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Subject: Re: RBL use and unavailable RBL servers
From: Brad Knowles (blkskynet.be)
Date: Thu Nov 02 2000 - 17:48:12 CST

At 10:22 AM +1100 2000/11/2, Andrew McNamara wrote:

> There are a bunch of other timeouts you can tune, but the connect one
> does it for me:
>
> smtp_connect_timeout = 30
> smtp_data_done_timeout = 600
> smtp_data_init_timeout = 120
> smtp_data_xfer_timeout = 180
> smtp_helo_timeout = 300
> smtp_mail_timeout = 300
> smtp_quit_timeout = 300
> smtp_rcpt_timeout = 300

        Our machines occasionally get driven so hard (usually when being
hit by a massive junkmail attack) that they may well take longer than
this to respond. You should not be exacerbating the problem that a
site may be suffering for reasons that may be beyond their control.

        The default values that postfix and sendmail use are derived from
RFC 1123, which have been determined via many years of long and hard
experience. Deviate from those values at your own peril.

        That said, if you're running a two-level mail server system (such
as I have suggested before), then you can safely reduce many of the
timeouts for the "fast" server(s) that may use very expensive SSD for
the mail queue, so long as you use the standard timeouts (or perhaps
even somewhat more generous timeouts) on the "slow" server(s) that
use actual rotating media and are designed to handle very large
backlogged queues relatively gracefully. 

--
   These are my opinions -- not to be taken as official Skynet policy
======================================================================
Brad Knowles, <blkskynet.be>                || Belgacom Skynet SA/NV
Systems Architect, Mail/News/FTP/Proxy Admin || Rue Colonel Bourg, 124
Phone/Fax: +32-2-706.13.11/12.49             || B-1140 Brussels
http://www.skynet.be                         || Belgium

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