OT: Blocking oversized messages during SMTP transaction

[Jim Holland]

Hi

On Wed, 15 Jun 2005, Scott Silva wrote:

> > However some systems such as Yahoo and, surprisingly, GoogleMail, fail to
> > use the SIZE extension when sending us mail.  The result is that we accept
> > large messages from them as we don't know what the message size is going
> > to be in advance, and then when the specified size limit is reached for
> > the temporary mail file, sendmail still stupidly insists on continuing
> > with the transaction even though it will no longer write to disk.
 
> Maybe a better option would be to rent a virtual server out on the net
> to act as a mail gateway. That way you could kill the large messages, as
> well as the bandwidth choking spam and viruses, and then pass the
> "clean" messages on to your server. I think several people on this list
> host servers, and it might not be too expensive. It would be cheaper
> then more bandwidth!
 
Thanks - this is a good suggestion.  I wish I could do it as proposed, but
unfortunately, as those who have followed what is going on in Zimbabwe at
the moment may appreciate, it is not possible - foreign exchange for such
purposes is not available via legal channels.  However we do have a local
partner who has more bandwidth than we do who acts as our secondary MX.  
I will experiment with setting up a 450 error message for incoming Yahoo
mail to make Yahoo servers leave us alone and dump their mail on our
secondary.

Regards

Jim Holland
System Administrator
MANGO - Zimbabwe's non-profit e-mail service

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