Edge - 2:25 pm on Feb 12, 2008 (gmt 0)

I have had server load issues for some time now. During peak traffic hours I often see load averages over 6. This load average has been traced to spammers pounding my sendmail with mutilple connections. They seem to be just flooding email addresses hoping that they get one through.

I don't want to spend more money on a server upgrade I just want to stop or sow down the assaults. I have very effective robot banning on my website, but not very good email sender banning. I do run spam assassin, however emails still get through just to be deleted on my pc.

So, I modified my sendmail CF (configuration) file as follows:

# maximum number of children we allow at one time
O MaxDaemonChildren=10

from 30

# load average at which we delay connections; 0 means no limit
O DelayLA=4

from 10

# load average at which we refuse connections
O RefuseLA=6

from 20

# maximum number of children we allow at one time
O MaxDaemonChildren=10

from 30

In summary, I changed my server to stop accepting email connections at a load average of 6 and to delay connections at 4. I reduced the connection to 10 and the children.

Seems to work at the moment - am I missing anything?

[edited by: Edge at 2:28 pm (utc) on Feb. 12, 2008]