Hello,
I am new to the list but I do need some help with exim.
I run a small independent web hosting company with under 20 servers.
I have 2 designated mail servers (prim & secondary). Secondary server
also acts as a smart host (mail gateway for entire network) in addition
to some other functions. The problem is that the server basically
overloaded. I decided do designate a separate server to act just as mail
gateway and nothing else. My challenge is to configure it such away that
it will do it very efficiently.
Some additional background on my network. All my servers use debian
therefor I use exim for mail services. Network itself does not generate
much email out but 99% of outgoing email is bounced spam.
While I been using exim for a while, I never really become an expert on
it. I basically use default configuration. It works but I never been
entirely happy with how it works. Note, this is not a complain about
exim as software rather my luck of knowledge how to configure it.
It became a time to take the issue under control and I seriously hope to
receive some help from this list.
The way I see it I am facing 2 issues right now:
- I am getting too much email (junk);
- I am bouncing to much junk back, mostly to the fake
addresses and try so hard that my server just cannot handle it.
I decided to separate the issues, and address one at the time starting
with taking under control outgoing email.
My first step is to designate a gateway host that will do just handling
outgoing email traffic. here are my first 2 questions:
- The default debian installation offers exim 3. Should I conceder
upgrade to exim 4? is any particular advantages in exim 4 for handling
outgoing email over older version of exim.
- Right now mail spool uses ext3 file system. It seamed to have a huge
impact on performance even after I set the journelling option to
data=writeback Is any "preferred" file system to use for mail spool? or
maybe there are some recommended parameters I should use while formating
my partition.
This is just a beginning of my questions! I have much more but do not
want the initial email to be too long.
I would like to thank everybody who read this till this point and am
looking forward to some responses.
--
Genady
