policyd-weight(8)                    System Manager's Manual                    policyd-weight(8)



NAME
       policyd-weight - weighted SMTP policy daemon


STATUS
       Beta, Documentation incomplete


SYNOPSIS
       policyd-weight [-option] [-option2 <arg>] command


DESCRIPTION
       policyd-weight(8)  is a SMTP policy daemon written in perl(1) for postfix(1). It evaluates
       based on RBL/RHSBL results, HELO and MAIL FROM domain  and  subdomain  arguments  and  the
       client  IP  address the possibility of forgery or SPAM. It is designed to be called before
       the SMTP DATA command at the RCPT TO stage.  This way it is a) possible to reject  a  mail
       attempt  before the body has been received and b) to keep multirecipient mail intact, i.e.
       provide the functionality of selective usage based on recipients.

       To make policyd-weight(8) work with postfix(1), it is required to add a system account for
       $USER (default: polw)

       Policyd-weight can operate in master.cf or daemon mode. In master.cf mode it uses postfix'
       spawn(8), which results in number of simultanous requests perl instances. In  daemon  mode
       it uses shared memory and forks on load, and only if all child processes are busy.

       At  the time of writing the man-pages for policyd-weight assume a postfix installation. It
       has been reported that policyd-weight works with other MTAs like Exim, too.


SETUP
master.cf mode:
       master.cf:
       policy   unix   -   n   n   -   -   spawn   user=polw
          argv=/usr/bin/perl /usr/local/bin/policyd-weight

       main.cf:
       smtpd_recipient_restrictions =
          permit_mynetworks,
          ... authenticated permits ...
          reject_unauth_destination,
          ... whitelists, role accounts, clients ...
          check_policy_service unix:private/policy


daemon mode:
       start the daemon with  policyd-weight  start.  Poliyd-weight  then  listens  on  $TCP_PORT
       (default:  12525)   for  policy  requests.  To make postfix talk to that port do following
       changes to main.cf:

       main.cf:
       smtpd_recipient_restrictions =
          permit_mynetworks,
          ... authenticated permits ...
          reject_unauth_destination,
          ... whitelists, role accounts, clients ...
          check_policy_service inet:127.0.0.1:12525

       It is possible to have more than one postfix server talk to the daemonized  policyd-weight
       by  configuring  each postfix machine to query the policy server with check_policy_service
       inet:IP:12525 where IP is the host on which policyd-weight runs.


       Please  note  that  check_policy_service  should  come  at  last,  or   at   least   after
       reject_unauth_destination, or else you may become an open relay.

COMMANDS
       Following commands exist and are reserved for daemon mode only:

       start     start the policy server

       stop      stop the policy server

       restart   restart the policy server

       reload    tells the policy server to reload its configuration

       defaults  prints the default settings to STDOUT and exits


OPTIONS
       -d operate in debug mode
              Not  for  use in master.cf.  In debug mode everything is reported on STDOUT instead
              of syslog(3).  Also an own debug cache daemon will be spawned. The  socket-file  is
              named after the value of $SPATH with ".debug" as suffix.


       -f /path/to/file
              Pass a configuration file to policyd-weight


       -h show help


       -k kill cache daemon
              Not  for  use  in  master.cf.   Together with -d this kills the debug cache daemon.
              Without -d it kills the global running cache daemon.


       -s show cache entries
              Not for use in master.cf.


       -v show version


LOGGING
       Logging is done via syslog(3) with facility "mail" and priority  "info".  For  a  complete
       list  of log entries and their correspondending configuration parameters refer to policyd-
       weight.conf(5).


BUGS
       Please report bugs to r.felber AT ek-muc.de


HISTORY
       March 2005
              Ralf Hildebrandt (Author of the Book of Postfix) is the spiritual father  of  poli‐
              cyd-weight.  It  was  his  idea  to  have  a  scored RBL evaluation, I've added the
              weighted MAIL FROM/HELO DNS-evaluation. For that purpose I used Meng Wong's  spf.pl
              which was shipped with the postfix source as example.


FILES
       /etc/policyd-weight.conf, Policyd-weight configuration file
       /etc/postfix/main.cf, Postfix configuration parameters
       /etc/postfix/master.cf, Postfix daemon processes


SEE ALSO
       policyd-weight.conf(5), Policyd-weight configuration file
       master(5), Postfix master.cf file syntax
       postconf(5), Postfix main.cf file syntax
       access(5), Postfix SMTP access control table


LICENSE
       GNU General Public License

AUTHOR
       Robert Felber <r.felber AT ek-muc.de>
       Autohaus Erich Kuttendreier
       81827 Munich, Germany



                                          Aug 25th, 2006                        policyd-weight(8)