Chris, Thanks again for all your time and knowledge. Incidentally, how have you configured your priorities in GFI? Right now, I have Whitelist at the top, but I will change to Directory Harvesting per your last email. --Jason _____ From: Chris Wall [mailto:Chris.Wall@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2005 12:16 PM To: [ExchangeList] Subject: [exchangelist] RE: GFI Mail Essentials 11 - NDR's and SMTP Mail Queue http://www.MSExchange.org/ Jason, Most spam is from 'Spoofed' e-mail accounts, therefore when an NDR is sent to the Spoofed e-mail account (and of course they will fail due to the fake address) it is retried for delivery based upon your SMTP settings. By default, I believe that mail is retried for 48 hours before being deleted. Here is what I have done to ease the issue: 1. Use the 'Directory Harvest' feature of GFI a. This verifies that an e-mail address exists in your domain via an LDAP lookup before GFI will continue processing the mail for delivery and additional spam checks. You want to make sure this is the first check that is done before all other Spam filters (you can prioritize GFI checks in version 11) b. If any mail triggers the 'Directory Harvest' check, configure this to NOT send and NDR. i. The only downfall here is if someone sends a legitimate e-mail and mistypes one of your user's e-mail addresses, they will not be notified that the mail was not delivered. This has not been an issue for me yet. ii. The Directory Harvest feature is so efficient for our organization that very few e-mails (in comparison) trigger the other SPAM checks. 2. Turn off NDR's for the SPF, Blacklist and DNS Blacklist options. (if you have them enabled) a. 99% of the e-mails that trigger these filters are known spammers. Who cares if they get an NDR. 3. Turn on NDR's for the Bayesian, Key Word and Header Checking options 4. Set up and Automated task to delete your Badmail directory on a nightly, or weekly basis. 5. You can also play around with the default settings for 'Retry Mail Delivery' so that they are not retried for 48 hours. I have adjusted mine to try for only 24 hours before failing the message. This should help minimize the amount of mail that builds up in your queues and still notify the senders when they are being filtered out... Regards, Chris _____ From: Jason Davis [mailto:JDavis@xxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2005 2:57 PM To: [ExchangeList] Subject: [exchangelist] GFI Mail Essentials 11 - NDR's and SMTP Mail Queue http://www.MSExchange.org/ Hello all, I thought I'd send you a quick note regarding my findings today: This issue may have been a "no-brainer" for you guys, but I rebuilt my original GFI server yesterday (Mail Essentials 11) and tested the SMTP gateway for a few hours to keep an eye on the queues - no problems. Then, I installed the latest build version for Mail Essentials 11. When I got home, I decided to check the GFI server remotely to see how the queues were doing. I found a lot of emails piling up in the queues as well as 1000's of emails piling up in the Badmail folder! Yikes!!! After scratching my head for a few hours and doing some research online, I proceeded to disable a feature which I had implemented in the GFI software for each SPAM filter. The feature involved sending back a NDR for each SPAM filter (under the "Other" tab - "Generate Non Delivery Report <NDR>). Each SPAM filter (i.e. SPF, Bayesian, etc, etc.) had that option checked! Once I unchecked that option for each filter, I had to delete the mail in the Badmail folder and purge the SMTP mail queue. Well, I've been running GFI since that change and my queue is purging fine and there have been NO emails in the Badmail folder. Alas, I think that that was causing my problem this past weekend! Does that make sense to you guys? I'm sure it's a lack of knowledge on my part, but I didn't realize that generating NDR's would cause my mail queue to get "backed-up" as well as creating thousands of emails in my Badmail folder. I could see how this would bring the GFI server to its knees after a while. Does anyone have that option checked to "Generate Non Delivery Reports"?? If so, how are your servers handling it? I'd be very curious...... It seems to me that GFI would not put that option in its software, if it was going to cause such a problem? Hmmmm......... Thanks for any comments, in advance! --Jason Davis ------------------------------------------------------ List Archives: http://www.webelists.com/cgi/lyris.pl?enter=exchangelist Exchange Newsletters: http://www.msexchange.org/pages/newsletter.asp ------------------------------------------------------ Visit TechGenix.com for more information about our other sites: http://www.techgenix.com ------------------------------------------------------ You are currently subscribed to this MSEXchange.org Discussion List as: Chris.Wall@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe visit http://www.webelists.com/cgi/lyris.pl?enter=exchangelist Report abuse to listadmin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx ------------------------------------------------------ List Archives: http://www.webelists.com/cgi/lyris.pl?enter=exchangelist Exchange Newsletters: http://www.msexchange.org/pages/newsletter.asp ------------------------------------------------------ Visit TechGenix.com for more information about our other sites: http://www.techgenix.com ------------------------------------------------------ You are currently subscribed to this MSEXchange.org Discussion List as: jdavis@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe visit http://www.webelists.com/cgi/lyris.pl?enter=exchangelist Report abuse to listadmin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx