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milter-greylist(8)					      milter-greylist(8)

NAME
     milter-greylist - grey listing filter for sendmail

SYNOPSIS
     milter-greylist  [-A] [-a autowhite_delay] [-c] [-D] [-d dumpfile] [-f con-
     figfile] [-h] [-l] [-q] [-r] [-S] [-T] [-u username[:groupname]]  [-v]  [-w
     greylist_delay] [-L cidrmask] [-M prefixlen] [-P pidfile] -p socket

DESCRIPTION
     milter-greylist is a mail filter for sendmail that implements grey listing,
     a spam filtering technique proposed by Evan Harris.

     Grey  listing works by assuming that contrarily to legitimate MTA, spam en-
     gines will not retry sending their junk mail on a temporary error. The fil-
     ter will always temporarily reject mail on a first attempt, and  accept  it
     after some time has elapsed.

     If  spammers  ever try to resend rejected messages, we can assume they will
     not stay idle between the two sends. Odds are good that  the  spammer  will
     send  a  mail  to an honey pot address and get blacklisted in a distributed
     black list before the second attempt.

     Of course, the filter can be configured to not apply grey listing	to  some
     hosts  or networks. You can whitelist friendly SMTP servers, and you should
     whitelist your own network, otherwise your  SMTP  clients	will  have  real
     trouble to send e-mail. Whitelisting localhost is also a must.

     milter-greylist  works  with two files.  greylist.conf is the configuration
     file. It holds the whitelist of addresses that will not  suffer  grey  list
     filtering.   It  is read once upon milter-greylist startup, then it will be
     automatically reloaded whenever a new message gets in and if  it  had  been
     modified.	You  should  not  send milter-greylist a kill -1 as it will just
     terminate it (libmilter works that way).

     See greylist.conf(5) for documentation on the file's format.

     The second file is greylist.db.  milter-greylist will  regularly  dump  its
     grey  list database into this file, which is used on startup to restore the
     previous grey list state. If the file does not exist or is unreadable, mil-
     ter-greylist will start with an empty grey list.

     The default location for the grey list database and the socket for communi-
     cating with sendmail is  /var/milter-greylist/.   That  directory	must  be
     owned and writeable by the user id under which milter-greylist runs.

     The following options are available; if present, they override their equiv-
     alents specified in the configuration file:

     -A     Normally,  milter-greylist	does not greylist senders that succeeded
	    SMTP AUTH. This option disables that feature and causes  authentica-
	    tion to be ignored.  Equivalent to the noauth option in the configu-
	    ration file.

     -a autowhite_delay
	    Configure  auto-whitelisting.  After  a  tuple (sender IP, sender e-
	    mail, recipient e-mail) has been accepted,	other  identical  tuples
	    will  get accepted for autowhite_delay.  The default is one day. Use
	    zero to disable auto-whitelisting.	A suffix can be added to specify
	    seconds (s), minutes (m), hours (h), days (d) or weeks (w).  Without
	    any  suffix,  values  are treated as seconds.  Equivalent to the au-
	    towhite option in the configuration file.

     -c     Only check the configuration file and exit. Return value is 0 if the
	    configuration is valid, or an error code from <sysexit.h> otherwise.

     -D     Do not fork; run in the foreground instead. Without this flag,  mil-
	    ter-greylist  will	become a daemon.  Equivalent to the nodetach op-
	    tion in the configuration file.

     -d dumpfile
	    Location   of   the   dump	  file.    Default    is    /var/milter-
	    greylist/greylist.db.  Equivalent to the dumpfile option in the con-
	    figuration file.

     -f configfile
	    Location of the config file. Default is /etc/mail/greylist.conf.

     -h     Show usage information.

     -L cidrmask
	    Use cidrmask as a matching mask when checking IPv4 addresses entries
	    in	the  greylist.	This is aimed as a workaround to mail farms that
	    re-emit messages from different IP addresses. With -L 24, the match-
	    ing mask is 255.255.255.0, and all addresses within the same class C
	    network are considered the same. Default is -L 32, which corresponds
	    to all addresses considered different.

     -M prefixlen
	    Use prefixlen as a matching mask when checking  IPv6  addresses  en-
	    tries  in  the greylist. This is aimed as a workaround to mail farms
	    that re-emit messages from different IP addresses. With -M	64,  the
	    matching mask is ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff::, and all addresses within the
	    same subnet are considered the same. Default is -M 128, which corre-
	    sponds to all IPv6 addresses considered different.

     -l     Enable debug output in the access-list management code.

     -P pidfile
	    write the daemon's PID to pidfile.	Equivalent to the pidfile option
	    in the configuration file.

     -p socket
	    Use  socket  as  the  socket used by sendmail(8) to communicate with
	    milter-greylist.

     -q     Quiet mode.  milter-greylist will not tell	SMTP  clients  how  much
	    time they have to wait before the message will be accepted.  Equiva-
	    lent to the quiet option in the configuration file.

     -r     Display milter-greylist version and build environment, then exit.

     -S     If	milter-greylist  was  built with SPF support, then SPF-compliant
	    senders  bypass  greylisting.   This  flag	causes	messages  to  be
	    greylisted	regardless  of	whether  they  are SPF-compliant or not.
	    Equivalent to the nospf option in the configuration file.

     -T     Enable  test  mode.  This  alters  the  meaning  of  rcpt  lines  in
	    greylist.conf,  so	that  only  messages sent to recipient addresses
	    listed there are selected for greylisting. This option and the  rcpt
	    lines have been deprecated in favor of ACL, so do not use it.

     -u username[:groupname]
	    Drop  root	privileges and switch to username (and optionally group-
	    name) credentials. Make sure this user (and group) has write  access
	    to	greylist.db.  Equivalent to the user option in the configuration
	    file.

     -v     Enable debug output.  milter-greylist will send messages (and  debug
	    output  if	it  is	given  the  -v flag) to syslogd(8) with facility
	    LOG_MAIL.  Equivalent to the verbose  option  in  the  configuration
	    file.

     -w greylist_delay
	    sets  the  minimum	delay between the first attempt and the time the
	    message can be accepted. Default is 30 minutes.   A  suffix  can  be
	    added  to  specify	seconds (s), minutes (m), hours (h), days (d) or
	    weeks (w). Without	any  suffix,  values  are  treated  as	seconds.
	    Equivalent to the greylist option in the configuration file.

GREYLIST MX SYNC
     milter-greylist  is  now  able to sync the greylist between multiple MX. In
     order  to	enable	this  feature,	you  need  to  list  the  peer	MXs   in
     greylist.conf(5) like this:

       peer 192.0.2.17
       peer 192.0.2.18

     When  peers are configured, milter-greylist will listen on the port defined
     for the mxglsync service in /etc/services (defaults to 5252), and	it  will
     connect  to  peers  at this port. Each time an entry is added or deleted on
     one MX, it will be propagated to the others.

     The protocol is quite simple, just telnet to your MX at port 5252, and type
     help to see how it works. Note that connections will only be accepted  from
     peer  MXs, even localhost will be rejected (and don't ever add localhost as
     a peer for MX sync, as you will cause each entry  in  the	greylist  to  be
     added twice).

     If an MX is down, changes to the greylist will be queued until it gets back
     up  again. The queue length is limited (default is 1024 entries), and if it
     overflows, newer entries will be discarded.

AUTHORS
     Emmanuel Dreyfus <manu@netbsd.org>

     milter-greylist received many contributions from (in  alphabetical  order):
     Adrian  Dabrowski, Aida Shinra, Adam Katz, Alexander Lobodzinski, Alexandre
     Cherif, Alexey Popov, Andrew McGill,  Attila  Bruncsak,  Benoit  Branciard,
     Bernhard  Schneider,  Bob	Smith,	Constantine  A.  Murenin, Chris Bennett,
     Christian Pelissier, Cyril Guibourg, Dan  Hollis,	David  Binderman,  Denis
     Solovyov,	Elrond,  Enrico  Scholz,  Eugene Crosser, Fabien Tassin, Fredrik
     Pettai, Gary Aitken, Georg Horn, Gert Doering, Greg  Troxel,  Guido  Kerke-
     witz, Hajimu Umemoto, Hideki ONO, Ivan F. Martinez, Jacques Beigbeder, Jean
     Benoit,  Jean-Jacques  Puig, Jeff Rife, Jim Klimov, Jobst Schmalenbach, Joe
     Pruett, Joel Bertrand, Johann E. Klasek, Johann Klasek, John Thiltges, John
     Wood, Jorgen Lundman, Kazuyuki Yoshida, Klas Heggemann, Kouhei Sutou,  Lau-
     rence  Moindrot,  Lev Walkin, Manuel Badzong, Markus Wennrich, Mart Pirita,
     Martin Paul, Matt Kettler, Mattheu Herrb, Matthias Scheler, Matthieu Herrb,
     Michael Fromme, Moritz Both, Nerijus Baliunas, Ole  Hansen,  Pavel  Cahyna,
     Pascal  Lalonde, Per Holm, Petar Bogdanovic, Petr Kristof, Piotr Wadas, R P
     Herrold, Ralf S. Engelschall, Ranko Zivojnovic, Remy Card, Rick Adams,  Ro-
     gier  Maas,  Romain Kang, Rudy Eschauzier, Stephane Lentz, Steven Hiscocks,
     Thomas Scheunemann, Tim Mooney, Vincent Dufresne,	Wolfgang  Solfrank,  and
     Yaroslav Boychuk.

     Thanks  to  Helmut Messerer and Thomas Pfau for their feedback on the first
     releases of this software.

SEE ALSO
     greylist.conf(5), sendmail(8), syslogd(8).

     Evan Harris's paper:
	    http://projects.puremagic.com/greylisting/

     milter-greylist's web site:
	    http://hcpnet.free.fr/milter-greylist/

				  May 10, 2005		      milter-greylist(8)

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