in the but to do at some level, so what did I do? Spent the last two days developing and deploying a very ugly, but functional PHP application which while not GREAT code, it works 
and allows me to make as many users at one time as needed, so if I want to add all the users on a single domain all I do is make it as such “user:password” - the system does the rest, whatever domain it is managing it appends that domain to the user so say I was using this domain, it’d append @charlesabrown.com to the name for me automatically.
Needless to say I was pretty happy, and the system has some great tools for the end users which I didn’t code, but I am going to spruce up and customize a wee bit to make pretty for my customers, but so far the testing has gone really well - my parents both have accounts on a domain I own, and they were test subjects, so far it’s tagged about 4 good as spam, but that is because I have things turned up to the highest filtering on their two accounts, simply because they get a decent amount of spam, so currently as their MX records update, they are getting a slow steady stream of things going into their Quarantine - it’s lovely.
So that’s where I have been - My goal is to spruce up the code over the next week or so and make a interface for end users, thus it’s hard wired to a customer domain, so if a customer wants the filtering - they have full access to add users, and create new logins for the training interface for their users, needless to say, very nifty!
Tomorrow I am getting my car washed, my friends are working a car wash for my old Jr. High’s music dept. and quite frankly I am a sucker for music programs and I want to do my part, told them if they sold candy too I’d buy it all up but with some light rain, a little car wash will do nicely I hope! But other than that, no major plans for the weekend, I know I have some things to do around here (read: clean room more), and I am still trying to get the budget happy so I can get on my way to an apartment, so if anyone wants to give me money on a constant basis, please do! Heck I’d even work for it if needs be… well work within reason.
Anywhoo - thats really the catch-up of things, a pretty nice week, some good things taken care of, have some sites to clear from servers tonight, and some final bits of billing to adjust for customers, but all in all, tonight should be mellow, I think since no one has responded to going to Denny’s later, I am going to go put in a pizza, and then watch last night’s Burn Notice finale, next week all the good TV starts, how will I get any work done?
Parting Video:
Well it’s chilly, we keep having these crazy record cold weather, dipping into the low 20’s, which is rare, its not bad - I enjoy cold, but this keeps hitting hard - says 28, but I’d say in my neck of the woods were looking at 19F - house is frozen, so @ 3am, my pizza comes out of the oven.
In other news, Wonderfalls should of been allowed to live - its a great DVD, one of those “Perfect Series” that should of been given a chance by networks, one such show which surived the network cut was Monk, which to this day is a great show, CBS killed it, USA picked it up, and its still alive today - too many shows which should not of been killed, if you get a chance, snag this DVD set.
I have 2 plans on the table, servers, servers, and more servers - its been a lot of back and forth, I am enjoying a few options I am seeing, but just waiting for cash to come back into the bank, apparently this whole holiday thing kills the cash flow but a few big deals are done, and cash will follow, tomorrow I have to do some invoicing of print invoices, not my favorite, but a good flow of funds - but after that, and normal bills, I’ll really have a choice based upon cash - but this means good things for everyone, servers all-around.
Anywhoo, going to head towards my pizza, then back to logos and a hint of spam server monitoring - morning!
The last 2 weeks there has been an increasing number of blocks on servers I work on, AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail are all on some kick to simply block domains, IP’s, whoever the feel like.
In a email trouble ticket I had open with Hotmail, I asked to see an example of the Spam I was apparently sending out, but they could not produce anything, and as I bounced around their techs I even had one say “Your not blocked!” and then suddenly 5 test mails I had sent from Hotmail showed up in my inbox on my server, and I could magically send to Hotmail again.
It’s getting old, because MY customers are getting angry at me for something I have no control over, granted when it comes down to the IP owner, and the server administrator who needs to contact AOL/Yahoo/Hotmail - that is me, folks are getting very frustrated with me and other companies admins who I work with on their systems. Some would say “Well it’s your problem!” well as much as I wish it was, it’s not. If it was my issue, trust me, I’d be awake for a week working on things to get it ironed out, but in these cases I have no control which sucks - and it’s not a automated process for removal, it’s not “Fill out this form with the domain/IP and we’ll send a confirmation” - it’s a human process, and while I am not saying that that their staff are jerks, its just pulling teeth to get information, but thankfully some folks have been very helpful in helping us comply with new “requirements” for SPF/SenderID/DomainKeys from the various providers, but that kindness is not across the board.
So I guess for now until some of the spam volume comes down, it will continue to be my fault, but I wish it wasn’t, as I’d really like mail to once again just work.
This does not feel like the weekend, I feel like I am just coming off a LONG Monday, and it’s about time to goto bed - but all in all a productive week, the spam testing has gone well, it’s first full day 3000 messages processed for 5 domains, and 2800 mails tagged as spam, 60 as viruses, twas crazy nuts, but a promising start - once this filter goes production, it’s going to be awesome!
Got the friend server installed tonight, and it’s looking good - came out of my building to find a fight just breaking up, and the police coming in to find out what happened - kinda crazy/scary - but thats the joys of downtown - but all in all things got done, even setup some of the basic firewall rules for the server, so pretty awesome!
I am exhausted in every sense of the word, physically, mentally, emotionally, you name it, I am it. Just been some crazy highs and lows with all of this server stuff, I have some ideas for the current servers I want to put into place, and with a small boost to the budget, I am going to probably move forward and do it here soon, but its all good - dad is doing better (thanks for the prayers) and since I am really scatter brained, I am going to end on that note, maybe more tomorrow… who knows - night folks, have a good weekend.
Been a whirlwind week, seems like I haven’t really got a ton of sleep, just a lot on my mind honestly - mainly work related, but some personal stuff mixed in there somewhere I have been working the last 3 days though in testing this new spam appliance, and I must say - results are a little mixed, but still no false-positives, so I can cut the amount of traffic to servers and have the system actually create a Quarantine like your anti-virus program would.
So needless to say, I am pretty happy, I put this domain up for testing, the results were fair, 36 emails in thus far, out of that only 1 piece of spam made it though - 33 were spam, and the others were tests I sent from 2 networks to see if the new MX records had taken hold - but it’s working! So I am going to let it ride for the weekend, and go from there, but hopefully I can unleash 2 setups:
- Basic Filtering - All customers can get this, it helps two fold on my end as it increases effectiveness of spam filtering, but also removes load from SpamAssassin from running on the servers! Less load, more speed, less space, higher efficiency.
- Advanced Filtering - This one will offer a full blown access to a quarantine which customers can login to and manage if they got a message tagged as spam, but will also offer some fail-over on mail, as it will help store mail if the host is down (rare, but it could happen).
So pretty excited, looking at maybe $10 a month for a domain with 50 or less email addresses for the Advanced filtering, and $30 for 50 or more - but the pricing isn’t set in stone, but the next goal is to re-build the appliance a bit, bigger primary drive and swap the current primary to secondary and throw on a bit more ram, so pretty exciting!
But that’s been my week, some minor fun in there - was on the news, had lunch with some friends, dinner with some friends, so I am not completely a work-a-holic, but I could definitely use a nap :) Well back to it! Another 5 hours then it’s off to build the friend server!
In the hopes that there are spam bots out there crawling looking for tasty email accounts to swallow up, if you want one, snag this one:
chuck@subsonic.com
If your a friend, viewer, etc - send it email, we are testing out a anti-spam device, and trying to see what we get through filters, false positives, etc. so any and all mail helps - however please please please - do not sign it up for things just for the sake of trying to help - one or two is helpful.
More blog tonight, must finish up here at the office and head home sooner or later. Pray for my dad, he’s been sick the last few days, so prayers are appreciated. More later, brain scattered, bbl.
