[NTLUG:Discuss] I need some advice, quick

[Lance Simmons]

Thanks, both Stuart and Neil.

How weird that I have my mail working fine for years, then right at
the time when I start having problems with it, there's another,
apparently unrelated DNS problem.  I guess when it rains it pours!

Still, I wonder what happened over the past couple of weeks to all
those emails that didn't make it to me?  Wonder if I'll ever find out.

Thanks again.

On 12/20/06, Stuart Johnston <saj at thecommune.net> wrote:
> http://zoneedit.com/status.html
>
> Last Update Time: 12/20/06 10:58 am PST
>
> We are currently experiencing issues with NS2.ZONEEDIT.COM,
> NS3.ZONEEDIT.COM and NS6.ZONEEDIT.COM. We are aware of the situation and
> our engineers are working diligently to get this resolved.
>
> Neil Aggarwal wrote:
> > Lance:
> >
> > zoneedit.com is timing out.  Take a look at this page from
> > DNSStuff:
> >
> > http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/traversal.ch?domain=lsimmons.net&type=MX
> >
> > Their DNS records must be messed up.
> >
> >       Neil
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: discuss-bounces at ntlug.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at ntlug.org] On Behalf
> > Of Lance Simmons
> > Sent: Wednesday, December 20, 2006 8:50 PM
> > To: discuss at ntlug.org
> > Subject: [NTLUG:Discuss] I need some advice, quick
> >
> > I've been running a mail server at home for about 5 years.  Nothing
> > fancy, and I only have a couple of accounts (wife and kids old enough
> > to use email), and everything seemed to be fine.  I thought I had the
> > spam problem under control, using spamassassin and bogofilter, but in
> > the past 3 or 4 months, the spam was getting way out of control.
> >
> > I was swimming in spam (every day I had to hand delete hundreds, even
> > though my spamassassin and bogofilter were catching many more
> > hundreds), and I didn't have time to devote to the problem.  So I
> > tried something that seemed reasonable: I changed my .forward file to
> > direct mail to my gmail account (because gmail does good spam
> > filtering), instead of to procmail (which sent the mail to
> > spamassassin and bogofilter).  It seemed like a good idea.
> >
> > The first thing I noticed was that about 90% of the spam my exim4 mail
> > server was forwarding to my gmail account was not showing up in the
> > gmail spam box.  I guess it was so obviously spam there was no need to
> > show it to me.  Fine.
> >
> > But then I noticed that within a few days, I started not getting
> > emails from people.  Lots of people told me that they were sending me
> > email and I wasn't getting it.  I started to get concerned.  It got so
> > bad that I stopped the experiment, and changed my .forward file back
> > to the old  "|/usr/bin/procmail".  But things didn't get better. And
> > now, I see that my domain (lsimmons.net) no longer has DNS records.
> >
> > Is it possible that by forwarding so much spam to gmail, my mail
> > server got targetted as a compromised machine?  Could there be some
> > other way of finding out why DNS lookups don't work for me?
> >
> > I guess I have two questions:
> >
> > 1: How do I find out why DNS lookups aren't working for me any more?
> > (I've checked with my registrar (joker.com) and with my nameserver
> > (zoneedit.com), and things seem normal.
> >
> > 2.  Was it a bad idea (maybe a really bad idea) to bounce my incoming,
> > spam-riddled mail to my gmail account?
> >
> > I know this isn't directly Linux-related, but wasn't sure who else to
> > ask, and I'm feeling some urgency here.
> >
>
>
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