Chuck's Blog

A little over a week ago I posted on how I was trying out a VPS as a backup MX server.  So far things have been working out great, I’m rather impressed with the service I’ve been getting so far; its fast, expandable, and best of all, affordable.

The provider I decided to go with for this adventure is VPSLink, a rather well known and reliable Xen/OpenVZ VPS provider. I started by ordering a Link-2 for 14.95$/mo, but quickly decided it would be worthwhile to upgrade to a Link-3 for 19.95$/mo.

Their support has so far been excellent, and their prices amazing. I mean, I’m getting around 300GB of traffic per month that I am sure I will never end up using completely. Even if I hosted all my websites on the VPS I still wouldn’t come anywhere near 300GB of monthly traffic, it barely goes more than a few GB’s right now. They also give a decent amount of disk space, but since this is a backup MX server I rarely would ever use more than a 1GB of space.

The only real problem I see is the large volume of brute-force attacks on the IP subnet that I’m on. While the risk is pretty tiny if you use proper passwords for your SSH access you should still consider installing a program like fail2ban or denyhosts to block the IP’s initiating all the failed login attempts. Also be very sure your mail server is not an open relay.

But anyway, now for the nifty referral code. If you use the below code you will 1) Reduce my hosting costs and 2) Save yourself 10% of the VPS’s price for LIFE. You don’t have to use this code, but I personally would be grateful if you did. So here it is:

9PDT2M

Or, for an easier way to already have it stored in your browser for when you order, try clicking this link to VPSLink.

Ever since I started running Linux systems I became significantly annoyed with these stupid –MARK– messages in my log files. I mean, there’s no point of it, it just fills up disk space that costs me money, as well as creating more I/O activity.

So, when you get mesages like this in your /var/log/messages file:

Feb 22 14:54:21 mx2 -- MARK --
Feb 22 15:14:21 mx2 -- MARK --
Feb 22 15:34:21 mx2 -- MARK --
Feb 22 15:54:21 mx2 -- MARK --
Feb 22 16:14:21 mx2 -- MARK --
Feb 22 16:34:21 mx2 -- MARK --
Feb 22 16:54:21 mx2 -- MARK --
Feb 22 17:14:21 mx2 -- MARK --
Feb 22 17:34:21 mx2 -- MARK --

The way to stop it is to adjust the following parameter in the file /etc/default/syslogd

SYSLOGD=""

to

SYSLOGD="-m 0"

And voila, no more –MARK– messages.

Everyone knows how much it sucks to have bounced mail from your mailserver going down. I mean, its like the worst thing that could happen. So in order to prevent this on my server, I’ve started looking around for backup mx services. Then I took a step back and realized something:

For one domain, the cheapest I could really find a backup mx service for was 3$/mo

However, for a full out VPS I found I could find a suitable one for less than 20$/mo, or even as cheap as 8$/mo, depending on how many resources I want.

So, I went and signed up for a pretty simple plan, and installed a postfix server setup as a backup mx. The biggest benefit here is I have no tiny restrictions on bandwidth transfers or disk space for the domains, I’m only limited by my account total. And I also have the ability for this server to later on host things like a backup NS server, or even do network monitoring for me.

I havent been with the provider longer than a week yet, so I won’t plug them, but when I do they supposdly have a nifty referral coupon code that would give me account credit, and give the user of the coupon a 10% discount for life on their account. So when (if?) they are plugged, I’ll have a coupon code ready for anyone here to use.

Just wondering — does anyone still use my SleepScript plugin for JavaOp2? I’m thinking of setting up a CVS server for it aswell as a forum for all users to contribute to.

If you are still using it, comment on this blog or give me an email at javaopplugins@xtarutaru.com

If enough people show interest I may start up development again, which currently has been on a roughly year hiatus.

In my last post about Fanbox I wrote about how I tried the whole unsubscribe option on their site, since I noted it is supposedly a legit site. So far, so good. It’s been nearly a month, and I still haven’t received any new messages from them.

So, for future reference for anyone, unsubscribing from Fanbox DOES work. Though if your having a domain-wide problem, (Eg, many users getting the spam) it’s still pretty feasible to block the domain on an SMTP level, rather than individually unsubscribe the addresses.