# Distributed Checksum Clearinghouse (DCC) Frequently Answered Questions

Current versions of this list can be found among the https://www.rhyolite.com/dcc/ web pages and their mirror at https://www.dcc-servers.net/dcc/.

- What is the Distributed Checksum Clearinghouse or DCC?
- Is the DCC source free?
- Where can I get DCC source?
- Where can I get DCC RPMs, packages or other binary forms?
- Do the fuzzy checksums ignore personalizations?
- How much bandwidth, RAM, disk space, and computing does the DCC require?
- Do I need to run a DCC server?
- Can I use cluster or other load balancing mechanisms with my DCC servers?
- What happens to my mail if DCC breaks?
- How do I mark spam without rejecting it?
- Why doesn't the man command find the man pages?
- Must sendmail be used with DCC?
- Can Postfix be used with DCC?
- Can the DCC be used with smtpd?
- Can the DCC be used with Exim?
- How can the DCC be used with mail user agents?
- Can the DCC be used with SpamAssassin or other spam filters?
- How long must SpamAssassin or an MTA wait for DCC results?
- Must I have the root password to use DCC?
- Why don't the public DCC servers work? Do I need a client-ID?
- Which ports do I need to open in my firewall?
- Why does the dccd database grow without bound?
- The dccd database is corrupt. What should I do?
- How can I stop the log directories from overflowing?
- Why do my DCC clients including cdcc and dccproc complain about Resource temporarily unavailable?
- Why does dccifd or dccm complain about thread_create() failed: 11, try again? or pthread_create(): Cannot allocate memory?
- Why does dccm or dccifd complain about too many simultaneous mail messages?
- Why doesn't my DCC client pick my local DCC server?
- If I have a server-ID, do I need a DCC client-ID, or vice versa?
- Why does my DCC server complain about "rejected server-IDs" among flooded checksum reports?
- Why does my DCC server refuse to accept more than 50 operations per second?
- How do I keep strangers from using my DCC server?
- How can I determine why dccm reported a message as spam or with a recipient count of "MANY"?
- How can I see what checksums my server has heard from its clients?
- How do I stop DCC false positives?
- Why is mail from my favorite mailing list marked with an X-DCC header line that says it is spam?
- Why are acknowledgments of spam reports mistakenly marked as spam by DCC?
- Why are some checksums missing from my X-DCC header lines?
- How do I maintain client whitelists?
- Do I need both server and client whitelists?
- When the whitelist file used by dccd, dccm or dccifd is changed, what must be done to tell the software about the change?
- How do I test a whiteclnt file?
- Can I use wild cards or regular expressions in DCC whitelists?
- How do I whitelist mail from a legitimate bulk mailer using its name or SMTP headers such as Mailing-List or the Habeas SWE headers?
- Why does dccm or dccifd complain about "incompatible whitelists"?
- Why do legitimate mail messages have X-DCC header lines that say they are "bulk", "many", or spam?
- Are IP address blocks in whitelists used by dccproc?
- Why is dccproc is ignoring env_from whitelist entries?
- What if I make a mistake with dccproc -t many and report legitimate mail as spam?
- Can the sendmail "spamfriend" mechanism tell dccm to not check mail sent to some addresses?
- How do I tell dccm and sendmail to not check mail for an entire domain?
- How can I avoid polluting the databases of DCC servers with checksums of my mail that is not spam?
- Can DCC be fed with spam traps?
- How many flooding peers does my DCC server need?
- Do I need to tell the operators of other DCC servers the password for controlling my server to turn on flooding?
- How can I figure out why flooding is not working?
- How do I monitor my DCC clients and servers? Is there a nagios plugin?
- Why didn't the RTT reported by the cdcc info operation change when my network topology changed?
- When my clients are configured to use SOCKS, they do not realize immediately when a server is down.

What is the Distributed Checksum Clearinghouse or DCC?
  The DCC or Distributed Checksum Clearinghouse is an anti-spam content filter that runs on a variety of operating systems. The idea of the DCC is that if mail recipients could compare the mail they receive, they could recognize unsolicited bulk mail. A DCC server totals reports of "fuzzy" checksums of messages from clients and answers queries about the total counts for checksums of mail messages.

  See the main DCC man page as well as the DCC web page and its mirror.

Is the DCC source free
  The non-commercial Distributed Checksum Clearinghouse source carries a license that is free only to organizations that do not sell filtering devices or services except to their own users and that participate in the global DCC network. ISPs that use DCC to filter mail for their own users are intended to be covered by the free license. You can redistribute unchanged copies of the free source, but you may not redistribute modified, "fixed," or "improved" versions of the source or binaries. You also can't call it your own or blame anyone for the results of using it.

  Organizations that do not qualify for the free license are welcome to inquire about licenses for the commercial version by email to sales@rhyolite.com or via the form. The commercial version supports DCC Reputations.

  Please note that organizations that do not qualify for the free DCC license have never been allowed to use the public DCC servers.

Where can I get DCC source?
  The official DCC source repositories are at www.rhyolite.com/dcc/ and https://www.dcc-servers.net/dcc/.

  Please do not try to use ancient versions of DCC software dating from early 2005 and redistributed by third parties including some Linux packagers. Those versions do not detect bulk mail as well as more recent versions. Installations using those old versions also have problems using the public DCC servers that often make it necessary to add their IP addresses to the blacklist that protects the public DCC servers. Even worse, all known Linux redistributions of DCC software have been changed in ways that break things, including the /opt/local/libexec/dcc/updatedcc shell script that could otherwise be used to fetch, configure, compile, install, and restart a current version.

  When installing DCC software, please consider the installation instructions in the INSTALL.html file included with the source or in the on line source trees.

Where can I get DCC RPMs, packages or other binary forms?
  There are no official distributions of DCC binaries, whether simple a.out files, RPM Package Manager (RPM) packages, or BSD style ports or packages (pkg). There are many unofficial sources of DCC binaries, including Linux RPMs and BSD style packages.

  The FreeBSD packages are not too far out of date and include a working version of the /opt/local/libexec/dcc/updatedcc shell script that fetches, configures, compiles, installs, and restarts a current version.

  As far as known in 2009, all DCC RPMs offered by Linux distributors are based on DCC software from 2005 and should not be used. They cause problems for the public DCC servers.

Do the fuzzy checksums ignore personalizations?
  Yes, they ignore many personalizations and hash busters.

How much bandwidth, RAM, disk space, and computing does the DCC require?
  The UDP packets used by a DCC client to obtain the checksum totals from a DCC server for a mail message generally use less bandwidth than the DNS queries required to receive the same message. A DCC client needs very little disk space.

  Bulk messages are usually logged by DCC clients. On systems receiving a lot of mail, the mechanisms for automatically creating new log directories every minute, day, or hour can keep any single log directory from becoming too large. See the dccm and dccproc man pages.

  About 1.4 GBytes/day are exchanged between each pair of DCC servers. Each server has 3 or 4 peers. The resulting database is about 3 GBytes with the default expiration parameters.. However, while dbclean is deleting old checksums, there are three copies of the database. The DCC clients and server do not need many CPU cycles, but the daily executions of dbclean on a system with a DCC server require a computer with at least 2 or 3 GBytes of RAM. In 2006, a DCC server prefers more than 4 GBytes of RAM and can use 6 GBytes. 12 to 18 GBytes of disk space are also needed.

  The memory found by dccd or dbclean and how can be seen by starting them with -d in DCCD_ARGS or DBCLEAN_ARGS /opt/local/etc/dcc/dcc_conf file in the DCC home directory. They try to use half of physical memory if there is less than 2 GBytes, all except 512 MByte between 2 GBytes and 4 GBytes, and all but 1 GByte if there are more than 4 GBytes.

  DCC servers used by clients handling 100,000 or more messages per day need to be larger. Each additional 100,000 messages/day need about 100 MBytes of disk space and system memory, given the default expiration used by dbclean.

Do I need to run a DCC server?
  A mail system that processes fewer than 100,000 mail messages per day uses less of its own bandwidth and the bandwidth of other DCC servers by using the public DCC servers. Each mail message needs a DCC transaction that requires about 100 bytes, and so 100,000 mail messages/day imply about 10 MBytes/day of DCC client-server traffic. Each DCC server needs to exchange "floods" or streams of checksms with 4 other servers. Each flood is currently about 1.4 GBytes/day for a current total of about 3 GBytes/day.

  When normally installed by the included Makefiles, DCC clients are configured to use the public DCC servers without any additional configuration except opening firewalls to port UDP 6277.

  Mail systems that process more than 100,000 mail messages per day need local DCC servers connected to the global network of DCC servers. The public DCC servers include denial of service defenses which ignore requests in excess of about 240,000 per day per client.

  It is wrong to resell the CPU cycles, network bandwidth, disk space, and, most important, human system administration work of the public DCC servers. Vendors of "anti-spam appliances" or similar that do not steal from the operators of the public DCC servers have always run their own DCC servers.

Can I use cluster or other load balancing mechanisms with my DCC servers?
  No, do not try outside load balancing mechanisms with a DCC server. Each DCC client must know the DCC server it is using for each DCC request by fixed IP address. Instead let the load balancing mechanisms in each DCC client work. Each DCC client monitors the round trip time (RTT) including queue delays to all of the DCC servers it knows. The client uses the fastest available server.

What happens to my mail if DCC breaks?
  When in doubt or trouble, the DCC clients including dccproc and dccm deliver mail. They wait only a little while for a DCC server to answer before giving up. They then avoid asking a server for a while to avoid slowing down mail.

  If the DCC sendmail interface or milter program, dccm, crashes, the default parameters in misc/dcc.m4 for the sendmail.cf Xdcc line tell sendmail to wait only about 30 seconds before giving up and delivering the mail.

  The DCC client code keeps track of the speeds of the servers it knows about, and uses the fastest or closest. Every hour or so it re-resolves A records and checks the speeds of the servers it is not using. When the current server stops working or gets significantly slower, the client code switches to a better server.

How do I mark spam without rejecting it?
  Unless given thresholds at which to reject mail, dccm and dccproc do not reject mail. When dccm is given a threshold by setting DCCM_REJECT_AT in /opt/local/etc/dcc/dcc_conf in the DCC home directory, DCCM_ARGS can also be set to "-a IGNORE so that spam is marked but not rejected.

Why doesn't the man command find the man pages?
  The nroff source, formated nroff output, and HTML versions of the man pages are in the top-level source directory. Formatted or nroff source is installed by default somewhere in /usr/local/man depending on the target system. It may be necessary to add /usr/local/man to the MANPATH environment variable. Even with that, SunOS 5.7 sometimes has trouble finding them unless man -F is used.

Must sendmail be used with DCC?
  While the sendmail milter interface, dccm and the DCC program interface or dccifd are the most efficient ways to report and check DCC checksums, dccproc is also commonly used.

Can Postfix be used with DCC?
  The best way to use DCC with Postfix is with dccifd as a Before-Queue Content Filter.

  In tests thesevalues for -p and -o in the /opt/local/etc/dcc/dcc_conf file:

          DCCIFD_ENABLE=on
          DCCIFD_ARGS="-p 127.0.0.1,10025,127.0.0.1/32 -o 127.0.0.1,10026   ..."

  worked with these lines in /etc/postfix/master.cf

          smtp      inet  n       -       n       -       -       smtpd
              -o smtpd_proxy_filter=127.0.0.1:10025
          127.0.0.1:10026 inet n  -       n       -	-	smtpd
              -o smtpd_authorized_xforward_hosts=127.0.0.0/8
              -o smtpd_client_restrictions=
              -o smtpd_helo_restrictions=
              -o smtpd_sender_restrictions=
              -o smtpd_recipient_restrictions=permit_mynetworks,reject
              -o smtpd_data_restrictions=
              -o mynetworks=127.0.0.0/8
              -o receive_override_options=no_unknown_recipient_checks

  I think the warnings in the Postfix documentation about the costs of Before-Queue filters apply more to computationally expensive filters such as SpamAssassin than dccifd.

Can the DCC be used with smtpd?
  Yes, dccproc can be used with Obtuse's smtpd. Dave Lugo has contributed a shell script to the smtpd-sd project which can be used to do DCC checking prior to the end of the SMTP DATA command.

Can the DCC be used with Exim?
  There are comments about using Dccproc with Exim in the DCC mailing list archives including these messages:
  - 2002/000203
  - 2002/000254

  However, those mailing list messages talked about using dccproc before dccifd was available. Dccproc is suitable only for low mail volumes.

Can the DCC be used with SpamAssassin or other spam filters?
  The DCC can be used with SpamAssassin as well as other spam and virus filters. Note that it is more efficient to arrange to use a DCC client daemon, dccm or dccifd, to mark passing mail and check X-DCC header lines in the filter than connect to dccifd on each message. It is even less desirable to start and run dccproc on each message.

  If the dccifd socket is present, SpamAssassin prefers to talk to dccifd instead of running dccproc.

  Some commercial virus and spam filters include DCC clients that query public DCC servers or DCC servers operated by the filter vendor and that "flood" or exchange bulk mail checksums with public servers. Reputable manufacturers of such devices operate their own DCC servers connected to global network of DCC servers instead of stealing and then selling the CPU cycles, network bandwidth, disk space, and, most important, human system administration efforts of the public DCC servers.

How long must SpamAssassin or an MTA wait for DCC results?
  DCC clients including dccproc, dccifd, and dccm can wait as long as about 16 seconds for an answer from a DCC server. Except when an anonymous client triggers the progressive delays that are among the defenses against denial of service attacks in the public DCC servers, delays are almost always less than 10 seconds. Delays for DNS blacklists (see dccifd -B) are additional.

How can the DCC be used with mail user agents?
  Dccproc can be used with any mail user agent that can check mail headers. For example, WD Baseley sent a note to the DCC mailing list on how to configure Eudora to act on X-DCC header lines.

  Bharat Mediratta has developed DeepSix for people using mail user agents on UNIX boxes connected remote servers such as corporate Exchange servers. See his project on Sourceforge as well as his announcement in the DCC mailing list.

Must I have the root password to use DCC?
  No, the procmail or sendmail .forward DCC user program, dccproc can be installed in an individual ~/bin directory. Then cdcc can create a private map file used with dccproc -h dir or dccproc -m dir/map.

  Also see the DCC installation instructions.

Why don't the public DCC servers work? Do I need a client-ID?
  The public DCC servers accept requests from clients using the anonymous client-ID. Incorrectly configured firewalls often cause problems. Traceroute can be used to send UDP packets to test for interfering firewalls. See the answer to the firewall question.

  After firewalls, the most common cause of problems while trying to use the public DCC servers is sending too many requests. The DCC server daemon, dccd, includes defenses against denial of service or DoS attacks. Those defenses include progressively delaying responses and eventually ignoring requests. The ancient version of the DCC client software included in some Linux redistributions tries so hard to reach the fastest server that it can trigger those DoS defenses.

Which ports do I need to open in my firewall?
  DCC traffic is like DNS traffic. You should treat port 6277 like port 53. Allow outgoing packets to distant UDP port 6277 and incoming packets from distant UDP port 6277.

  If the command `cdcc info` says no DCC servers are answering, you may need to adjust your firewall. Also consider the other reasons why the public DCC servers can ignore requests.

  If you run a DCC server, open incoming connections to local TCP port 6277 from your flooding peers, and outgoing connections to TCP port 6277 on your flooding peers. Also open UDP port 6277 to your DCC clients (systems using dccproc, dccifd, or dccm to filter mail) and to dcc-status.rhyolite.com for the DCC server status web page.

  See also the discussion of Cisco ACLs at https://www.dcc-servers.net/dcc/firewall.html.

  TCP and UDP port 6276 is by the greylisting mechanism in dccifd and dccm very much like port 6277. TCP 6276 is used for flooding greylist data among your greylist database servers, if you have more than one. UDP port is used by dccm and dccifd for database operations similar to DCC operations.

Why does the dccd database grow without bound?
  Dbclean should be run every night when the system is least busy with the /opt/local/libexec/dcc/cron-dccd script. An entry like misc/crontab should be put into the crontab file for the user that runs dccd.

The dccd database is corrupt. What should I do?
  Dbclean -R will usually repair a broken DCC server database. However, if your server is "flooding" or exchanging checksums with other servers, it is often quicker to stop the DCC server, delete the /opt/local/etc/dcc/dcc_db and /opt/local/etc/dcc/dcc_db.hash files and restart dccd with the /opt/local/libexec/dcc/start-dccd script. When dccd starts, it will notice that the database has been purged and ask its flooding peers to rewind and retransmit their checksums of bulk mail.

How can I stop the log directories from overflowing?
  Global dccm or dccifd logging can be entirely disabled by setting DCCM_LOGDIR="" or DCCIFD_LOGDIR="" in the /opt/local/etc/dcc/dcc_conf file in the DCC home directory. Logging for individual users can be disabled by not creating or deleting thir log directories. However, this not only disables logging of rejected mail, but also logging of mail that suffered system failures.

  To delete old log files, run the /opt/local/libexec/dcc/cron-dccd script daily with an entry like misc/crontab in the crontab file for the user that runs dccd or dccd. The DBCLEAN_LOGDAYS parameter in the /opt/local/libexec/dcc/dcc_conf file in the DCC home directory specifies the age of old log files.

Why do my DCC clients including cdcc and dccproc complain about "Resource temporarily unavailable"?
  Perhaps your operating system has bugs in its implementation of `fcntl` file locking, particularly for the DCC client map file when it is on an NFS file system.

  Another common case is using an editor such as some versions of vi that locks files on the main or a per-user /opt/local/etc/dcc/whiteclnt file,

Why does dccifd or dccm complain about thread_create() failed: 11, try again? or pthread_create(): Cannot allocate memory?
  The most common cause of thread_create() failed: 11, try again or pthread_create(): Cannot allocate memory error messages from dccm and dccifd is a too small limit on the maximum number of processes allowed the UID running the dccm or dccifd process. The "maxproc" limit seen with the `limit` or `limits` shell command should be a dozen or so larger than the sum of the queue sizes of dccm or dccifd (or both if both are running).

  See also the common question and answer about too many simultaneous mail messages.

Why does dccm or dccifd complain about too many simultaneous mail messages?
  Dccm or dccifd can fail to create a thread to deal with an incoming mail message if there are no available file descriptors or other resources. Adding -d to DCCD_ARGS or DCCIFD_ARGS in /opt/local/etc/dcc/dcc_conf in the DCC home directory sends a message to the system log that includes the limit on simultaneous mail messages and its source, such as a process resource limit on the number of file descriptors.

  Another common limit is the maximum number of file descriptors allowed by the select system call. This limit can be escaped by building the sendmail milter library to use the poll system call.

Why doesn't my DCC client pick my local DCC server?
  The DCC clients including dccm and dccproc pick the nearest and fastest server in the list kept in the /opt/local/etc/dcc/map file. DCC servers not in that list will not be used. That list can be viewed with the cdcc info or cdcc RTT operations. Add to the list with cdcc add or cdcc load.

  A nearby server that seems slower than a more distant server will not be chosen. The anonymous user delay set with dccd -u is intended to make a server appear slow to "freeloaders." The "RTT +/-" value that can be used with the cdcc add and cdcc load operations can be used to force DCC clients to prefer or avoid servers except when absolutely necessary.

If I have a server-ID, do I need a DCC client-ID, or vice versa?
  DCC server and client-IDs serve distinct purposes. Servers require server-IDs to identify each other in the floods of checksums they exchange and to recognize authorized users of powerful cdcc operations such as stop. DCC servers require client-IDs to identify paying clients that should be given quicker service that anonymous clients, to refuse reports from anonymous clients, or to refuse even to answer queries from anonymous clients.

Why does my DCC server complain about "rejected server-IDs" among flooded checksum reports?
  You have turned on IDS tracing, but do not have a /opt/local/etc/dcc/ids file that is complete. You don't need and probably will not have a complete file unless you are assigning DCC server-IDs.

  Redundant paths among DCC servers exchanging or flooding reports of checksums would cause duplicate entries in each server's database without the mechanism that depends on every DCC server having a unique server-ID. With IDS tracing enabled, dccd complains about server-IDs that are not listed in the local /opt/local/etc/dcc/ids file.

Why does my DCC server refuse to accept more than 50 operations per second?
  A common cause of such problems is one of the DCC server's defenses against denial of service attacks. A DCC server cannot know anything about anonymous clients, or clients using client-ID 1 or without a client-ID and matching password from the /opt/local/etc/dcc/ids file. As far as your server can know, an anonymous client sending many operations is run by an unhappy sender of unsolicited bulk mail trying to flood your server with a denial of service attack. It is easy to tell your client its ID with the cdcc add or load operations.

  The default limits can changed by adding an dccd -R argument can be added to DCCD_ARGS in the /opt/local/etc/dcc/dcc_conf file in the DCC home directory,

How do I keep strangers from using my DCC server?
  See the dccd -u option.

How can I determine why dccm reported a message as spam or with a recipient count of "MANY"?
  Dccm is usually configured to log mail with recipient counts greater than the -t ,log-thold, as well as mail with some conflicts among whitelist entries. Each log file contains a single message, its checksums, its disposition, and other information as described in the dccm man page.

  See also the dblist -C command.

How can I see what checksums my server has heard from its clients?
  The dblist -Hv command displays the contents of the database. Look for records with your server-ID with dblist -I.

How do I stop DCC false positives?
  You are probably not seeing false positives. The Distributed Checksum Clearing Houses detect both solicited and unsolicited bulk mail, while spam is only unsolicited bulk email. For your DCC client, dccm, dccifd, or dccproc, to know to ignore bulk mail messages that are solicited, it must be told by entries the main or a per-user whiteclnt whitelist file.

  The DCC source includes proof-of-concept cgi scripts for web pages supporting point-and-click white- and blacklisting. See the /opt/local/etc/dcc/cgi-bin/README file. There is also a demonstration of the cgi scripts.

Why is mail from my favorite mailing list marked with an X-DCC header line that says it is spam?
  Sources of solicited bulk mail including mailing lists to which you have subscribed should usually be in your DCC client whitelist so that they receive no X-DCC header lines.

Why are acknowledgments of spam reports mistakenly marked as spam by DCC?
  There is probably no mistake. DCC detect bulk mail and not only unsolicited bulk mail. Whether a bulk message is spam depends on whether you solicited or asked for it. Some INTERNET service providers have sent literally millions of acknowledgments of spam reports, which makes them bulk mail. Bulk mail you want to receive should be whitelisted in your master whiteclnt file or a per-user whiteclnt file.

Why are some checksums missing from my X-DCC header lines?
  If the DCC client was not able to compute a checksum for a message, it will not ask the server about that checksum and the checksum will not appear in the X-DCC header. For example, if dccproc is not told and cannot figure out the IP address of the source of the message, that checksum will be missing. The Fuz1 and Fuz2 checksums cannot be computed for messages that are too small, and so will be missing for them. A checksum will also be missing if the DCC server is configured to not count it.

Do I need both server and client whitelists?
  The server /opt/local/etc/dcc/whitelist file used explicitly by dbclean and implicitly by dccd is not very useful.

  The /opt/local/etc/dcc/whiteclnt client whitelist file used by dccproc, dccm, and dccifd are generally required. Client whitelists apply only to the stream of mail handled by the DCC client, while server whitelists apply to reports of mail from all DCC clients of the DCC server.

  Dccproc is intended for use by individual users with programs such as procmail. Because the global whiteclnt file usually found in the DCC home directory is as likely to be used as a private file, the file name must be explicitly specified with dccproc -w whiteclnt. A perhaps inconvenient implication is programs such as SpamAssassin that switch unpredictably between dccproc and dccifd might get inconsistent results unless they invoke dccproc with the global whiteclnt file.

How do I maintain client whitelists?
  Start by monitoring bulk mail in the global log directories specified with dccproc -l and with DCCM_LOGDIR and DCCM_USERDIRS in the /opt/local/etc/dcc/dcc_conf file for dccm, and dccifd. Then add entries to whitelist files.

  The global /opt/local/etc/dcc/whiteclnt file and the whitelists specified with dccproc -w are maintained with ordinary text editors.

  Per-user whitelists in whiteclnt files specified with DCCM_USERDIRS in the /opt/local/etc/dcc/dcc_conf file are easily maintained with ordinary text editors by the system administrator. However, it is often better to let individual users deal with their own whitelists. The DCC source includes sample CGI scripts in the /opt/local/etc/dcc/cgi-bin directory to let individual end-users monitor their private logs of bulk mail and their individual whitelists. See the /opt/local/etc/dcc/cgi-bin/README file. There is also a demonstration of the cgi scripts.

When the /opt/local/etc/dcc/whiteclnt whitelist file used by dccm, dccd, or dccifd is changed, what must be done to tell the software about the change?
  The DCC clients notice when their whiteclnt files as well as included files change and automatically rebuild the corresponding .dccw hash table files.

  Changes to the DCC server or dccd whitelist are not effective until after dbclean is run.

  Some text editors including versions of vi lock their files. Dccm, dccproc, and dccifd are unable to read whitelist files while they are locked.

How do I test a whiteclnt file?
  An easy way to test a DCC client whitelist or /opt/local/etc/dcc/whiteclnt file is to feed dccproc with a test message. For example, the following shell script would test whether the IP address 127.0.0.1 and the SMPT envelope Mail_From value postmaster@example.com are in the whiteclnt file in the DCC home directory:

      	#!/bin/sh
      	/usr/local/bin/dccproc -QCw whiteclnt \
      		-a 127.0.0.1 -f postmaster@example.com <<EOF
      	Message-ID: <1234@example.com>

      	text
      	EOF

  If the script produces something like

      	X-DCC--Metrics: calcite.rhyolite.com; whitelist
      			    reported: 0		      checksum	       wlist
      		       IP: e475b896 492c60fc efecb432 6e29e3c5		  ok
      		 env_From: bef98dc1 cc6ea4d7 b8daf07c a2bfbc9e
      	       Message-ID: 26573398 2ab927cd 681a89fa e502496d

  then you know that SMTP client IP (mail sender) IP address 127.0.0.1 is whitelisted, but the SMTP envelope Mail_From value is not.

Can I use wild cards or regular expressions in DCC whitelists?
  No, regular expressions cannot be used, because DCC client and server whitelists are converted to lists of checksums. The same basic idea is used for DCC client whitelists as for the DCC protocol. A DCC client computes the checksums for a message, and then looks for those checksums in the local whitelist. Depending on the values associated with those checksums, the DCC client asks a DCC server about them.

  To use regular expressions with the DCC, consider procmail. Procmail is included with many UNIX-like systems. See also the Procmail Homepage.

  DCC clients can be configured to white- or blacklist using called "substitute" headers. See dccproc -S or dccm -S.

  It is also possible to use a sendmail access_db file entries to white- or blacklist based on portions of SMTP envelope and client IP addresses. For example, an access_db file line of "From:example.com OK" can be used to tell dccm to whitelist all mail from SMTP clients in the example.com domain. See the -O argument to the /opt/local/libexec/dcc/hackmc script.

  It is generally better to use white- and blacklisting lines in the global /opt/local/etc/dcc/whiteclnt file or a per-user whiteclnt file. See the main DCC man page

How do I whitelist mail from a legitimate bulk mailer using its name or SMTP headers such as Mailing-List headers?
  Start by determining an envelope value or SMTP header that distinguishes the bulk mail from a sample message or DCC log file. The name of the sending computer is the mail_host value in dccm log files. If the distinguishing header or envelope value is not among the main DCC whitelist values, then a "substitute" value must be used. An "ok substitute ..." line must be added to the whitelist file and the DCC client program must be told with dccproc -S or dccm -S. There are example whitelist entries in the sample /opt/local/etc/dcc/whiteclnt file.

Why does dccm or dccifd complain about "incompatible whitelists"?
  There are several points during an SMTP transaction when an SMTP server can reject a mail message. Early points are when the SMTP client specifies the recipients of the mail message. The last point is after the entire message has been received by the SMTP server. Spam filters that check mail message bodies must wait until that last point. The SMTP protocol does not allow an SMTP server to reject the mail message for only some recipients. The SMTP server must tell the SMTP client that the message has been accepted for all or rejected for recipients. This is a problem when the recipients of a single mail message have differing DCC thresholds or other parameters in their individual whitelist files that require that the mail message be delivered to some mailboxes but rejected for other mailboxes.

  The DCC client programs solve this conflict in one of two ways. One is telling the SMTP client that the mail message has been accepted for all recipients and then discarding instead of delivering the message for mailboxes with parameters that make it spam. This solution has the disadvantage of not informing senders of the refusal to deliver the message. The other solution is to temporarily reject recipients with possibly incompatible parameters early in the SMTP transaction with the same SMTP error status number as too many recipients for a single SMTP transaction. This second solution has the advantage of ensuring that senders know when their mail is rejected but the disadvantage of sometimes requiring as many SMTP transactions as there are recipients for a mail message.

  Which solution is used is determined by the forced-discard-ok and forced-discard-nok settings in the global and per-user whiteclnt files. Unless all recipients for a mail message agree on the first solution, perhaps by forced-discard-ok in the main /opt/local/etc/dcc/whiteclnt file, the second solution is used.

Why do legitimate mail messages have X-DCC header lines that say they are "bulk", "many", or spam?
  There are several possible causes of such problems. The first and most obvious is that the mail is solicited bulk mail and that the source needs to be added to your whitelist.

  Another possible reason is that your individual legitimate mail messages have not been marked as spam because their Body or Fuz1 checksum counts are small, but that the IP address or other checksum counts are large. The IP address checksum count, for example, is the total of all reports of addressees for that checksum. That total is independent of the other checksums, and so counts all reports for all messages with that source IP address. A source of legitimate mail that has sent a message that was reported as spam by one of its recipients will often have the totals for the checksums of its IP address, From header, and other values be MANY. This is why it usually does not make sense to reject mail based on what the DCC server reports for the IP address, From header, and other values that are not unique to the message. Only the last Received header line, the Message-ID line, and body checksums can be expected to be unique and sometimes not the Message-ID and Received header lines.

Why is legitimate mail from someone using qmail marked as spam?
  A common cause for that and similar complaints involves null or missing Message-ID header lines. Spam often lacks Message-ID lines or has a null or "<>" ID, so rejecting mail with null or missing Message-IDs can be an effective filter. DCC clients treat missing Message-ID lines as if they were present but null. The sample /opt/local/etc/dcc/whiteclnt whitelist file in the DCC source includes the line:

      	many    message-id <>

  Some Mail Transfer Agents violate section 3.6.4 of RFC 2822 and do not include Message-ID header lines in mail they send, including some combinations of qmail and "sendmail -bs" acting as the originating MTA, and qmail by itself when it is generates a non-delivery message or "bounce." Solutions to this problem include removing that line from your whitelists or adding lines specifying the From or envelope from values of senders of legitimate mail lacking Message-ID header lines.

Are IP address blocks in /opt/local/etc/dcc/whiteclnt whitelists used by dccproc?
  Yes, dccproc can whitelist mail by the IP address of the immediately preceding SMTP client, but only if it knows that IP address. Unless the dccproc -a or dccproc -R options are used, dccproc does not know the IP address.

Why is dccproc is ignoring env_from whitelist entries?
  DCC checksums are of the entire header line or envelope value. An entry in the whitelist file for jsmith@example.com will have no effect on mail with an envelope value of "J.Smith" jsmith@example.com. The file must contain "J.Smith" jsmith@example.com.

  Another common cause for this problem is implied by the fact that for an env_from whitelist entry to have any effect, dccproc must be able to find the envelope value in the message in a Return-Path header, an old UNIX-style From_ header, or an -f argument. If your mail delivery agent does not add a Return-Path header and you do not use dccproc -f, then dccproc cannot know about white or blacklist entries for envelope return addresses.

  Note also that dccproc has no whitelist by default and that dccproc -w must be used.

What if I make a mistake with dccproc -t many and report legitimate mail as spam?
  It is possible to delete checksums from the distributed DCC database with the cdcc delck operation. However, it is not worth the trouble. Unless the same (as far as the fuzzy checksums are concerned) message is sent again, no one is likely to notice the mistake before the report of the message's checksums expire from the DCC servers' databases for lack of repetition.

Can the sendmail "spamfriend" mechanism tell dccm to not check mail sent to some addresses?
  Sendmail decisions to accept, reject, or discard mail are largely independent of the decisions made by dccm. The DCC equivalent is to add env_to entries to the dccm whitelist. See the sample /opt/local/etc/dcc/whiteclnt file in the DCC source

  However, if your sendmail.cf file sets the dcc_notspam macro while processing the envelope, then the message will by whitelisted. This is related to the dcc_isspam macro used by sendmail.cf modified by /opt/local/libexec/dcc/hackmc -R to tell dccm to report blacklisted messages as spam to the DCC server.

How do I tell dccm and sendmail to not check mail for an entire domain?
  To whitelist all mail addressed to mailboxes in a local domain name, first modify sendmail.cf with the /opt/local/libexec/dcc/hackmc -O script. Then add the following line to the sendmail access_DB file and rebuild the database with the sendmail tool, makemap:

      	To:domain.com       DCC:OK

  You can apply finer control by adding a third argument to the FEATURE(dcc) macro in your sendmail.mc file as described in misc/dcc.m4. All mail for the domain can use a single "per-user" whiteclnt file, often in the /opt/local/etc/dcc/userdirs/esmtp/example.com, where /opt/local/etc/dcc/userdirs is the default value for DCCM_USERDIRS in the DCC configuration file /opt/local/etc/dcc/dcc_conf. Making /opt/local/etc/dcc/userdirs/esmtp a symbolic link to /opt/local/etc/dcc/userdir/local can be useful.

  To whitelist all mail sent from a domain, add a line like the following to the global /opt/local/etc/dcc/whiteclnt file or a per-user whiteclnt file:

      OK      substitute mail_host   example.com

  See the DCC man page.

How can I avoid polluting databases of DCC servers with checksums of my mail that is not spam?
  Reports of checksums with whitelist entries in your server's database are not flooded to its peers. The checksums of messages whitelisted with entries in local dccm or dccproc whitelists are not reported to DCC servers. It is good to add entries to DCC server and client whitelists for localhost, your IP address blocks, and your domains if you know that none of your users will ever send spam.

  However, in the common mode in which the DCC is used, no checksums of mail are pollution. Checksums of genuinely private mail will have target counts of 1 or a small number, and so will not be flooded by your server to other servers. Strangers will not see your private mail and so will not be able to ask any DCC server about the checksums of your private mail. On the other hand, the DCC functions best by collecting reports of the receipt of bulk mail as soon as possible. That implies that it is generally desirable to send reports of all mail to a DCC server. The DCC flooding protocol does not send checksums with counts below 10 to other servers.

Can DCC be fed with spam traps?
  A spam trap is a mail address that should practically never receive legitimate mail, and that treats any mail that it does receive as spam. A spam trap might be a common name such as user1 that has never been valid and is discovered by unsolicited bulk email advertisers by dictionary attacks or guessing. It might instead be an address hidden in a web page or a mailbox of an account that has been disabled for many months.

  Any spam trap might receive legitimate mail. For example, a spam trap that differs from an ordinary mailbox by a single character might receive mail intended for the ordinary mailbox. It might be best for a system to reject mail sent to such a trap so that legitimate mail senders know that their messages have gone astray. A mailbox that is a long string of arbitrary letters and digits is much less likely to receive legitimate messages and so might best accept all messages without complaint.

  There are several ways to connect spam trap mailboxes to DCC:

  dccproc
    For example,

        dccproc -R -tMANY -cCMN,MANY -o/dev/null

    will accept a message on STDIN, look for the IP address of the sender among Received: SMTP fields, reports the message to the DCC server as spam and the IP address as the sender, and exit with the default value of dccproc -x.

  dccif-test
    dccif-test was written to test the interface to the DCC interface daemon, dccifd. When wired to a spam trap, it is more efficient than dccproc. For example,

        dccif-test -cclnt-IP-addr -oSPAM -O/dev/null

    will do much the same as the dccproc example above.

  whiteclnt file option line
    The best way to build a spam trap is with a per-user whiteclnt file with an option spam-trap-accept or option spam-trap-reject line.

    With sendmail, virtual user mapping can be used to send mail to invalid mailboxes to a single mailbox whose corresponding DCC per-user whiteclnt file contains an option spam-trap-accept or option spam-trap-reject line.

How many flooding peers does my DCC server need?
  A single flooding peer delivers all reports of checksums of bulk mail seen by any DCC server. Additional peers provided reports sooner and so help the clients of a peer detect spews of spam sooner. However, more peers will cause more reports to be duplicates.

  A DCC server in a network of many servers should have at least three flooding peers to ensure that the failure of a single server or network link cannot partition the network. Limiting the number the number of peers of any server to four or perhaps a few more ensures that no single server is critical to the network. To minimize the distances in the network, four peers per server seem necessary.

  An organization with more than one server can be viewed as a single server by other organizations, with its servers flooding each other and external peers spread among its servers. This protects the network should the organization suffer large scale problems while protecting the organization from single points of failure.

Do I need to tell the operators of other DCC servers the password for controlling my server to turn on flooding?
  No, you do not need to and generally should not tell other DCC server operators the passwords for controlling your server with the cdcc command. Every Inter-server flood of checksums is authorized by lines in each server's /opt/local/etc/dcc/flod file and authenticated by the password associated with the passwd-ID in those lines. The passwd-ID is a server-ID defined in the /opt/local/etc/dcc/ids file that should generally be used only to authenticate floods of checksums.

How can I figure out why flooding is not working?
  Many DCC server problems can be diagnosed by turning on one or more of the tracing modes in the server with the cdcc trace operation or by restarting the server with dccd -T.

  The cdcc flood list operation displays the current flooding peers of a DCC server. Counts of checksum reports sent and received to and from a single peer can be displayed with cdcc "flood stats ID"

  The positions in the local database of outgoing streams of checksums are displayed by the start of dblist -Hv.

How do I monitor my DCC clients and servers? Is there a nagios plugin?
  The DCC source includes a shell script /opt/local/libexec/dcc/dcc-nagios that can be used as a nagios plugin.

Why didn't the RTT reported by the cdcc info operation change when my network topology changed?
  The RTT or round trip time is an average value. Changes in network topology, server load, and so forth are not immediately reflected in the RTT to avoid switching DCC servers too frequently.

When my clients are configured to use SOCKS, they do not realize immediately when a server is down.
  When configured to use SOCKS, DCC clients cannot "connect" to a server and so do not receive ICMP errors and must wait for timeouts to know the server is not answering.

This document describes DCC version RHYOLITE_VERSION.