Duplicated messages

Wed Jul 29 13:13:11 UTC 2015

Hi all,

So I have resolved getting the missing mails delivered from the quarantine.
The main problem stopping this from being easy from the command line was
the fact that "Quarantine Whole Messages As Queue Files = no" was set,
whilst the MTA in use is exim. I've changed that setting to "yes" now...

I've read that if its postfix you can just send that "message" file back to
the queue, I guess the headers are kept with the message in the quarantine
with postfix. With exim they seem to be split between the database and the
message file.

I first put the message ID's in to a file "idlist.txt" that had been put in
to the quarantine with the "Other Bad Content Detected" error (every single
email after a certain time on that day), then pulled the header from the db
and combined them with the following simple loop;

-------
#!/bin/bash
for msgid in `cat idlist.txt`;
do
    /usr/bin/mysql -u root --password=XXXXX -N -e "select headers from
maillog where id='$msgid' limit 1 \G;" mailscanner | grep -v "* 1. row *"
>> with-headers/$msgid &&
    /bin/cat 20150724/$msgid/message >> with-headers/$msgid
done
-------

now I'm sending them out slowly (every 30 secs) with another simple loop...

-------
#!/bin/bash
for msgs in with-headers/*;
do
    cat $msgs | exim -ti
    mv $msgs with-headers-processed/
    sleep 30
done
-------

So at least the missing mail is now going to users.. but I'm no closer to
knowing exactly why this happened in the first place. Jeremy mentioned a
known "taint" issue? Can anyone elaborate on that?

I've also found now that Archive is enabled, and is set to "Archive Mail =
" which I guess just defaults to the quarantine dir, as they seem to go to
the "nonspam" folder in there (interestingly in a exim usable format!!)
That couldn't have anything to do with the loop that appears to have killed
my mailcleaner DB? I wouldn't think so as this has been running for years
like this and not had this issue before but thought it worth mentioning.

Any other theories or places to check for clues? unfortunately the mail.log
of the day got removed by the first person looking at the issue to try to
free up space as it was over 4GB.

Regards,
Mark

On 28 July 2015 at 17:07, Mark Adams <mark at workshopit.co.uk> wrote:

> Hi Jerry,
>
> If you wanted to pull a bunch of items from the quarantine from the
> command line and re-process them through Mailcleaner, how would you do that?
>
> Regards,
> Mark
>
> On 28 July 2015 at 17:00, Jerry Benton <jerry.benton at mailborder.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I am not sure on what parameters Mailwatch calls and logs “other bad
>> content”.  The MailScanner setting is "Notify Senders of Other Blocked
>> Content”. Mailwatch could be calling a trigger of a spam RBL “other blocked
>> content” for all we know. You are going to have to follow the below
>> suggestion and enable debug or see if you can get an idea from
>> /var/log/maillog.
>>
>> -
>> Jerry Benton
>> www.mailborder.com
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jul 28, 2015, at 11:49 AM, Mark Adams <mark at workshopit.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> Of course, apologies - I'm using Mailwatch. Any advice on how to most
>> efficiently pull things out of quarantine via command-line? (note they are
>> stored as "message" rather than queue items, that would be too easy..)
>>
>> I don't have Archive enabled, everything has gone in to the quarantine
>> because of this "Other Bad Content Detected"
>>
>> On 28 July 2015 at 16:43, Jerry Benton <jerry.benton at mailborder.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> By the way, there is no web interface in the MailScanner package. There
>>> are 3rd party products of course (I created one myself) but those questions
>>> would need to be directed to those support forums or mailing lists.
>>>
>>> -
>>> Jerry Benton
>>> www.mailborder.com
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jul 28, 2015, at 11:34 AM, Mark Adams <mark at workshopit.co.uk> wrote:
>>>
>>> How do I try send them through again? At the moment they are just
>>> "message" in the quarantine, and if I try open them through the web
>>> interface it times out, I guess because its trying to open each one of the
>>> dupes?
>>>
>>> "Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in
>>> /var/www/html/mailscanner/functions.php on line 1022"
>>>
>>> On 28 July 2015 at 16:31, Jeremy McSpadden <jeremy at fluxlabs.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>>  Yup. Turn on debug and watch it pass through. Last time I saw these
>>>> it was a taint issue .. Which I am assuming has been fixed by now.
>>>>
>>>>  --
>>>> Jeremy McSpadden | Flux Labs
>>>> Local - 850-250-5590x501 <850-250-5590;501> | Mobile - 850-890-2543
>>>> Fax - 850-254-2955 | Toll Free - 877-699-FLUX
>>>> Web - http://www.fluxlabs.net
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Jul 28, 2015, at 10:20 AM, Mark Adams <mark at workshopit.co.uk> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>   Hi Jeremy,
>>>>
>>>>  Are you saying that something in these messages is crashing
>>>> Mailscanner? Everything seems to be OK right now, but all 70 of the emails
>>>> (all different types and from different servers) are now in the quarantine
>>>> because of "Other Bad Content Detected" with the report "MailScanner:
>>>> Message attempted to kill MailScanner". It seems it succeeded...
>>>>
>>>> On 28 July 2015 at 15:59, Jeremy McSpadden <jeremy at fluxlabs.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>  It's probably looping/crashing mailscanner. Drop MS into debug mode
>>>>> and watch logs.
>>>>>
>>>>>  --
>>>>> Jeremy McSpadden | Flux Labs
>>>>> Local - 850-250-5590x501 <850-250-5590;501> | Mobile - 850-890-2543
>>>>> Fax - 850-254-2955 | Toll Free - 877-699-FLUX
>>>>> Web - http://www.fluxlabs.net
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Jul 28, 2015, at 9:54 AM, Mark Adams <mark at workshopit.co.uk> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>   An update to this, the "2 or 4" duplicates showing in the exim log
>>>>> look like they are actually just separate deliveries to other addresses, so
>>>>> not duplicates. In 1 example there is a single email with 2 recipients (2
>>>>> entries in exim log) that has over 1500+ entries in the mailcleaner DB. It
>>>>> looks like this email hasn't been delivered to the recipient at all either.
>>>>>
>>>>> On 28 July 2015 at 15:14, Mark Adams <mark at workshopit.co.uk> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi All,
>>>>>>
>>>>>>  If anyone could provide advice that would be great. Running Debian
>>>>>> Wheezy Mailscanner 4.79.11-2.2
>>>>>>
>>>>>>  Our incoming dir filled up just before the weekend so we didn't see
>>>>>> the issue for a couple of days. Normally we would just shut down
>>>>>> mailcleaner and delete the dir then start it up again and all would be ok.
>>>>>> However on this occasion, the root partition also become full because of
>>>>>> the mysql DB (it got to 14G in 2 days..).
>>>>>>
>>>>>>  For some reason everything started duplicating. I can see lots of
>>>>>> incoming messages in the exim logs with duplication (2 or 4 of what looks
>>>>>> like the same email) but in the mailscanner database there is hundreds of
>>>>>> each email listed (apparently there was over 9 million messages delivered
>>>>>> on 1 day compared with the server average of about 1500!)
>>>>>>
>>>>>>  It seems like some sort of loop, but afaik nothing specific was
>>>>>> changed in the config apart from the fact incoming became full. Space has
>>>>>> been cleared on the root partition and incoming, and everything appears to
>>>>>> be running as normal right now.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>  Any advice on debugging this would be much appreciated, also, how
>>>>>> best should I clear out the DB of all the dupes?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>  Thanks!
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
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