Presently, this only effects *@eskimo.com addresses.  I have not yet moved *@eskimo.net and hosted domains to the new system.

The daemonized version of spam assassin was not working as documented.  In particular, it rejected anything above the spam threshold rather than tagging and it did not read user preference files.

I’ve totally changed how spamassassin is “wired in” to the mail system now.  Instead of using a milter that talked to spamd, spamassassin is now being called by procmail for ever incoming mail, it tags it, then anything above the spam threshold is placed in a ‘spam’ mailbox.

In your directory there will be a subdirectory called .spamassassin, and in it a file called user_prefs.  By editing this file, you can change the threshold score, whitelist or blacklist users, or change any spamassassin rules.

If you find this directory not owned by you, please contact support and we will fix that.  Some files were created with the wrong permissions early on.

Isomedia is doing network maintenance May 16th between midnight and 4AM which may briefly interrupt connectivity to our equipment at the co-location facility.  Any interruption that may occur should not last more than a few minutes.  Please avoid scheduling any critical activities during this time frame.

We will soon be offering servers for lease.  These will be virtual machines using KVM under CentOS 6.4, running a guest OS of CentOS 6.4.  These will basically be exactly the same platform as the web, ftp server, and shellx shell server here (and other services are being moved to this platform).

All the details haven’t been decided yet, but basically this will offer you the capability of having a server for your own needs, upon which you have root access and can configure however you like within the bounds of the IP addresses provided and that it not be used for anything illegal or unethical or negatively impact customer service such as things which continuously consume CPU such as bitcoin mining, seti@home, etc.

We will not be allowing public IRC servers for the time being because of their tendency to draw denial of service attacks that interfere with all other services, but games, e-commerce, most other applications will be allowed.

Things like MMORPGs, E-commerce, your own web hosting setup, etc, will be okay.  I would very much like your ideas and comments concerning this in the early stages so that I can design the product around your needs.

Business and Personal web hosting plans have been changed.

I created these plans with a transfer quota after which there were charges for data export because we have costs for data transferred and at the lower costs of these plans verses virtual domains, I couldn’t just work the averages like we do with virtual domains.

I realize this creates an uncertainty that many people are uncomfortable with, so I’ve changed the terms of these plans so that rather than having a potentially huge data export fee, you will only be required to upgrade to a plan that will support the amount of traffic your site generates in the event your traffic exceeds the plans data quota.

We haven’t had a single unplanned outage of the web service since replacing the server back on December 7th, 2012 and the machine is fast, has current software, and quite a few capabilities.  I had really expected web hosting sales to be better.  I am hoping this change will help.

If there are other capabilities that we lack that are important to your needs, please contact us at support@eskimo.com or on our forum or BBS, or even use the comments here, and let me know.

I am still working out configuration issues with the first of three new mail servers.

Today I discovered that I had neglected to specify a maximum message size so Postfix defaulted to 10MB.  We had the old server set to 50MB, and I’ve now corrected this.

Some of you are posting on Yahoo Groups.  I am restricted from using social media at present and so I can not view or respond to those posts there.

Please bring your mail and other service concerns to my attention by either e-mailing support@eskimo.com or giving us a call at 1-800-246-6874, or 206-812-0051.  You can also visit our web forum at http://www.eskimo.com/forums.

When you have a problem with e-mail, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not send generic messages like “email is being blocked”, or all my friends can’t e-mail me.  E-mail problems are almost always specific to addresses or at the very least specific servers and when logs show we’ve processed 2 million messages a day successfully, then a statement that e-mail isn’t working is not meaningful.

Instead, please provide the “From:” and “To:” addresses, the date the problem occurred, and if you got a bounce message, what the message said.  This will allow me to determine what the problem is and if it’s on our end, to fix it, and if it’s not on our end, to forward the necessary information to the originating site for them to be able to fix it.

Last year I replaced our web server, and initially we had some configuration issues like these to nail down.  I’d like to point out that they were resolved and we haven’t had a single web outage since.  The same will be true of mail once these issues are worked out, but switching to an entirely different hardware and software platform is not without it’s challenges.

I am in the process of replacing Eskimo’s mail servers.  I’ve got one new server up and running for inbound, working on the 2nd, and then the client mail server will be next.

It’s a bit messy and that is pretty much unavoidable.  The new servers are i7-2600 based, running CentOS 6.4, and completely different software.  They are using Postfix instead of Sendmail, and are using clam-av and spam-assassin.  They use Procmail as the delivery agent, hence it will no longer be necessary to have a .forward to a procmail_wrapper; everything will automatically direct through Procmail for delivery.

When everything is done, you will be able to train spam-assassin by mailing examples of good mail and bad mail to addresses for that purpose or by pressing a spam button in webmail.  You will be able to set individually the threshold at which mail is considered spam and specify the handling of it via procmail rules.

Viruses are rejected outright but a mail is sent back to the sender telling them there mail was rejected and which virus it contained so that they can take the necessary actions to disinfect their computer.

I urge your patience while this process takes place; in the end it will be worth it, far less spam, less false positives, and more control over your mail, and the client server will have proper certificates so picky clients will work properly.  But getting there is somewhat messy.  It will probably take 2-3 weeks to complete this transition.

Because the software is completely new, this is a learning curve for me as well.  There are many components and unanticipated interactions can occur.

Due to failure of the old SS-10 running RedHat 4.2, UUCP infrastructure has been upgraded to a virtual machine running on an I7-2600 platform.  The new OS is CentOS 6.4 Linux.  The UUCP is now Taylor UUCP version 1.07, and the MTA is Postfix.

I haven’t been selling UUCP to new customers in need of that service because I was afraid that 20-year old box was going to die soon and I had not been successful at getting UUCP to work properly with modern Sendmail.  Using Postfix as an alternative provided a solution.

We will now be offering UUCP connectivity to new customers, either by local dial-up or over TCP at an annual rate of $264.

If you are interested, please e-mail support@eskimo.com or give us a call at 1-206-812-0051 or Toll Free 1-800-246-6874.

Comcast has taken to blocking port 25, the normal outgoing SMTP port. You can work around the problem by changing your outgoing SMTP port either to port 2525 or port 587.

I would also encourage you to let Comcast know this is unacceptable.  Otherwise, they may continue to block additional ports and your Internet functionality will continue to degrade.

The maintenance activity for tonight has been completed.  The newer Intel servers including shellx and the web server, the name servers, and the main file server are all updated to Centos 6.4 Linux.

Our web server has been upgraded to Apache 2.4.4.  This is mainly a bug and security fix.  It fixes several instances that can cause Apache to core dump as well as some cross-scripting exploits.