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NAME

       greylistd - simple greylisting system for mail transport agents

SYNOPSIS

       greylistd

DESCRIPTION

   Greylisting
       This  daemon  provides a simple greylisting implementation for use with
       Exim and other mail transport agents  (MTAs).   For  a  more  elaborate
       introduction  to  greylisting,  please refer to Evan Harris' whitepaper
       at:      http://projects.puremagic.com/greylisting/

       Greylisting is a simple but highly effective means to weed out messages
       that  are  being  delivered via spamware/ratware tools.  The idea is to
       establish whether a prior relationship exists between  the  sender  and
       the  receiver of a message.  Most of the time it does, and the delivery
       proceeds normally.

       On the other hand, if no prior relationship  exists,  the  delivery  is
       temporarily  rejected, using a 451 SMTP response.  Legitimate MTAs will
       treat this response accordingly, and retry the delivery in a while.  In
       contrast,  ratware  will usually fail to retry the delivery in a normal
       fashion.

       As a result, greylisting  is  currently  more  than  90%  effective  in
       blocking  incoming  junk  mail,  while  nearly all legitimate mail goes
       through.

       Three pieces of  information  (herafter  called  a  triplet)  from  the
       delivery attempt are cached for future reference:

         - The address of the host attempting the delivery
         - The envelope sender address (MAIL FROM:)
         - The envelope recipient address (RCPT TO:)

       If  a  delivery attempt was temporarily rejected, then after an initial
       timeout (60 minutes by default), but before a retry expiration time  (8
       hours  by  default),  new  delivery  attempts with the same triplet are
       accepted, and the triplet is added to a  whitelist.   This  allows  for
       delivery  retries,  presumably  from  legitimate MTAs, and ensures that
       future mail from the same contact is not subject to greylisting.

       If a whitelisted triplet has not been seen for an extended duration (by
       default 60 days), it is expired.  This prevents unlimited growth of the
       list.

       The downside to greylisting is that legitimate  mail  from  people  who
       have  never sent you mail in the past (or, at least, within the last 60
       days) are subject to a one-hour delay.

       The upside is that the current generation of ratware tools will not  be
       able  to deliver spam or virii to you.  Even if, as a result of lots of
       sites incorporating the greylisting concept, ratware tools are modified
       such  that  temporarily  rejected  deliveries are retried, you stand an
       increased chance of blocking such mail.  That  is  because  within  the
       mandatory  1-hour initial delay, chances are that the sending host's IP
       address has been listed in  one  or  more  DNS  block  lists  (such  as
       bl.spamcop.net,  cbl.abuseat.org,  etc..),  and can be rejected by your
       MTA by consulting these lists directly, or via anti-spam software  like
       SpamAssassin.

   greylistd
       greylistd  is  meant  to be installed on a server that accepts incoming
       mail.  The MTA on this server connects to the greylistd daemon  over  a
       UNIX   domain   socket   (by   default  /var/run/greylistd/socket),  or
       alternatively  via  the  command  greylist(1),  and  submits  a  string
       (triplet)    that   identifies   a   particular   host/sender/recipient
       relationship.  greylistd responds "white", "grey" or "black", depending
       on  the current listing status of the provided triplet.  Alternatively,
       if either of the "--white", "--grey", or "--black" options precede  the
       data,  greylistd  responds  "true"  or  "false", indicating whether the
       triplet is currently in the corresponding state.

EXAMPLES

   Exim 4
       A sample greylistd statement for Exim 4 is provided with this  package,
       and          can          normally          be         found         in
       "/usr/share/doc/greylistd/examples/exim4-acl-example.txt".

   Others
       What others?  :-)

       A prerequisite to greylisting in general  is  the  ability  to  perform
       custom filtering throughout the various stages in the SMTP transaction,
       most  notably  after  the  RCPT  TO:  SMTP  command.   In   particular,
       greylistd(8) can be invoked either over a UNIX domain socket or via the
       supplied greylist(1) utility.

       Although greylistd(8) is written mainly with Exim in mind, it should be
       possible to use it with any MTA that:

         -    Allows  arbitrary  strings  to  be  passed  on via a UNIX domain
              socket  (/var/run/greylistd/socket)  or  supplied  to   external
              programs (greylist(1)).

         -    Can defer the incoming delivery, based on the response.

       Some  MTAs  either have limited or no support for such external filters
       in the SMTP transaction  (e.g.  Sendmail),  or  define  a  very  custom
       interface for such filters (e.g. Postifx "Policy Servers").

       That  said, solutions exist for these other MTAs as well.  For Postfix,
       check into "postgrey", and for Sendmail  there  is  "relaydelay".   For
       other MTAs, check the links on Evan Harris' greylisting project page:

           http://projects.puremagic.com/greylisting/links.html

FILES

   /etc/greylistd/config
       Configuration   settings.   Currently,  this  file  consists  of  three
       sections:

       [timeout]
           Lists various timeouts used to determine how long  to  keep  a  new
           triplet greylisted, and when to expire previosly known triplets.

       [socket]
           Specifies  path  and permissions of the UNIX domain socket on which
           greylistd will listen.

       [data]
           Specifies the paths to the data files, containing  the  data  items
           and  statistics, as well as an update interval specifying how often
           data will be written to these files.

   /var/lib/greylistd/states
       (default path, can be modified in the configuration file)

       Runtime data.  Theare are four sections: [white], [grey],  [black]  and
       [statistics].  The first three sections consist of lines of the form:

           hash = lastseen firstseen count

       where:

         - hash is a 32-bit value representing a given triplet,

         - lastseen  is  a  32-bit  value  representing  the timestamp of last
           delivery attempt for this triplet,

         - firstseen is a 32-bit value representing  the  timestamp  of  first
           known delivery attempt for this triplet,

         - count  is  a  32-bit  value  representing  the  number  of delivery
           attempts that have been made for this triplet in this time  period.

       The  [statistics]  section  contains  a  counter  for each of the three
       lists, indicating how many items that has ever made its way into  these
       lists by way of the update protocol.

   /var/lib/greylistd/triplets
       (default path, can be modified in the configuration file)

       Unhashed  data  -  i.e.  the  original  triplets  passed  to greylistd.
       Internally, greylistd(8) hashes the provided data into a single  32-bit
       value  for efficiency.  Prior to version 0.6, the original data was not
       retained; as of version 0.6, data is optionally saved into this file.

       Data items are saved in the form:
           hash = data ...

   /var/run/greylistd/socket
       (default path, can be modified in the configuration file)

       The UNIX domain socket providing the  main  interface  to  "greylistd".
       The MTA can either connect to this socket directly, or use the supplied
       "greylist" utility to do so.

BUGS

       Because triplets and timestamps are hashed into simple  32-bit  values,
       there  is  a  very  slim  chance  that deliveries that should have been
       greylisted are allowed through.  More so for very busy sites.

       Commands are actually  executed  in  the  daemon,  not  the  "greylist"
       client.   If  the  user  who  invokes  "greylist"  interactively  has a
       different  time  zone  than  the  daemon   process,   time   and   date
       representations in the output will reflect those of the daemon.

AUTHOR

       This  python  script  and  manual  page  is  written  by  Tor Slettnes,
       originally for Debian GNU/Linux.

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (C) 2004-2005 Tor Slettnes.

       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
       under  the  terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
       Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at  your
       option) any later version.

       This  program  is  distributed  in the hope that it will be useful, but
       WITHOUT  ANY  WARRANTY;  without   even   the   implied   warranty   of
       MERCHANTABILITY  or  FITNESS  FOR  A  PARTICULAR  PURPOSE.  See the GNU
       General Public License for more details.

       On a Debian GNU/Linux system, the full text of the GPL is available  in
       /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL.  It is also available at:

           http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

SEE ALSO

       http://projects.puremagic.com/greylisting/
              Evan Harris' greylisting whitepaper

       greylist(1)
              Command-line interface to the greylist daemon.

       greylistd-setup-exim4(8)
              Utility   to   add/remove   support  for  greylistd  in  Exim  4
              configuration files.