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Bubulle's weblog, Random bits from Christian Perrier

Christian Perrier
christian@perrier.eu.org

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On random blacklisting of mail servers
Yesterday, I again got a stupid thing like:

: host YYYYYYYYYYY.de[AA.BB.CC.DDa] said: 550
    5.7.0 ... We don't accept mail from SPAM-friendly
    providers (in reply to RCPT TO command)

The original mail was sent from my home server, hosted on a fixed IP address of the French ISP provider Free. The address has reverse DNS resolution and my system never sent spam or never was used to send spam. Free has a policy to block outboind port 25 for its customers unless they explicitely request to open it...which is IMHO the best compromise to avoid thousands of zombie Windows computers to send out spam.

Blocking random blocks of IP addresses because they are "used by ISP customers" or because "one should us one's ISP mail server" is nonsense. This is not the Internet I knew and this is not the Internet I want.

I don't see any reason why my home server would be worse than Free mail servers.

I know what spam is. I receive tons of it and I had to take measures to limit and filter it. These measures never involved such stupid blocking by IP address and silly blacklisting. I use the Internet to communicate and I want people to be able to reach me, not going through weird ways to find their route to my precious mail address.

That was the random rant of the day. I know many people will maybe comment on why Filtering Is Good or why I Shouldn't Be Sending Mail Directly But Use My ISP. Feel free to do so but also think about it: aren't we using mail to freely communicate? Blocking IP addresses randomly is just the poor man's solution to spam.

[/bubulle/planet-debian] permanent link

June 24 2008

fr   : 9673/9706,  33 missing, 99.66%
de   : 9647/9706,  59 missing, 99.39%
pt   : 9351/9706,  355 missing, 96.34%
cs   : 9238/9706,  468 missing, 95.17%
vi   : 8111/9706,  1595 missing, 83.56%
nl   : 7751/9706,  1955 missing, 79.85%
ru   : 7150/9706,  2556 missing, 73.66%
gl   : 6945/9706,  2761 missing, 71.55%
es   : 6773/9706,  2933 missing, 69.78%
sv   : 6439/9706,  3267 missing, 66.34%
fi   : 5936/9706,  3770 missing, 61.15%
ja   : 5865/9706,  3841 missing, 60.42%
eu   : 5225/9706,  4481 missing, 53.83%
pt_BR   : 5193/9706,  4513 missing, 53.50%
it   : 4673/9706,  5033 missing, 48.14%
ca   : 3868/9706,  5838 missing, 39.85%
da   : 3396/9706,  6310 missing, 34.98%
nb   : 3190/9706,  6516 missing, 32.86%
ml   : 2928/9706,  6778 missing, 30.16%
bg   : 2893/9706,  6813 missing, 29.80%
hu   : 2753/9706,  6953 missing, 28.36%
lt   : 2651/9706,  7055 missing, 27.31%
ro   : 2659/9706,  7047 missing, 27.39%
sk   : 2622/9706,  7084 missing, 27.01%
ta   : 2598/9706,  7108 missing, 26.76%
tr   : 2573/9706,  7133 missing, 26.50%

[/bubulle/l10n-fr] permanent link

More nuts-driving packages
And the packages that drove me nuts today are....root-system and mxallowd. Congratulations, people, you succeeded in turning me mad the same day by introducing debconf templates without any prior call for translations.

So, another move back for translation teams. As a reward for that, please expect an *immediate* l10n NMU proposal by /me.

Maybe, some day, people will *learn*. I can dream...

Besides that, these packages are packages indeed coming out of NEW. I should maybe talk with the ftpmasters and see if we can enforce maintainers who introduce new packages with debconf stuff to actually:

• ask for a templates review on d-l-english
• send a call for translations

[/bubulle/planet-debian] permanent link

100% for debconf: only French and German?
Yesterday, I looked at the status of debconf translations for the three top languages in the current ranking.

French and German will make it definitely. I can fairly easily NMU packages which are slow, if needed (but for most that won't be needed, except maybe udev where Marco is.....somewhere). Of course, being the nasty person I am, I'll arrange so that French makes it before German..:-)

However, Portuguese will not, IMHO. There are way too many missing translations so even though they're 96% or so, I don't think I can successfully push enough packages at the same time. Apparently, the Portuguese team has been neglecting the *needed updates* for translations they already sent in the past.

Sorry, guys, you'll stay hosed around 96-99% probably. Unless some miracle happens.

[/bubulle/planet-debian] permanent link