[Gllug] Server management query

[David L Neil Mailing list a/c]

Hi all,

Which general, or 'compulsory' email addresses do you maintain for your
domains (web and email service)?

I notice other comments on the list about spam levels, and have been
feeling a bit overwhelmed myself. Have ended up shutting off 'catch-all'
addresses on certain of my domains, but I notice that a weight of spam
arrives at what I would call required-addresses, eg
PostMaster@
WebMaster@
Abuse@

I've generally understood that there are some accountNMs which one
should/must have available on every site/domain? (and be monitoring!)
However quick research this morning has (apparently) failed, or perhaps
failed to select the 'correct' keywords, to find a relevant
reference-source.

RFC822 does say:
<<<
6.3. RESERVED ADDRESS It often is necessary to send mail to a site,
without know- ing any of its valid addresses. For example, there may be
mail system dysfunctions, or a user may wish to find out a person's
correct address, at that site. This standard specifies a single,
reserved mailbox address (local-part) which is to be valid at each site.
Mail sent to that address is to be routed to a person responsible for
the site's mail system or to a person with responsibility for general
site operation. The name of the reserved local-part address is:
Postmaster so that "Postmaster at domain" is required to be valid.
>>>
Interestingly RFC2822 (superseding) does NOT repeat this!?

Of course that RFC does not (also) apply to 'web', specifically. Thus
turning to the Apache docs (.conf files) we find unbridled optimism:
<<<
ServerAdmin Directive
Description:	Email address that the server includes in error messages
sent to the client
Syntax:	ServerAdmin email-address|URL
Context:	server config, virtual host
Status:	Core
Module:	core

The ServerAdmin sets the contact address that the server includes in any
error messages it returns to the client. If the httpd doesn't recognize
the supplied argument as an URL, it assumes, that it's an email-address
and prepends it with mailto: in hyperlink targets. However, it's
recommended to actually use an email address, since there are a lot of
CGI scripts that make that assumption. If you want to use an URL, it
should point to another server under your control. Otherwise users may
not be able to contact you in case of errors.

It may be worth setting up a dedicated address for this, e.g.
ServerAdmin www-admin at foo.example.com
as users do not always mention that they are talking about the server!
>>>
So they seem to have gone to the same school as I, but, one could hard
say this is a "requirement" placed upon server admins.

I'm wondering if my 'knowledge' of such things is 'old hat' and thus no
longer applicable in today's more cooperative and communicative age? I
have always believed that to provide an admin service, one has to have
certain addresses live and make use of the "Mail to non-existent user"
feature in order to capture mis-spellings, eg Rae@ is frequently
dyslexically typed Rea@ However this 'service' is also a formula for
spam-collection.

Are we at the point where spam rates are so high, people generally
consider that providing helpful services to 'guessers', the
typographically challenged, and dyslexics, is no longer viable?

What is your practice?
=dn

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