Re: [Exim] a newbie needs help...

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Author: John (TJ) Penton
Date:  
To: admin
CC: exim-users
Subject: Re: [Exim] a newbie needs help...
On Wed, 24 Apr 2002 admin@??? wrote:

Can't give a definitive solution (a look at your logs might help). I have
given a few hints below.

Can I also suggest that you take this project in little steps - rather
than try and do it all in one go.
1. Unplug your modem (save embarassing mistakes).
2. Run exim and use something simple like mail (or a telnet connection) to
try and send a local mail. Check that this has been delivered by reading
the mailbox manually. (It's just a text file).
3. Plug the modem in and use fetchmail (not in batch mode to save
embarassing mistakes) to fetch a single test message. Check that this
gets delivered correctly.
4. Then make more complex arrangements like filtering/batch mode/aliasing.

> For the sake of protecting privacy, I was going to send all e-mail to a user "bill".
> You can see my Exim runtime file at:
> http://www.neteffex.com/exim/exim-configure.txt


Doesn't look too bad. local_domains should include neteffex.com and
localhost.

> I set up a .forward file under /home/bill:
>    #Exim filter
>    if $header_to: contains bill then deliver bill endif


This doesn't do anything, on several counts:
The To: header is not always set for an email.
It is in "bill"'s home directory - therefore everything going through this
filter will be for bill anyway.
It says "if this email is for bill, then deliver it to bill" - this is
kinda pointless since mail for bill should get delivered to him anyway.

The one thing it does do is remove the domain. All matching email is
being delivered to the address "bill" - since you don't specify a domain I
am not sure what exim is doing with it.

I suggest you remove this file for now.

> You have spammed over 2,000 emails through my account in the last 3 days.
> I have done an IP trace, and turned you over to the authorities.
> This is a $2,000 per occurrence fine under Federal Spamming laws,
> and up to a year in Federal Prison.


This begs the question: how did you manage to generate 2000 emails??
Surely you didn't send that many test messages? I suspect all your email
has been going to this guy.


Like I say - take it in little steps and fix things at each stage.
Looking at your logs should give you enough information to work out what
is going on.

HTH

John

--
and then he climbed to the top of his tree and climbed down
again, and then he wondered what Pooh was doing, and went
across the Forest to see.