[Exim] RE: Limiting messages per N hours (Alistair Mann)

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Author: Bernard Stern
Date:  
To: Alistair Mann, exim-users
Subject: [Exim] RE: Limiting messages per N hours (Alistair Mann)
On Tue, 14 Jan 2003 09:07:02 +0000 exim-users-request@??? wrote:

>Greetings all,
>
>I'm investgating how we might limit the number of emails per period that our
>exim server may forward to particular domains, or addresses.
>
>What we are doing is, on a per application basis, having severe or fatal
>problems ('disk full', etc) emailed to appropriate mobile phones via an sms
>gateway. However as contacts and systems increase in number, we need to move
>the throttle from the (many) applications to the mail server such that exim
>will, for instance, forward the first two such mails in every 6 hours, on the
>third send a prearranged message ('3 or more severe problems, please contact
>the office') and discard fourth and subsequent mails. (A maillist will
>already have sent emails to people's iboxes, so the thrid and subsequents are
>not completely lost).
>
>The soothing side for domestic harmony is obviously far more important than
>anything else!
>
>I've not been able to google up anything like the above, or see anything in
>the docs under 'limit' or 'throttle'. Before I knock something up in perl, is
>anyone here aware of anything in Exim that already provides the above?


Like someone said before, I don't know of any "native" method within
exim to do that. I have developed a perl script that does just what
you want. However,
- it's for exim3
- it's very specific to our own environment
- it's not been extensively tested
- some perl modules are needed
- some parts you won't directly need (it includes a parser/sorter
that reads a human readable config file containing domains, wild-
carded domains and network [in netmask writing style], all of which
can be negated [exim negation style]; the result is a sorted config
file to get "best" possible match [à la exim])
But,
- it's free! (as in GPL)
I believe it definitely won't do in a medium to high load environment.
Ours being a low load environment, especially for this SMS stuff, it
worked ok during my tests.
The whole thing is rather long (perl script, exim filters, exim
config tidbits), mail me in private if your're interested, there is
no use waisting bandwidth and list members time for this.

Regards,

Bernard Stern, SWITCH

PS: I'm currently on digest mode, so I'm not reacting too quickly (currently
busy with completely other stuff)

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