Logging outgoing message content
Hey team,
This feels like a question that's been answered before, but Google has turned up nothing, so here I am.
I have a RHEL server running sendmail that sends out a variety of notifications to a huge user base. Today, my manager got an email from that server, with no subject or body in it. Naturally, he's concerned that some of our users might've received similar messages and he wants me to investigate.
I can see that messages are being sent out if I review /var/log/maillog, but it doesn't show me any of the message content. What I want to do is log all outbound messages' contents, including the subject and body.
I realize this can generate a LOT of data very quickly, so naturally I would set up logrotate to clear it out on a pretty frequent basis.
Also, I'm not opposed to changing my mailer daemon (to postfix, for example).
Cheers,
- Rick
Comments
-
I have never used sendmail. Though I am saw there are good documentation that further explained the use of this package. I would first read the man page for sendmail and find any commands that will you do what you are requesting.
Sendmail should have a configuration file that allows you to manipulate the the way the program works.
I'll get back to you letting you know what can and cannot be done in regards to your request.0 -
rickwschneider wrote:
I can see that messages are being sent out if I review /var/log/maillog, but it doesn't show me any of the message content. What I want to do is log all outbound messages' contents, including the subject and body.
- Rick
When you say outbound messages are you referring to messages being sent to the hosts that your mail server serves are messages coming in to the server from the hosts? Is this server by any chance accepting email transfers from the Internet or only from in-house hosts?0 -
I was reading how sendmail works through redhat's online documentation. I found a section that highlights stopping spam. However, I have yet to come across anything related to configuring what sendmail logs. Have a look at this section and see what you can find.
18.3.2.5. Stopping Spam
Email spam can be defined as unnecessary and unwanted email received by a user who never requested the communication. It is a disruptive, costly, and widespread abuse of Internet communication standards.
Sendmail makes it relatively easy to block new spamming techniques being employed to send junk email. It even blocks many of the more usual spamming methods by default. Main anti-spam features available in sendmail are header checks, relaying denial (default from version 8.9), access database and sender information checks.
For example, forwarding of SMTP messages, also called relaying, has been disabled by default since Sendmail version 8.9. Before this change occurred, Sendmail directed the mail host (x.edu) to accept messages from one party (y.com) and sent them to a different party (z.net). Now, however, Sendmail must be configured to permit any domain to relay mail through the server. To configure relay domains, edit the /etc/mail/relay-domains file and restart Sendmail~]# service sendmail restart
However users can also be sent spam from from servers on the Internet. In these instances, Sendmail's access control features available through the /etc/mail/access file can be used to prevent connections from unwanted hosts. The following example illustrates how this file can be used to both block and specifically allow access to the Sendmail server:badspammer.com ERROR:550 "Go away and do not spam us anymore" tux.badspammer.com OK 10.0 RELAY
This example shows that any email sent from badspammer.com is blocked with a 550 RFC-821 compliant error code, with a message sent back. Email sent from the tux.badspammer.com sub-domain, is accepted. The last line shows that any email sent from the 10.0.*.* network can be relayed through the mail server.
Because the /etc/mail/access.db file is a database, use the makemap command to update any changes. Do this using the following command as root:~]# makemap hash /etc/mail/access < /etc/mail/access
Message header analysis allows you to reject mail based on header contents. SMTP servers store information about an email's journey in the message header. As the message travels from one MTA to another, each puts in a Received header above all the other Received headers. It is important to note that this information may be altered by spammers.
The above examples only represent a small part of what Sendmail can do in terms of allowing or blocking access. See the /usr/share/sendmail-cf/README file for more information and examples.
Since Sendmail calls the Procmail MDA when delivering mail, it is also possible to use a spam filtering program, such as SpamAssassin, to identify and file spam for users. See Section 18.4.2.6, “Spam Filters” for more information about using SpamAssassin.
https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Deployment_Guide/s2-email-mta-sendmail.html#s3-email-mta-sendmail-changes0
Categories
- All Categories
- 49 LFX Mentorship
- 102 LFX Mentorship: Linux Kernel
- 552 Linux Foundation Boot Camps
- 296 Cloud Engineer Boot Camp
- 118 Advanced Cloud Engineer Boot Camp
- 52 DevOps Engineer Boot Camp
- 53 Cloud Native Developer Boot Camp
- 4 Express Training Courses
- 4 Express Courses - Discussion Forum
- 1.9K Training Courses
- 18 LFC110 Class Forum
- 6 LFC131 Class Forum
- 25 LFD102 Class Forum
- 150 LFD103 Class Forum
- 17 LFD121 Class Forum
- LFD137 Class Forum
- 61 LFD201 Class Forum
- LFD210 Class Forum
- LFD210-CN Class Forum
- 1 LFD213 Class Forum - Discontinued
- 128 LFD232 Class Forum
- LFD237 Class Forum
- 23 LFD254 Class Forum
- 597 LFD259 Class Forum
- 102 LFD272 Class Forum
- 1 LFD272-JP クラス フォーラム
- LFD273 Class Forum
- 2 LFS145 Class Forum
- 24 LFS200 Class Forum
- 739 LFS201 Class Forum
- 1 LFS201-JP クラス フォーラム
- 3 LFS203 Class Forum
- 69 LFS207 Class Forum
- 300 LFS211 Class Forum
- 54 LFS216 Class Forum
- 47 LFS241 Class Forum
- 41 LFS242 Class Forum
- 37 LFS243 Class Forum
- 11 LFS244 Class Forum
- 33 LFS250 Class Forum
- 1 LFS250-JP クラス フォーラム
- LFS251 Class Forum
- 140 LFS253 Class Forum
- 1K LFS258 Class Forum
- 10 LFS258-JP クラス フォーラム
- 92 LFS260 Class Forum
- 129 LFS261 Class Forum
- 32 LFS262 Class Forum
- 79 LFS263 Class Forum
- 15 LFS264 Class Forum
- 11 LFS266 Class Forum
- 17 LFS267 Class Forum
- 17 LFS268 Class Forum
- 23 LFS269 Class Forum
- 203 LFS272 Class Forum
- 1 LFS272-JP クラス フォーラム
- LFS281 Class Forum
- 221 LFW211 Class Forum
- 167 LFW212 Class Forum
- SKF100 Class Forum
- 901 Hardware
- 219 Drivers
- 74 I/O Devices
- 44 Monitors
- 115 Multimedia
- 208 Networking
- 101 Printers & Scanners
- 85 Storage
- 761 Linux Distributions
- 88 Debian
- 66 Fedora
- 15 Linux Mint
- 13 Mageia
- 24 openSUSE
- 141 Red Hat Enterprise
- 33 Slackware
- 13 SUSE Enterprise
- 356 Ubuntu
- 477 Linux System Administration
- 41 Cloud Computing
- 69 Command Line/Scripting
- Github systems admin projects
- 95 Linux Security
- 77 Network Management
- 108 System Management
- 49 Web Management
- 66 Mobile Computing
- 23 Android
- 29 Development
- 1.2K New to Linux
- 1.1K Getting Started with Linux
- 536 Off Topic
- 131 Introductions
- 216 Small Talk
- 21 Study Material
- 816 Programming and Development
- 275 Kernel Development
- 507 Software Development
- 928 Software
- 260 Applications
- 184 Command Line
- 3 Compiling/Installing
- 76 Games
- 316 Installation
- 59 All In Program
- 59 All In Forum
Upcoming Training
-
August 20, 2018
Kubernetes Administration (LFS458)
-
August 20, 2018
Linux System Administration (LFS301)
-
August 27, 2018
Open Source Virtualization (LFS462)
-
August 27, 2018
Linux Kernel Debugging and Security (LFD440)