[Mimedefang] Spam to inactive accounts

David T Hollis dhollis at davehollis.com
Fri Oct 18 13:14:00 EDT 2002


Alberto.daSilva at rmb.co.za wrote:

>>Yes, the trick would to extract the active user information into a
>>accessdb/virtusertable/aliases format, and I suspect that many people are
>>doing just that.  I'm doing that to a limited degree already.  It's just
>>that's it's a _manual_ process that must be done on the end mail system
>>    
>>
>and
>  
>
>>the process differes depending on what type of end mail system is being
>>used.
>>    
>>
>
>We got around the manual part by using cron to once a day run a
>perl script (200 lines) to extract the addressbook from the
>backend e-mail system and convert it into accessdb/virtusertable/aliases
>format.
>
>  
>
>>I think that the suggestion was to create a portable and automatic method
>>    
>>
>on
>  
>
>>the MIMEDefang side to add similar functionality without relying on
>>    
>>
>sendmail
>  
>
>>or manually generating access / virtual user / alias lists. I'm sure the
>>many people already have an acceptable procedure in place for generating
>>these files... I don't.  I'm also lazy.  And I also like to program
>>    
>>
>(small
>  
>
>>programs) :-)  That's why I'm interested in an interface that will do all
>>    
>>
>of
>  
>
>>the work for me.
>>    
>>
>
>I'm not sure how portable you can make it, since there are a number of
>backend
>e-mail systems - probably the most potable way is to use ldap (which is
>already
>supported by sendmail)
>
>  
>
>>That way when a new user is added, I don't make any changes--the first
>>    
>>
>email
>  
>
>>send to the user will automatically add an entry for that email address.
>>Then when that user leaves, cached information about that user will
>>automatically expire and then user will automatically be switched from a
>>valid to an invalid recipient.  When mail eventually stops going to that
>>mailbox, that entry will automatically be deleted.
>>
>>That seems like a pretty nice framework to me.
>>    
>>
>
>Nice idea for activating new users.
>
>I still feel that this can be fully accomplished using sendmail only and
>not
>duplicate the functionality in MD.
>
>You need a script/tool to extract from backend e-mail to
>accessdb/virtusertable/aliases.
>
>Regards,
>
>Alberto
>
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>  
>
The portability really does come from sendmail.  It isn't something that 
needs to be in MIMEDefang, it's not it's job.  If there was a nice 
collection of standard scripts for pulling info from various mail 
systems and putting it into the right format for sendmail, that would 
handle it for everyone.  Sendmails job is the mail delivery to include 
address checking.  MIMEDefangs role is to ensure that the messages are 
clean.





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