Plenty of Unknown Users

[Joe Smith]

On Wed, 28 Jul 2004, Mustafa N. Deeb wrote:

> my MailScanner is installed on a gateway, at the moment i'm being
> bombarded by spam email to users that don't exist on the domain,
>
> basically what happens is that the email bounces from my mail server ,
> get stuck on the mail gateway , filling up the queue, and since it is
> alot it is causing delays on delivery.
>
> what is the best Practice for handling such a situation?

If you are using Sendmail as the MTA, look into the /etc/mail/access file
setup for setting up known users.  Be sure to put the forwarded domain
names into the relay-domains file.  This can cut down your load
significantly as t he MTA will reject all those unknown addresses before
they even get into the system.


Sample:

/etc/mail/access

To:bob at somedomain.com      RELAY
To:mary at somedomain.com     RELAY
To:somedomain.com  ERROR:5.1.1:550 User Unknown

/etc/mail/relay-domains

somedomain.com

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