[leafnode-list] Re: spool full due to posted binarys

Matthias Andree matthias.andree at gmx.de
Fri Jul 21 16:33:38 CEST 2006


Brian D <groups at planet3.freeuk.co.uk> writes:

> I've got a problem with the partition containing the news spool being filled
> up by someone posting (to a non binary group) a full linux distribution so
> far 40000+ large messages I've manually deleted some from the spool to enable
> me to post, but how can I (hopefully easily) recover from this, and guard
> against it happening again?

Assuming that "large messages" means the messages are considerably
larger than the text messages in that group so that a particular byte
limit can be found, recovery and prevention is possible. A assume this
limit is 31,000 bytes, i. e. the large posts are all larger than 31,000
and the desired posts are smaller than 31,000 bytes.


RECOVERY

To remove all articles of 31,000 bytes and larger from GROUP.NAME, run
these two commands:

find /var/spool/news/GROUP/NAME -size +31000c -exec rm '{}' ';'
texpire


PREVENTION

1. You can set size limits on the articles just short of the size they
   have. Assuming the parts had 32 kByte, you can do:

   with leafnode-1:
   put "maxbytes=31000" (without quotes) on a line in /etc/leafnode/config

   with leafnode-2:
   put "filterfile=/etc/leafnode/filters" on a line in /etc/leafnode/config
   put this snippet into /etc/leafnode/filters:

   newsgroups = .*
   maxbytes   = 31000
   action     = kill

   Either will prevent fetchnews from downloading any article larger
   than 31,000 bytes.

2. Ask the upstream news service to install cleanfeed or similar
   software that rejects binary postings to text groups.

-- 
Matthias Andree



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