OIT SysCore

The new IMAP/POP servers have arrived and are being installed. These will replace the current servers which are Dell 2650s running RedHat. The new servers are Sun X4100 systems with 8GB of RAM and a total of four 2.6GHz CPU cores. They will run Solaris 10 as the operating system.

As a side note, once these servers are installed and put into production (3 are actually already installed and in production, we need to install the last 2) our primary core infrastructure (AFS, Mail - including SMTP, IMAP/POP and spam filtering, DNS, LDAP, and Web) will all be running Solaris with just a few minor systems still running Linux. In time and where appropriate, those systems will also be migrated to Solaris 10. Beyond that, we're looking at the possibility of running Linux systems (such as the GL login servers) in a virtualized environment under Solaris (using BrandZ)

Blackboard went down again ~12:40 11/22 due to a Java memory overflow

Ran a bunch of database checks to see if I could find a possible inconsistancy within the blackboard database.Found nothing... Well, at least nothing interesting.

OIT’s Core Systems group has put in place an implementation of greylisting on the central email servers over the thanksgiving holiday weekend. Greylisting is another method of combating spam which relies on the methods that most spammers are currently using to send their messages by returning a temporary error to a mail server the first time it attempts to communicate with a particular recipient. While well behaved mail servers will simply retry sending their message within a short period of time, spammers won’t, causing your wanted messages to get through but leaving the spam on the floor.

Like any anti-spam technique, greylisting does have a negative side effect. The side effect is that a delay – sometimes significant – may be incurred on the first time a message is sent to a UMBC recipient from a particular server. However, after the initial message does get through (after a short timeout period), messages from that mail server should flow smoothly to your mailbox from that sender. While our servers are configured to accept mail 2 to 5 minutes after the initial attempt is made – the remote server is responsible for scheduling the re-try.

We’d like your feedback on how the greylisting is working.

(read more for details.)

Our 'webauth' servers (umbc's web single signon software) have been migraded from Sun Netra T1 servers (really old boxes) to Dell 2650's running Solaris 10.

They will also be our Shibboleth IDP & AA servers as soon as that functionality is tested.