September 1, 2004 Archives

I'm working on the new mailing list system for perl.org. Want to test? Email somelist-subscribe@empty.us to subscribe to the test list, somelist-digest-subscribe@empty.us to subscribe to the digest version. Email somelist-help@empty.us for more commands.

If you subscribe, prepare to get a bunch of test mails, of course. :-) Also, if you subscribe, feel free to send test mails to the list.

Sverything should be working like a regular ezmlm list. The initial version (where it is at now) is just a system for managing the list configuration in database and for replacing all the .qmail-* files with one(!) .qmail-default file calling one program. It's also written so we can make qmail (or another mailer) just write to a Maildir and have Ballistic pick up the mails from there (it emulates qmail-local / qmail-command). It's great.

(if you are curious, then the code is in Subversion, use guest/guest for the login. No documentation yet and I wholeheartedly will not recommend that you try using it just yet).

It's fascinating to see how the mail server logs for the perl.org list server has changed over the years. Mostly because of all the new greylisting and rate limiting software. We don't mind the extra noise and server load on our side, qmail deals with it very efficiently. It's sad though to see all the broken software blocking our mail knowing there's someone on the other side who (presumably) wanted to get it but can't.

Greylisting software that gives us a temporary failure on the same mail for almost 2 weeks? A few other examples from the last hours of log files.

gmx.net / gmx.de's SPF checker is broken. Does anyone know a clueful admin there? If so, please tell them to fix their mail server if they want mail from the perl.org lists.

delivery 1875690: failure: 213.165.64.100 does not > 
   like recipient.
Remote host said: 553 5.7.1 {mx002} The recipient does >
  not accept mails from 'perl.org' over foreign mailservers.
553_5.7.1 According to the domain's SPF record your host >
  '63.251.223.186' is not a designated sender.
Giving up on 213.165.64.100.

The SPF checker says our records are OK ...

Other domains / services that are blocking us includes gawab.biz, bpsc.com.pl, I think those are because our new IP block from internap is in some blacklist.

There are also some exceptionally stupid mailers that are blocking mail from us because the mail server says "HELO $somename" where $somename isn't the same name as the PTR record for the IP address gives.

Mostly I don't care, but it nags me that some people can't get the list mail or gets it slowly because of their mail administrators or server vendors. (I want to say because they use clueless mail admins or vendors, but maybe that's too harsh).

Of course, you don't arrive at a morally profound motto like "don't be evil" without some serious thought. Here are some of the mottoes that Google tried out and rejected:

• Google! Dance with the devil, but go home before it gets serious.
• Google! We won't commit genocide in most circumstances.
• Google! Don't eat no babies.
• Google! We could do good, but we're like, whoa.
• Google! Begone, demon!

The Banality of Google