Re: Visited http://www.orbs.org/ recently?

[Jason Molenda <jason-swarelist@molenda.com>]

On Mon, Jul 17, 2000 at 08:42:50PM -0400, Chris Faylor wrote:

> We've been getting a flurry of complaints from people who insist that
> there is no reason for them to be blocked.  When you check the IP
> address they are not blocked and subsequent email from them is
> delivered just fine.
> 
> I wonder if this is somehow a symptom of ORBS problems with MAPS.

Maybe it is.  As far as I know, that _shouldn't_ happen.  For
instance, when another RBL we were using went off the air (IMRSS?
I forget what it was called), there was no affect on the lookup
script.  /usr/local/bin/rblcheckup would try to look the addr up
in the IMRSS DNS domain, time out after 30-60 seconds, and move on
to the next RBL.

Similarly, if ORBS wasn't reachable, rblcheck _should_ just waste
half a minute or so waiting for a response.  In fact, you can tell
when this kind of thing is happening if you look at the rbl log on
sourceware - there is an initial "Checking this IP#" log message,
and then when rblcheck has checked all the RBLs, there is a "This
IP is OK" message.  There are timestamps on both.

I could be mistaken - I'm only talking about how it is supposed to
work.  I have trouble imaging a scenario where non-response from
the RBL could be interpreted as a match, though.

(On the other hand, it may be that ORBS' database is buggy or
something.  I'd be pretty willing to believe something like that
was happening.)

J