@Apinto...thank you for the detailed response and write up. Sorry for taking so long to reply. This is great stuff!!
1.) Yes, I completely agree. I just need to learn more about digitalocean and how to make duplicates of the server so I can try on a non production instance of it. I haven't done this yet with Digitalocean, as I am new to their service as well. Does Sentora have any kind of backup feature to dump all the current configuration settings so that if I had to I can rebuild a new server with a default Sentora install and then just import the saved config file...i.e. it would setup my domains, email addresses and forwards, etc? Of course I would still need to move my http files and mysql databases, but at least the other stuff could be imported? Or are you saying to simply clone the entire server? What do you do?
2.) The mail-tester tool is awesome...love it! Great recommendation...thank you! I got a score of 9, so I guess I am pretty good...I just got dinged on the plaintext or ssl pieces as I don't have those setup. So I guess I am good there.
3.) Another great link...thank you! I will test making these changes this weekend. I think this will solve my probably of the mailq getting large with emails stuck in there.
Thank you for all the great advice. Right now it seems all the mail in my mailq deferred is because of spammers sending emails to my myname@mydomain.com email address. They then get stuck in the queue because gmail is refusing to deliver them or says it will delay it due to it being spammy. My legitimate emails are getting through immediately, so it doesn't seem to affect anything. Basically it's just a bunch of spam junk that gmail is doing a good job of rejecting. The only problem is my server has it sitting in the queue to retry to send through, and gmail is just gonna block it again.
I guess I could write a script to simply remove any mail in the deferred list which has the "blocked" word in it. Or just periodically just clear the mailq with a cron job script. But I think the best way will be to modify the postfix settings so that it simply just discards emails after it attempts twice within an hour or something. I'm guessing most of the emails stuck in deferred queues these days are just spam emails that will never get through anyways.
For example here are two in my queue right now:
4D1F1148538 208 Thu May 7 11:49:50 Mayer_Enrique30@autoplates.com
(host alt1.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[64.233.191.26] said: 550-5.7.1 [104.xx.xx.xx 12] Our system has detected that this message is 550-5.7.1 likely unsolicited mail. To reduce the amount of spam sent to Gmail, 550-5.7.1 this message has been blocked. Please visit 550-5.7.1 http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answe...wer=188131 for 550 5.7.1 more information. j12si1743109icc.29 - gsmtp (in reply to end of DATA command))
myemail@gmail.com
E8D99148560 32637 Thu May 7 19:26:56 reitwi@blr.pin.philips.com
(host alt1.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[64.233.191.27] said: 552-5.7.0 This message was blocked because its content presents a potential 552-5.7.0 security issue. Please visit 552-5.7.0 http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answe...nswer=6590 to review our 552 5.7.0 message content and attachment content guidelines. fb6si1804369icb.68 - gsmtp (in reply to end of DATA command))
myemail@gmail.com
So these will never be passed through and these are basically the only emails I have stuck in my queue. So I guess the question is, do I need to bother with installing a spam protection software on my server or just change the postfix settings to get rid of these emails faster? Does gmail penalize me if my server keeps trying to send these? I think its better to leave the spam software off my server to reduce load on server and let gmail handle the filtering for me. It does a good of enough job already. Thoughts?
Thank you!
1.) Yes, I completely agree. I just need to learn more about digitalocean and how to make duplicates of the server so I can try on a non production instance of it. I haven't done this yet with Digitalocean, as I am new to their service as well. Does Sentora have any kind of backup feature to dump all the current configuration settings so that if I had to I can rebuild a new server with a default Sentora install and then just import the saved config file...i.e. it would setup my domains, email addresses and forwards, etc? Of course I would still need to move my http files and mysql databases, but at least the other stuff could be imported? Or are you saying to simply clone the entire server? What do you do?
2.) The mail-tester tool is awesome...love it! Great recommendation...thank you! I got a score of 9, so I guess I am pretty good...I just got dinged on the plaintext or ssl pieces as I don't have those setup. So I guess I am good there.
3.) Another great link...thank you! I will test making these changes this weekend. I think this will solve my probably of the mailq getting large with emails stuck in there.
Thank you for all the great advice. Right now it seems all the mail in my mailq deferred is because of spammers sending emails to my myname@mydomain.com email address. They then get stuck in the queue because gmail is refusing to deliver them or says it will delay it due to it being spammy. My legitimate emails are getting through immediately, so it doesn't seem to affect anything. Basically it's just a bunch of spam junk that gmail is doing a good job of rejecting. The only problem is my server has it sitting in the queue to retry to send through, and gmail is just gonna block it again.
I guess I could write a script to simply remove any mail in the deferred list which has the "blocked" word in it. Or just periodically just clear the mailq with a cron job script. But I think the best way will be to modify the postfix settings so that it simply just discards emails after it attempts twice within an hour or something. I'm guessing most of the emails stuck in deferred queues these days are just spam emails that will never get through anyways.
For example here are two in my queue right now:
4D1F1148538 208 Thu May 7 11:49:50 Mayer_Enrique30@autoplates.com
(host alt1.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[64.233.191.26] said: 550-5.7.1 [104.xx.xx.xx 12] Our system has detected that this message is 550-5.7.1 likely unsolicited mail. To reduce the amount of spam sent to Gmail, 550-5.7.1 this message has been blocked. Please visit 550-5.7.1 http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answe...wer=188131 for 550 5.7.1 more information. j12si1743109icc.29 - gsmtp (in reply to end of DATA command))
myemail@gmail.com
E8D99148560 32637 Thu May 7 19:26:56 reitwi@blr.pin.philips.com
(host alt1.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[64.233.191.27] said: 552-5.7.0 This message was blocked because its content presents a potential 552-5.7.0 security issue. Please visit 552-5.7.0 http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answe...nswer=6590 to review our 552 5.7.0 message content and attachment content guidelines. fb6si1804369icb.68 - gsmtp (in reply to end of DATA command))
myemail@gmail.com
So these will never be passed through and these are basically the only emails I have stuck in my queue. So I guess the question is, do I need to bother with installing a spam protection software on my server or just change the postfix settings to get rid of these emails faster? Does gmail penalize me if my server keeps trying to send these? I think its better to leave the spam software off my server to reduce load on server and let gmail handle the filtering for me. It does a good of enough job already. Thoughts?
Thank you!
