Jason White wrote:
Mike Fabre <mike+luv@fabre.id.au> wrote:
Hi, I have a postfix & dovecot server set up, and I have been given the task of making it put a arbitrary 5-10 minute delay for every email that comes through, whether it be for sent mail or received mail doesn't matter.
Are you sure you have to reinvent what is already available? You could install Postgrey, which (based on reports from friends who use it) can be very effective.
Some background: the users are malicious; and are leveraging high speed of modern email as a substitute for SMS (which they are not allowed). The obvious solution is to artificially delay all mail for (say) fifteen minutes. This is hoped to reduce the enormous quantity of one-line messages like "hi F, how r u" and "im ok, u".
Sigh. Users. Our jobs would be a lot easier without them. Under Exim I would set up dual spool directories, so incoming email gets dumped in Q1, but only Q2 is processed for delivery automatically. A cron job would run every few minutes and move spool files older than 5 minutes from Q1 to Q2. Maybe you can do something similar with postfix? I don't think the greylist solution is the right one. You still want your server to receive the email... forcing a retry could introduce a much larger delay than you want. Have you considered charging the users department for excessive emails? ;) James