Re: Trouble using "sendmail" w/ inetd for incoming mail

[Ken Pizzini <ken@ember.spry.com>]

> 	How about integrating tcp-wrapper into the server itself ?
> 
> 	By the way, why it is needed ?   To provide a stopgap against
> 	SPAMers ?  Would not some smarter way be better ?  Say, to
> 	accept all doubtfull messages, and then to place them into
> 	some manual pre-inspection area instead of normal router ?
> 	(I am doubtfull of its effectiveness, as at SPAM-war there
> 	 is no advanced warning on which to add wrapper rules...)

It was the fact that Zmailer had an independent smtpserver
process which was capable of being placed under xinetd control
that first got me interested in porting Zmailer to some of
our machines here.  Other features have since made it my mail
server of choice, but that was the first attaction.

I can't speak to tcp-wrapper, but I've put smtpserver under xinetd
control for two different purposes:
   * On a limited access machine, to only accept connections from
	 valid domains.  (only_from = xxx.com)
   * On a machine for which mail was a low-importance addition,
	 to ensure that its resource consumption did not interfere
	 with the important work.  (instances=3)

And I can see that if a site is being harrassed by someone
attempting to overload system resources then an interim
blockage of connections from a set of problem hosts could keep
the local machine running smoothly while actions against the
malicious person are being taken.

		--Ken Pizzini