The mailing list for listmasters using Sympa

[Hans Ekbrand <address@concealed>]

Hello sympa-users!

I am new to this list, and rather new sympa administrator as well.
Yesterday, one user sent some malformed requests to
address@concealed and recieved some 700 autogenerated answers,
before I noticed what was happening, and moved the files in
/var/spool/sympa/queue/ to another location.

The logfile of the MTA, exim, tells this story:

2002-03-08 11:12:17 16jHMG-0003Ab-00 <= address@concealed 
H=mailf.telia.com [194.22.194.25] P=esmtp S=1897 
id=000001c1c686$d3157280$3b25fcc3@oemcomputer
2002-03-08 11:12:18 16jHMG-0003Ab-00 => |/usr/lib/sympa/bin/queue sympa 
<address@concealed> D=system_aliases T=address_pipe
2002-03-08 11:12:18 16jHMG-0003Ab-00 Completed
2002-03-08 11:12:18 16jHMH-0003Ai-00 <= address@concealed U=sympa 
P=local S=625
2002-03-08 11:12:18 16jHMI-0003Ak-00 <= address@concealed U=sympa 
P=local S=625
2002-03-08 11:12:18 16jHMI-0003Ap-00 <= address@concealed U=sympa 
P=local S=625
2002-03-08 11:12:19 16jHMI-0003Ap-00 failed to open database lock file 
/var/spool/exim/db/wait-remote_smtp.lockfile: Permission denied (euid=8 
egid=8)
2002-03-08 11:12:19 16jHMI-0003Ap-00 => address@concealed R=lookuphost 
T=remote_smtp H=mail.telia.com [194.22.194.231]
2002-03-08 11:12:19 16jHMI-0003Ap-00 Completed
2002-03-08 11:12:19 16jHMI-0003Aw-00 <= address@concealed U=sympa 
P=local S=625
2002-03-08 11:12:19 16jHMI-0003Aw-00 failed to open database lock file 
/var/spool/exim/db/wait-remote_smtp.lockfile: Permission denied (euid=8 
egid=8)
2002-03-08 11:12:19 16jHMI-0003Aw-00 => address@concealed R=lookuphost 
T=remote_smtp H=mail.telia.com [194.22.190.101]
2002-03-08 11:12:19 16jHMI-0003Aw-00 Completed
2002-03-08 11:12:19 16jHMI-0003Ak-00 failed to open database lock file 
/var/spool/exim/db/wait-remote_smtp.lockfile: Permission denied (euid=8 
egid=8)
2002-03-08 11:12:19 16jHMI-0003Ak-00 => address@concealed R=lookuphost 
T=remote_smtp H=mail.telia.com [194.22.194.6]
2002-03-08 11:12:19 16jHMI-0003Ak-00 Completed

And so on...


While the sympa logfile has recorded the following

Mar  8 11:12:17 emac140 sympa[277]: Processing command with priority1, 
<000001c1c686$d3157280$3b25fcc3@oemcomputer>
Mar  8 11:12:17 emac140 sympa[277]: Parsing: E-post adresser
Mar  8 11:12:17 emac140 sympa[277]: Multipart message changed to singlepart
Mar  8 11:12:17 emac140 sympa[277]: Parsing: Hej
Mar  8 11:12:17 emac140 sympa[277]: No command found in message
Mar  8 11:12:18 emac140 sympa[277]: Processing command with priority 1, 
<000001c1c686$d3157280$3b25fcc3@oemcomputer>
Mar  8 11:12:18 emac140 sympa[277]: Parsing: E-post adresser
Mar  8 11:12:18 emac140 sympa[277]: Multipart message changed to singlepart
Mar  8 11:12:18 emac140 sympa[277]: Parsing: Hej
Mar  8 11:12:18 emac140 sympa[277]: No command found in message

And it goes on like that 3 times per second until it reaches 200. While 
continuing to generate messages, it now says:

Mar  8 11:13:22 emac140 sympa[277]: Processing command with priority 1, 
<000001c1c686$d3157280$3b25fcc3@oemcomputer>
Mar  8 11:13:22 emac140 sympa[277]: Parsing: E-post adresser
Mar  8 11:13:22 emac140 sympa[277]: Multipart message changed to singlepart
Mar  8 11:13:22 emac140 sympa[277]: Parsing: Hej
Mar  8 11:13:22 emac140 sympa[277]: No command found in message
Mar  8 11:13:22 emac140 sympa[277]: Ignoring message which would cause a 
loop, 200 messages sent to address@concealed
Mar  8 11:13:22 emac140 sympa[277]: Processing command with priority 1, 
<000001c1c686$d3157280$3b25fcc3@oemcomputer>
Mar  8 11:13:22 emac140 sympa[277]: Parsing: E-post adresser
Mar  8 11:13:22 emac140 sympa[277]: Multipart message changed to singlepart
Mar  8 11:13:22 emac140 sympa[277]: Parsing: Hej
Mar  8 11:13:22 emac140 sympa[277]: No command found in message
Mar  8 11:13:22 emac140 sympa[277]: Ignoring message which would cause a 
loop, 201 messages sent to address@concealed

And so on... The last one was this

Mar  9 03:43:54 emac140 sympa[277]: Processing command with priority 1, 
<000001c1c686$d3157280$3b25fcc3@oemcomputer>
Mar  9 03:43:54 emac140 sympa[277]: Parsing: E-post adresser
Mar  9 03:43:55 emac140 sympa[277]: Multipart message changed to singlepart
Mar  9 03:43:55 emac140 sympa[277]: Parsing: Hej
Mar  9 03:43:55 emac140 sympa[277]: No command found in message
Mar  9 03:43:55 emac140 sympa[277]: Ignoring message which would cause a 
loop, 177691 messages sent to address@concealed

When I noticed what was happening and stopped the sympa daemon.

There were three messages in /var/spool/sympa/queue/ before I stopped
the daemon and moved them, but as far as I can tell, only the first
have "Hej" as found in the sympa log, and that one is probably
"quilty" in some way.

The messages can be found as

http://sociologi.cjb.net/symba/queue/sympa.1015582337.12194
http://sociologi.cjb.net/symba/queue/sympa.1015582465.13201
http://sociologi.cjb.net/symba/queue/sympa.1015582500.13208


Now, since I am new to sympa, I am not in position to know whether
this is caused by a misconfiguration from my part, or should be
reported as a sympa bug.

What do you think about it?


-- 

Hans Ekbrand