Los Angeles Free-Net Information

Something happened this morning. For about an hour before noon today I was unable to access most of the internet include the LAFN servers. I couldn't even get to Google or this blog. I am hearing of others encountering the same problem. I am not seeing anything being identified as the cause yet. I am not sure it affected all users.

If you are having problems accessing your mail, your mailbox is probably too large. We have always recommended deleting mail from your mailbox when its downloaded. Now that we are on a slower system, it becomes critical to keep your mailbox size down. Otherwise, the server has to parse the entire mailbox to build an index of the messages for your mail program. If the mailbox is too large, it takes longer than your mail program will wait and it then drops the connection. At that point the server generally leaves over a temporary file because it was terminated abruptly and thus can't be restarted properly. I have to manually remove the temporary file before you can access mail. If you request the temporary file be removed but still have auto download running with your mail program, the problem just returns. The only way to access the mailbox is to use the Mailbox Utility function. Do note, it can't function if the temporary file still exists either. If the mailbox is too large, even it will time out.

There are issues with both DSPAM and TMDA that have been caused by updates to both products and loss of compatibility with our mail server. As a result we are testing a new approach to handling both of them. There will be some changes in how they function. At this time the following appear to the changes. Keep in mind, we are still testing this approach. DSPAM - the addresses you use to report spam or ham (not spam) will most likely become: user_id+spam@lafn.org and user_id+notspam@lafn.org. For example: for me to report spam would be bc979+spam@lafn.org. TMDA - the confirmation process no longer works with our incoming mail server. Actually, I am not all that confident that it worked after the previous system update. We will be eliminating the confirmation request email to the originator. You will still have all the remaining whitelist, blacklist, and quarantine features. You will be the only one who can move a message from the quarantine to your mailbox. There is still a lot of testing required to be sure that mail is being handled properly before we put these into production. In addition, the FAQ will need a major update and we will send out a bulletin with all the changes when they occur.

When we switched to new hardware, the network interface got changed and that didn't get updated in the spam blocking. As a result the drive-by spammers were getting through again. That has been corrected. You should see a significant reduction in spam later today.