You probably have experienced one kind of abuse or another of your e-mail address yourself in the past, e.g. when you received an error message saying that a message allegedly sent by you could not be delivered to the recipient, although you never sent a message to that address. Or you nay have received spam mails which have been sent from your e-mail ID.

These types of SPAM technique are called Sender address forgery or Spoof Mail. It is a threat to users and companies.

There is a Solution for that!

SPF: Sender Policy Framework

The Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an open standard specifying a technical method to prevent sender address forgery. More precisely, the current version of SPF — called SPFv1 or SPF Classic — protects the envelope sender address, which is used for the delivery of messages.

Even more precisely, SPFv1 allows the owner of a domain to specify their mail sending policy, e.g. which mail servers they use to send mail from their domain. The technology requires two sides to play together:

(1) The domain owner publishes this information in an SPF record in the domain’s DNS zone, and when someone else’s mail server receives a message claiming to come from that domain, and then,

(2) The receiving server can check whether the message complies with the domain’s stated policy. If, e.g., the message comes from an unknown server, it can be considered a fake.

Once you are confident about the authenticity of the sender address, you can finally “take it for real” and attach reputation to it. Furthermore, additional kinds of policies are planned for a future version of SPF, such as asserting that all of a domain’s outgoing mail is S/MIME or PGP signed.

An Example Policy

Let’s look at an example to give you an idea of how SPF works. Bob owns the domain domain.com. He also sometimes sends mail through his otherdomain.com account.

example.net.  TXT  “v=spf1 mx ip4:10.100.110.201 mx:domain.com  a:pluto. domain.com include:mail.otherdomain.com -all”

The parts of the SPF record mean the following:

v=spf1 : this identifies the TXT record as an SPF string. SPF version 1.

mx : the incoming mail servers (MXes) of the domain are authorized to also send mail for domain.com. If you add more MX servers in the future, they’ll automatically be allowed, too.

ip4:10.100.110.201: 10.100.110.201 is allowed to send mail from domain.com.

mx:domain.com: The MX servers for domain.com are allowed to send mail from domain.com.

a:pluto.domain.com: the Host pluto.domain.com is authorized, too send mail

include:mail.otherdomain.com: everything considered legitimate by mail.otherdomain.com (outside mail server) is legitimate for domain.com, too

-all : No other servers are allowed to send mail from domain.com. This is a good default for sites particularly concerned about forgery.

This example demonstrates but a small part of SPF’s expressiveness. Do not take it as a guideline for building your own record — things might not work out as you expect and legitimate messages might get blocked! Instead, learn more about the record syntax, or get the complete picture by studying the full specification or contact your hosting service provider.

Today Gmail, Hotmail, Rediffmail, Microsoft, Redhat, IBM, Citi Bank and most of the leading Service Providers and Companies use SPF and so do we for blocking out unwanted junk emails from reaching our clients inboxes.

Read More about SPF at:

http://www.openspf.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/safety/technologies/senderid/overview.mspx

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So, I was walking by my office a couple of weeks back and out of some overgrown creepers, I was able to spot the signage of Just Books CLC and out of curiosity I walked in to find out more about this place. Once inside, I was met with some very courteous staff at Just Books and they walked me through the entire process of what makes Just Books community library chain, different and better then most standalone libraries. All the details are available on the Just Books CLC website – http://justbooksclc.com/how_it_works and I would like to summarise some of the key benefits which appealed to me:

• The library is just a short walk from my office, which makes it very convenient for me to change my books at ease. However for clients who would like to avail of a doorstep delivery service, its available across the city for a very nominal fee of Rs. 50 pm.
• Their membership plans pricing is surprisingly low, when you consider their total collection of over 0.5 million books across all their locations and the quality of those books.
• The technology behind issuing, returning and searching for books is truly innovative and convenient for the members. There are no queues for returning or issuing new books and the staff are always ready to help if you are stuck in the process.
• If a book is not available at this library you can request for it from any of their other libraries and it will be made available to you within a week or two and you will be notified about it over SMS and email.
• The library is tidy, well organised and the books are well maintained by an efficient team.

It came as a surprise to me that this is the only JustBooks CLC in Kolkata and I truly hope that this would be the first of many such libraries in the days ahead as this is a truly innovative concept and a win-win model for all people concerned.

As for me, I am making the most of this opportunity to catch up on some of the books I most wanted to read and I would strongly recommend this place as one of the best kept secrets in the city!

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Just Books CLC Kolkata Centre:

Contact :
033 – 40012211; 8981853672

Working Hours :
Hours 10:00 AM TO 9:00 PM, MONDAY HOLIDAY

Address :
PPF ENTERPRISES BD 30 (1st. FLOOR), SECTOR 1, SALT LAKE, KOLKATA 700064.

Email:
ppfenterprises1@gmail.com

Windows 2008 R2 Parallels Virtuozzo Containers

Description:

While logging into Administrator account through RDP on a VPS after a reboot, a blank screen or recycled svchost.exe property page is shown. Rebooting the VPS does not resolve the issue.

Cause:

This problem is caused by corruption of the Administrator account profile.

Solution:

On the hardware node run the following command from command prompt, in order to enter the container.

vzctl enter <Container_ID>

(Conatiner_ID can be obtained by running the vzlist –a command.)

Now you will get the C:\Windows\system32> prompt in the terminal, indicating that you have entered the container. In the C:\Windows\system32> prompt run the following commands, in order to create another account and make it a member of Administrators group on the container.

net user <username> <password> /add
net localgroup administrators <username> /add

Now RDP into the affected container, using this new username and password.

After you successfully login into the container, make sure from task manager that Administrator account is not logged into the container. If Administrator account is still logged into the container, then log off Administrator from Task Manager, running with elevated privilege.

Then copy all important files from C:\Users\Administrator folder to another folder for safekeeping and delete the C:\Users\Administrator folder.

Next login into the Administrator account. This account will use a temporary profile path due to absence of C:\Users\Administrator folder. Now create the C:\Users\Administrator folder again.

Then go to the windows Control Panel. Inside control panel select Small Icon view and click the User Accounts icon or link.

Inside User Accounts click on the Configure advanced user profile properties link on the left panel. It will popup User Profiles dialog.

Inside User Profiles dialog, select the Default Profile and then click Copy To button. It will pop up the Copy To dialog.

In Copy profile to section, browse and select the path C:\Users\Administrator and in Permitted to use section click change and select the Administrator user. Then click Ok.

Now the Confirm Copy message box will pop up with the message – “C:\Users\Administrator already exists. The current contents of this directory or this file will be deleted during this operation. Are you sure you want to continue?”. Click Ok to confirm.

Now logoff from Administrator account and login again. Now the account will use the permanent profile path C:\Users\Administrator and everything should be fine.
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“top” command returns only Apache’s child process, which is not as much helpful because it does not provide website name.  But there is a way or a tool to trace down the name of the website that is causing the overload.

The Status module (mod_status) allows a server administrator to find out how well their server is performing. A HTML page is presented that gives the current server statistics in an easily readable form. If required this page can be made to automatically refresh.

The details given are:

* The number of children serving requests.
* The number of idle children.
* The status of each child, the number of requests that child has performed and the total number of bytes served by the child (*)
* A total number of accesses and byte count served (*).
* The time the server was started/restarted and the time it has been running for
* Averages giving the number of requests per second, the number of bytes served per second and the average number of bytes per request (*).
* The current percentage CPU used by each child and in total by Apache (*).
* The current hosts and requests being processed (*).

Details marked “(*)” are only available with ExtendedStatus On.

Configure Apache mod_status

Open your httpd.conf file:

# vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

Append / modify (or uncomment) directives as follows:

ExtendedStatus On

<Location /server-status>

SetHandler server-status

Order deny,allow

Deny from all

Allow from 10.0.0.0/8

</Location>

Replace 10.0.0.0/8 with your Network IP range or workstation IP address. Save and close the file. Restart httpd server:

# service httpd restart

For full status report type:

# service httpd fullstatus

To view status report type URL – http://Server IP/server-status

IPBan software written by Jeffrey N. Johnson (jjxtra) comes to a great relief in tacking this nagging issue on Windows servers. IPBan is installed as a service under Windows operating system and listens for a failed logon event on the server. Whenever an failed logon attempt is made, it starts tracking the source IP and when number of such events reach a certain predefined threshold for that IP, within a specified time span, it Block that IP in the Windows Advanced Firewall using a Blocking rule there. The IP remains banned for a predefined amount of time after this. All these time and threshold values are configurable through the configuration file of the IPBan software. IPBan is a free tools which can be downloaded from jjxtra’s website Digitalruby.com and is updated often.

Now let us follow the steps that are required to install IPBan software on a Windows server:

1. IPBan software can be downloaded from the URL – https://github.com/jjxtra/Windows-IP-Ban-Service/downloads. This software only works on Windows Server 2008/R2.

2. The IPBan software requires .net framework v.4, which can be installed from the URL – http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17851 , if not already present in the system.

3. In order to enable the Remote Desktop Service to properly log the intruder’s IP addresses in the windows event log, perform the following configuration changes in Remote Desktop Session Host Configuration.

a) Run the Remote Desktop Session Host Configuration tool on Windows Server 2008/R2.

b) Double-click the connection RDP-Tcp to change encryption settings to native RDP encryption.

c) In order to do so change the Security Layer value to RDP Security Layer from the drop-down list in the General tab and click OK.

d) Now reboot the server to bring this change to effect.

4. Extract and copy all the files from the downloaded IPBan software zip archive to the folder C:\IPBan

5. The IPBan.exe.config file in the folder contains all the configuration settings for IPBan software.

6. The following section configures the number of failed audits in the event viewer before banning the IP address:

<add key="FailedLoginAttemptsBeforeBan" value="5" />

Change the value setting according to your requirement.

7. The following section configures the duration of time to ban a failed IP address:

<add key="BanTime" value="00:00:30:00" />

Change the value setting according to your requirement in DD:HH:MM:SS format.

8. IPBan Log Rotation can be configured in the following section:

<target name="logfile" xsi:type="File" fileName="${basedir}\logfile.txt" archiveNumbering="Sequence" archiveEvery="Day" maxArchiveFiles="28" />

Change the archiveEvery and maxArchiveFiles according to your requirement and availability of storage space for the same.

9. If a named instance of SQL server is in use, then change MSSQLSERVER to MSSQL$ (e.g. MSSQL$SQLEXPRESS) in the following section:

<XPath>//Provider[@Name='MSSQLSERVER']</XPath>

10. Now open the Command prompt and the run the following commands there to create and start the IPBAN Service –

sc create IPBAN type= own start= auto binPath= C:\IPBan\ipban.exe DisplayName= IPBAN
net start IPBAN

Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it. ]]> http://www.diademblogs.com/windows-server/ipban-setup-guide-to-block-intrusion-attempts-on-rdp-and-mssql-server-ports/feed 4 http://www.diademblogs.com/windows-server/ipban-setup-guide-to-block-intrusion-attempts-on-rdp-and-mssql-server-ports http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DiademBlogs/~3/Akv-uyzRKbw/hosted-email-archiving-service-with-diadem-mailvault http://www.diademblogs.com/hosted-solutions/hosted-email-archiving-service-with-diadem-mailvault#comments Thu, 11 Oct 2012 07:11:54 +0000 hriday http://www.diademblogs.com/?p=1397

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Take backup of a particular database and set it offline

This is a likely situation in a database migration scenario. You take backup of a database and immediately take it offline to avoid further data operations into it. You have to run the following SQL from sa login.

BACKUP DATABASE <dbname>
TO DISK = '<backup_path><dbname>.Bak'
WITH FORMAT,
NAME = 'Full Backup of <dbname> on <backup_time>, <backup_date>'
GO

ALTER DATABASE <dbname> SET OFFLINE
GO

<backup_path> may be something like “D:\migrate_database\” and <dbname> is the name of the database.

List tables and stored procedures with a specific schema

You may need to modify schema of tables and stored procedures in batch. This situation arises when you need to delete one user from the database who owns a lot of tables and stored procedures. In order to list those tables and procedures, run the following SQL commands.

USE <dbname>;

SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES WHERE INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES.TABLE_SCHEMA = '<dbuser>';

SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.ROUTINES WHERE INFORMATION_SCHEMA.ROUTINES.SPECIFIC_SCHEMA = '<dbuser>';

Now you can prepare and run a batch SQL script with commands like the following one.

ALTER SCHEMA dbo TRANSFER <dbuser>.<tablename>;

Find log size of all the databases

The following procedure will list the size of log file used by each database.

SELECT INSTANCE_NAME AS [DATABASE],
(CNTR_VALUE/1000) AS Size_In_MB FROM MASTER.dbo.SYSPERFINFO
WHERE COUNTER_NAME LIKE '%Log File(s) Size (KB)%'
AND INSTANCE_NAME NOT IN ('_TOTAL','mssqlsystemresuorce')
ORDER BY Size_In_MB DESC

Find recovery model of all the databases

Run the following procedure to know the recovery model used in each database.

Select name, DatabasePropertyEx(name, 'Recovery') from master..sysdatabases

A database’s log file size is influenced by the recovery model used in it.

Find failed login attempts to ‘sa’ account

Your public SQL server may be under constant brute force attack for ‘sa’ account. The following script will list the numbers and IPs from where the attacks are originated. This may be helpful in implementing your firewall policies.

declare @path VARCHAR(512)
select @path = path from sys.traces where is_default = 1
SELECT loginname, IP, Max(starttime) as LastErrorTime, COUNT(*) AS AttempCounts
FROM (
SELECT t.loginname, REPLACE(SUBSTRING(t.textdata, CHARINDEX(':', t.textdata, CHARINDEX(':', t.textdata, 1) + 1) + 1, 16), ']', '') AS IP, t.starttime
FROM dbo.fn_trace_gettable(@path, DEFAULT) AS t INNER JOIN
sys.trace_events AS e ON t.eventclass = e.trace_event_id
WHERE (eventclass = 20)) AS A
GROUP BY loginname, IP
order by LastErrorTime desc

Find cached page counts and memory uses for each database

The following two SQL commands will show page counts and memory used for each database in a SQL server instance.

SELECT
(CASE WHEN ([is_modified] = 1) THEN 'Dirty' ELSE 'Clean' END) AS 'Page State',
(CASE WHEN ([database_id] = 32767) THEN 'Resource Database' ELSE DB_NAME (database_id) END) AS 'Database Name',
COUNT (*) AS 'Page Count'
FROM sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors
GROUP BY [database_id], [is_modified]
ORDER BY [Page Count], [is_modified];
GO

SELECT count(*)AS cached_pages_count, (count(*) * 8)/1024 As Mbytes,  db_name(database_id)
FROM sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors
GROUP BY db_name(database_id) ,database_id
ORDER BY cached_pages_count DESC;
GO

Get list of all current connections to SQL Server instance

The following SQL command lists all current connections to the SQL Server instance. It generates list by code and is flexible and easy to analyze.

SELECT DB_NAME(dbid)AS ConnectedToDB,
hostname, program_name,loginame,
cpu, physical_io, memusage, login_time,
last_batch, [status]
FROM master.dbo.sysprocesses
ORDER BY dbid, login_time, last_batch
GO

Also you can filter the results for a single user or a single database by providing filter criteria in where clause as required. For example to get just connections to database you may add following condition in where clause

WHERE dbid = DB_ID ('AdventureWorks')

Similarly you may filter the results with relevance to any column as required. Above script can be used on all versions of SQL Server.

Complete memory usage report of an SQL server

The following SQL script will generate a complete memory usage report for a SQL server instance.

DECLARE @pg_size INT, @Instancename varchar(50)

SELECT @pg_size = low from master..spt_values where number = 1 and type = 'E'

SELECT @Instancename = LEFT([object_name], (CHARINDEX(':',[object_name]))) FROM sys.dm_os_performance_counters WHERE counter_name = 'Buffer cache hit ratio'

PRINT '----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------'

PRINT 'Memory usage details for SQL Server instance ' + @@SERVERNAME  + ' (' + CAST(SERVERPROPERTY('productversion') AS VARCHAR) + ' - ' +  SUBSTRING(@@VERSION, CHARINDEX('X',@@VERSION),4)  + ' - ' + CAST(SERVERPROPERTY('edition') AS VARCHAR) + ')'

PRINT '----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------'

SELECT 'Memory Configuration on the Server visible to Operating System'

SELECT physical_memory_in_bytes/1048576.0 as [Physical Memory_MB], physical_memory_in_bytes/1073741824.0 as [Physical Memory_GB], virtual_memory_in_bytes/1048576.0 as [Virtual Memory MB] FROM sys.dm_os_sys_info

SELECT 'Buffer Pool Usage at the Moment'

SELECT (bpool_committed*8)/1024.0 as BPool_Committed_MB, (bpool_commit_target*8)/1024.0 as BPool_Commit_Tgt_MB,(bpool_visible*8)/1024.0 as BPool_Visible_MB  FROM sys.dm_os_sys_info

SELECT 'Total Memory used by SQL Server instance from Perf Mon '

SELECT cntr_value as Mem_KB, cntr_value/1024.0 as Mem_MB, (cntr_value/1048576.0) as Mem_GB FROM sys.dm_os_performance_counters WHERE counter_name = 'Total Server Memory (KB)'

SELECT 'Memory needed as per current Workload for SQL Server instance'

SELECT cntr_value as Mem_KB, cntr_value/1024.0 as Mem_MB, (cntr_value/1048576.0) as Mem_GB FROM sys.dm_os_performance_counters WHERE counter_name = 'Target Server Memory (KB)'

SELECT 'Total amount of dynamic memory the server is using for maintaining connections'

SELECT cntr_value as Mem_KB, cntr_value/1024.0 as Mem_MB, (cntr_value/1048576.0) as Mem_GB FROM sys.dm_os_performance_counters WHERE counter_name = 'Connection Memory (KB)'

SELECT 'Total amount of dynamic memory the server is using for locks'

SELECT cntr_value as Mem_KB, cntr_value/1024.0 as Mem_MB, (cntr_value/1048576.0) as Mem_GB FROM sys.dm_os_performance_counters WHERE counter_name = 'Lock Memory (KB)'

SELECT 'Total amount of dynamic memory the server is using for the dynamic SQL cache'

SELECT cntr_value as Mem_KB, cntr_value/1024.0 as Mem_MB, (cntr_value/1048576.0) as Mem_GB FROM sys.dm_os_performance_counters WHERE counter_name = 'SQL Cache Memory (KB)'

SELECT 'Total amount of dynamic memory the server is using for query optimization'

SELECT cntr_value as Mem_KB, cntr_value/1024.0 as Mem_MB, (cntr_value/1048576.0) as Mem_GB FROM sys.dm_os_performance_counters WHERE counter_name = 'Optimizer Memory (KB) '

SELECT 'Total amount of dynamic memory used for hash, sort and create index operations.'

SELECT cntr_value as Mem_KB, cntr_value/1024.0 as Mem_MB, (cntr_value/1048576.0) as Mem_GB FROM sys.dm_os_performance_counters WHERE counter_name = 'Granted Workspace Memory (KB) '

SELECT 'Total Amount of memory consumed by cursors'

SELECT cntr_value as Mem_KB, cntr_value/1024.0 as Mem_MB, (cntr_value/1048576.0) as Mem_GB FROM sys.dm_os_performance_counters WHERE counter_name = 'Cursor memory usage' and instance_name = '_Total'

SELECT 'Number of pages in the buffer pool (includes database, free, and stolen).'

SELECT cntr_value as [8KB_Pages], (cntr_value*@pg_size)/1024.0 as Pages_in_KB, (cntr_value*@pg_size)/1048576.0 as Pages_in_MB FROM sys.dm_os_performance_counters WHERE object_name= @Instancename+'Buffer Manager' and counter_name = 'Total pages'

SELECT 'Number of Data pages in the buffer pool'

SELECT cntr_value as [8KB_Pages], (cntr_value*@pg_size)/1024.0 as Pages_in_KB, (cntr_value*@pg_size)/1048576.0 as Pages_in_MB FROM sys.dm_os_performance_counters WHERE object_name=@Instancename+'Buffer Manager' and counter_name = 'Database pages'

SELECT 'Number of Free pages in the buffer pool'

SELECT cntr_value as [8KB_Pages], (cntr_value*@pg_size)/1024.0 as Pages_in_KB, (cntr_value*@pg_size)/1048576.0 as Pages_in_MB FROM sys.dm_os_performance_counters WHERE object_name=@Instancename+'Buffer Manager' and counter_name = 'Free pages'

SELECT 'Number of Reserved pages in the buffer pool'

SELECT cntr_value as [8KB_Pages], (cntr_value*@pg_size)/1024.0 as Pages_in_KB, (cntr_value*@pg_size)/1048576.0 as Pages_in_MB FROM sys.dm_os_performance_counters WHERE object_name=@Instancename+'Buffer Manager' and counter_name = 'Reserved pages'

SELECT 'Number of Stolen pages in the buffer pool'

SELECT cntr_value as [8KB_Pages], (cntr_value*@pg_size)/1024.0 as Pages_in_KB, (cntr_value*@pg_size)/1048576.0 as Pages_in_MB FROM sys.dm_os_performance_counters WHERE object_name=@Instancename+'Buffer Manager' and counter_name = 'Stolen pages'

SELECT 'Number of Plan Cache pages in the buffer pool'

SELECT cntr_value as [8KB_Pages], (cntr_value*@pg_size)/1024.0 as Pages_in_KB, (cntr_value*@pg_size)/1048576.0 as Pages_in_MB FROM sys.dm_os_performance_counters WHERE object_name=@Instancename+'Plan Cache' and counter_name = 'Cache Pages'  and instance_name = '_Total'

At Diadem Technologies we have been using these scripts in our day to day DBA work and have benefited from these code snippets.

You can download all the scripts shown on this page from here: SQL Scripts (.zip)

Qmail Server Mail Queue monitoring overview:

/var/qmail/bin/qmail-qstat will show current processed or unprocessed mail in the queue. This is a qmail inbuilt command.

/var/qmail/bin/qmail-qread will show a brief details of queued mails, like delivery address and mail type (remote/local).

These are only inbuilt command in Qmail for mail queue monitoring.

There are few third-party tools available for Qmail for mail queue monitoring.

qmHandle is a simple program which allows you to view and manage the Qmail message queue. The software will work on every Unix platform with Perl installed and Qmail installed.

qmHandle Installation:
# wget http://optusnet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/qmhandle/qmhandle-1.3.2.tar.gz
# tar -xvzf qmhandle-1.3.2.tar.gz
# cp qmHandle /usr/bin/

Now run the command as
# qmHandle

Available parameters:
-a       : try to send queued messages now (qmail must be running)
-l       : list message queues
-L       : list local message queue
-R       : list remote message queue
-s       : show some statistics
-mN      : display message number N
-dN      : delete message number N
-fsender : delete message from sender
-f’re’   : delete message from senders matching regular expression re
-Stext   : delete all messages that have/contain text as Subject
-h’re’   : delete all messages with headers matching regular expression re (case insensitive)
-b’re’   : delete all messages with body matching regular expression re (case insensitive)
-H’re’   : delete all messages with headers matching regular expression re (case sensitive)
-B’re’   : delete all messages with body matching regular expression re (case sensitive)
-t’re’   : flag messages with recipients in regular expression ‘re’ for earlier retry (note: this lengthens the time message can stay in queue)
-D       : delete all messages in the queue (local and remote)
-V       : print program version

You can view/delete multiple message i.e. -d123 -v456 -d567

The Qmail-Remove utility will remove messages containing a particular string from your Qmail queue.

Qmail-Remove Installation:
# wget http://www.linuxmagic.com/opensource/qmail/qmail-remove/qmail-remove-0.95.tar.gz
# tar –zxvf qmail-remove-0.95.tar.gz
# mkdir /var/qmail/queue/yanked
# make ; make install

Now for deleting mail containing a particular IP Address run:

# qmail-remove -p 111.111.111.11 –v -d

You can change the IP address with a word string also  e.g.

# qmail-remove -p your- string -v -d

# qmail-remove -p your- string -v -r

This will yanked the mails instead of permanent delete.

Postfix Server Mail Queue monitoring overview:

List/Print current mail queue

# postqueue –p
# mailq

Flush the queue

# postqueue -f

Schedule immediate delivery of all mail that is queued for the named as domain.come.

# postqueue -s domain.com

TO delete all queue

# postsuper -d ALL

To delete a particular message

# postsuper -d messageid

Postfix inbuilt tools are pretty good for monitoring the mail Queue.

That’s all, for all my System Admin friends. I will keep posted for other useful article soon. Keep browsing .

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• Digital Security Video Surveillance
  get more details at: http://www.softlayer.com/advantages/datacenters/singapore

With over 2000 Gbps of network connectivity across the Softlayer 13 datacenters and a reduced latency time compared to US datacenters, our customers can expect the load time of their websites and the time taken to access their emails, stored files and databases to drop considerably as we move our servers from the US to Asia, since almost all our network traffic (incoming and outgoing) is from this region.

As an added example, I have run ping and traceroute commands to both our servers in the Softlayer US and the SG datacenters and found the the singapore servers to have a much lower latency (by over 70%) and also much less hops are required to reach the singapore servers.

Average ping response to US server:312 ms

Pinging plesk04.diadem-tech.com [208.43.212.71] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 208.43.212.71: bytes=32 time=312ms TTL=47
Reply from 208.43.212.71: bytes=32 time=313ms TTL=47
Reply from 208.43.212.71: bytes=32 time=313ms TTL=47
Reply from 208.43.212.71: bytes=32 time=312ms TTL=47
Ping statistics for 208.43.212.71:
Minimum = 312ms, Maximum = 313ms, Average = 312ms

Compare this with our singapore server which has a 70% lower latency at 97 ms:

Pinging 216.185.104.235 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 216.185.104.235: bytes=32 time=97ms TTL=115
Reply from 216.185.104.235: bytes=32 time=98ms TTL=115
Reply from 216.185.104.235: bytes=32 time=97ms TTL=115
Reply from 216.185.104.235: bytes=32 time=98ms TTL=115

Ping statistics for 216.185.104.235:
Minimum = 97ms, Maximum = 98ms, Average = 97ms (215 ms less then the US server!)

Here are some images of the SL Singapore datacenter and some links from their blogs:

Links from Softlayer.com on their international expansion:

• http://blog.softlayer.com/2011/globalization-and-hosting-the-world-wide-web-is-flat/
• http://blog.softlayer.com/2011/global-expansion-singapore-ready-for-launch/
• http://www.softlayer.com/press/release/1321/softlayer-launches-asia-pacific-operation/

As you can view from the above pics, this is a brand new datacenter with all the network security, performance and scaling up advantages which you can expect from the world’s leading datacenter provider and we are excited to bring this network closer to our customers.

We start moving our first server from US to Asia, this weekend and this will be an ongoing process, till we migrate the bulk of our servers over the next few months and deliver an outstanding hosting experience to our customers, all over again!

a. Support team augmentation: We have added more staff to our support team and have also been training them to work with our new hosting tools and utilities to ensure that our clients get prompt feedback for their queries. Our support team is now also available on Sunday’s (from 10AM  – 2 PM IST) and we are planning to further enhance our support functions by bringing in more resources and further extending their availability over the next few months.

b.Plesk Control Panel upgrade to 10.4: For our shared hosting clients, we have now upgraded our hosting control panel to the latest release of the much awaited Plesk control panel version 10.4. The new version of the Plesk panel has a more intuitive interface, single login for clients hosting multiple domains, third party application hosting support and administrative enhancements for admin users.

Get more details of the latest Plesk control panel 10.4

c. New VPS and Dedicated Hosting setups: We have added a record no. of new clients for our dedicated and vps hosting services, proving our capability for managing mission critical apps and services for our clients through our superior datacenter services, coupled with enterprise level backup and security services and our round the clock server management services. We will continue to enhance and further extend our dedicated and vps offerings in the next few months, so stay tuned.

d. Diadem Hosted Solutions: In a step beyond traditional mass market shared and plain vanilla vps hosting services, we have introduced the Diadem Hosted Solutions services which is essentially a SAAS model for providing enterprise level hosted services for small to mid sized organisation who wish to benefit from a zero capex enterprise level messaging, archiving and backup solution. Currently, we have introduced the following hosted services which has already been deployed for a good no. of clients for the past 12-18 months:

• R1Soft Continuous Data Protection & Recovery Solution
• Email archiving and retention solution
  
• Hosted Zimbra Groupware
  

e. Sysadmin knowledge sharing: The job of a sysadmin is never complete. As soon as one job is completed or an issue is resolved, another task, issue, update or an emergency pops up in front of us, making our job an ongoing roller coaster ride or learning, relearning and improvements. At Diadem, we have focused the last few months in documenting all our routine and custom activities in our internal knowledgebase which is shared by our sysadmins in enabling them to share their knowledge, resolve issues faster and work more cohesively as a single unit. We have been working tirelessly in the background to ensure less spams are being received in your inboxes, your sites stay clean from malware, intrusion attempts are nullified and all our servers are operating at an optimal state, 24×7.

The above activities, in a nutshell have kept us busy for the past few months but we have also been working on further extending our offerings and improving our services in the next couple of quarters, so if you would like to get email updates on our new offerings, signup on our newsletter mailing list on the main page of our website.