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Requests!

Printed From: LogSat Software
Category: Spam Filter ISP
Forum Name: Spam Filter ISP Support
Forum Description: General support for Spam Filter ISP
URL: https://www.logsat.com/spamfilter/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=4330
Printed Date: 30 November 2025 at 3:29pm


Topic: Requests!
Posted By: kspare
Subject: Requests!
Date Posted: 23 September 2004 at 2:32pm

Hi Roberto, I have two requests:

1.I run spamfilter in a tiered fashion on my server, and it's first and last in the tier. My problem is that if a user sends a message through via the web, and the first spamfilter service in the tier catches it and sends it through, it will get caught by the spamfilter that is last in the tier.

My request is that there be an option in spamfilter to decide whether or not it checks the database for messages to either delete or forward on.

2. I run and primary and backup gateway solution. When users forward on a message, I have both servers looking to a unc path and update the auto delivery text file. But it keeps getting cleared out and the file starts over! Very frustrating for myself and my users.

This could be solved by the above option and having that servers autowhilist file copied over to any other server.

Would it also be possible to add in the date for each address that is added in?

 

thanks

Kevin


Replies:
Posted By: LogSat
Date Posted: 25 September 2004 at 1:21am
Kevin,

We had tried in the past to have SpamFilter perform database lookups for each received email, but performance was incredibly degraded. No database platform was able to keep up with the queries in realtime as email was received. The only possible thing that did not affect performance was to "add" new records with quarantined emails, since that did not require search queries.

For that reason, what you ask for is unfortunately not an option for now. The following workaround is the only thing I could think of to bypass the issue.

When a user chooses to force-deliver an email, the ResolveSpam.asp page sets the field "Deliver" in the tblQuarantine to 1. This causes SpamFilter to deliver that email within a few seconds. You can modify the code in that ASP page to add a codeword in the subject line of that email. That codeword can then be added to the whitelist keyword list that SpamFilter uses to whitelist emails with user-defined words in them.

It won't be as simple as changing the "Subject" value in the tblQuarantine, as that's not the actual subject itself. The Subject that will appear in the email is the "Subject:" email header that is contained in the actual email source. That source is in the "Msg" field in the tblMsgs table. You'll need to modify the ASP page to add the codeword after the "Subject:" string.

For the auto delivery text files, we'll look into why the files gets cleared out. It should not, as a matter of fact SpamFilter should reload it as soon as it's been changed by an external application. WHile we look into this a temporary workaround is to have each SpamFilter write to its own file in a subdirectory underneath the SpamFilter directory. You can then use Windows's file replication to keep those subdirectories in sync.

Unfortunately I have a negative answer to the date request as well. For performance reasons we need to have the white/black list files contain only the data being searhed for, without any comments or other non-pertinent characters. Whilte adding the date is not posssible, the addition of an entry in the autowhitelist file is being logged by SpamFilter in the activity log. Every time that happens, the following entry is creaed in the logs:

Adding to AutoWhiteListForceDelivery.txt: from@email | to@email

so you can track down when it was done.

Roberto F. LogSat Software

Posted By: kspare
Date Posted: 25 September 2004 at 1:35am

Hi Roberto, I guess I didn't get what I was trying to say through.

When a user sends an email via the web interface. Spamfilter looks for the changed data and will take the email and forward it on. Can you not add an option in spamfilter to turn this function on or off?

Would it not add performance to spamfilter if it wasn't checking the quaruntine database to see if there were messages to be deleted or forwarded on?

Posted By: dcook
Date Posted: 25 September 2004 at 4:48pm

We have written an ASP.net solution that runs as a service for the autowhiteliet.  It takes the autowhitelist text files, looks for changes form our two spamfilters, addes them to a mySql table, removes duplicates then copies the end result over the spamfilter txt files.  The end result -- both of our servers have the same whitelist.  This works for us.Before we wrote this solution we were able to acomplish a simular solution using cmd files on a schedule.  The cmd files launched a command line sort utility that merged the autowhitelist files and removed duplicates. Hope this give you some ideas.

Dwight

Posted By: kspare
Date Posted: 25 September 2004 at 5:25pm

Hey Dwight, I thought about doing somthing similar, but thought I would bring up this problem, I have no doubt that we are the only ones who are running into this problem. If you were able to just have a computer that does nothing but deal with the database, you wouldn't have to setup creative solutions....

The best thing I could come up with was to have a single spamfilter service read the database for sends and deletes and create the whitelist and copy that whitelist to the rest of the servers.

Better yet, why can't the autowhitelist just be put into the database? Then we don't have to worry about propogating the whitelist around, it's just read from the database, no worries about text files getting deleted or having to share them.

Posted By: LogSat
Date Posted: 25 September 2004 at 10:52pm
Kevin,

I'm afraid I still may not have understoode the question at this point. In cases where there are multiple SpamFilter instances running on multiple servers, all accessing the same database, whenever a user chooses to force-delivery of an email, the smae server that originally blocked the email will be the one who will take care of delivering it. Each record in the tblQuarantine table has a "ServerID" field which indicates which server blocked it. Every few seconds SpamFilter issues a simple query to pull records with its ServerID that have the "Deliver" field set to one. This query is very fast and has no performance effect. Should there be any email for that server to force deliver, it will do so. If you wish to disable this option, rather than adding an option in SpamFilter, we leave it up to the users to disable the checkbox that causes this from the web interfaces. But this answer is too simple, so I'm guessing I did not understand the question again...

Roberto F.

LogSat Software

Posted By: LogSat
Date Posted: 25 September 2004 at 10:56pm
We thought about placing this whitelist in the database, but this could have limited flexibility to those users who run SpamFilter on multiple servers using a single database. That was the first reason for leaving it in a file. The second reason was for consistency, as all other black/white lists were already in files.

We'll be listening for input/criticism from user on this issue, as at the end SpamFilter is designed around everyone's needs. If the majority of users wish to have this list in the database, it will be made so!

Roberto F.

LogSat Software


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