The Sysadmin’s Daily Grind: Postfilter

THE GOOD NEWS

Article from Issue 75/2007
Author(s):

If protocols were human beings, NNTP would be a kind and slightly confused person that always believes the best of other people – even if they drop trash in the mailbox. Postfilter gives NNTP a watchdog.

Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) has been written off many times, but Usenet will probably still be around when the last Web 2.0 forum bites the dust. This wouldn’t be such a bad thing if the protocol had some kind of protection mechanisms. As things stand, people on Usenet tend to misbehave. As an admin, I once infuriated the Usenet community (abuse@kuehnast.com: Mailbox full), and then the disbelief of the offender: “Wadya mean crossposting is bad?” Postfilter adds spam and abuse protection to your server. I won’t go into the installation steps here, as the homepage has a fantastic guide.

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