Re: Is pyzor active?

[<pyz...@nr...>]

Hi. No, I'm not Frank. Didn't mean to give that impression at all. It
appears that Frank last posted to this list in september. I just don't
expect Frank to reply right away with "its not dead" every time someone
asks.

It's a fact that pyzor isn't dead because I have been using it for three
years with great results, using Frank's server (or whatever server Frank
kindly arranged for us).=20

There's simply no code to manage distributed servers. Someone would have =
to
write it. I suppose that if Frank thought it was a big problem he might =
have
done it already. I can only speculate based on his posts to the mailing
list.

People reporting server problems doesn't necessarily mean there is a =
server
problem. I see those posts pop up now and then, but I still see plenty of
spam going into my pyzor folder. I'm not impressed when people report =
server
problems and don't know or even try to do a traceroute, use other =
computers,
or internet connections. I don't have handy stats but it seems that I =
have
less than 2% timeouts or other errors. Probably pretty good for UDP over =
the
net.

As far as Milton's server goes I've never needed to use it. Has he posted
anything to indicated that it is overloaded by clients?
(Milton Cyrus <mi...@i-...> 82.94.255.100:24441)

That's right there hasn't really been any changes in the software since
2002, IMO because it is simple and it works. There are a few patches that
you can get all rolled into one:

>To: us...@sp...
>Subject: Re: Pyzor timing out
>From: Chris <cpo...@ea...>
>Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 21:35:44 -0600
...
>To make it simple, I have combined those 3 patches into 1...
>http://www.engelken.net/download/pyzor.patch
...

I don't really know the origin of these patches and I'm not aware of any
others. Did anyone even bother to send these patches to Frank to to be
included in the sourceforge release? I have no idea.

My pyzor reporting problem is not pyzor's fault. Manual reporting works =
ok.
I'm running a cvs spamassassin and who knows what horrible things they =
have
done to it. It could be that my spamassassin configuration is way out of
date. I haven't bothered to dig into it yet but I will. Obviously it =
works
for a lot of other people.

My recent manual attempts to check pyzor spams seemed to time out but I
checked my spamassassin logs and pyzor doesn't seem to be timing out that
often at all. Maybe it retries.

Anywhoo, the major point was that its not dead, it is working, and it's =
just
really low maintenance. Until we see a deluge of posts about server =
timeouts
I don't expect to hear from Frank about it. Even then all it might take =
is
someone to step up and provide another server, or hack the client code to
failover to multiple servers.

-Sean


On Mon, 26 Jun 2006 23:53:00 +0100, you John Horne wrote:

>On Mon, 2006-06-26 at 11:47 -0400, pyz...@nr... wrote:
>> Ok for the last 10 people who asked, and the next 10 people who will =
ask,
>> pyzor is not dead. It may simply appear dead because it has worked ok =
for a
>> long time and there have been minimal changes.
>>=20
>Er, are you Frank Tobin, the pyzor maintainer? Your message has no
>signature, and email address no real name with it, but you seem to be
>stating that pyzor is not dead as a fact.
>
>As one of the 'new people' (see below) it certainly does appear dead,
>and I don't think it has been working ok for a while. My first check
>when things weren't working, was the mailing lists and bug list.
>
>Users on the mailing list appear to have been having problems with the
>server back to July/August last year. So that's almost a year with a
>server problem. (Why is there only one server, it would obviously cause
>problems if the server failed. I gather from the list that another
>server has been offered, although that one too seems to timeout now.)
>
>The software itself is dated from 2002, so no changes since then? There
>are bugs listed dating from 2005 back to 2002. There are two patches
>listed dating from 2002, and 3 feature requests dating from 2004. Hence,
>the 'appearance' is that nothing is happening with the software - no
>bugs fixed, no patches applied, and no new release in over 3 years.
>
>>
>> We definitely should get those patches onto sourceforge so that new =
people
>> can start using pyzor. I expect many would give up on it before =
finding the
>> patches.
>>=20
>What patches? The Debian ones? Do you already know what these patches
>do? If a patch is at least available on SF then we, as users, can apply
>it if we wish and hence test it.
>
>> My pyzor reporting thru spamassassin has been broken for a while and =
my
>> recent tests show pyzor timing out quite often. I should get on that.
>>=20
>"Broken for a while" - so it hasn't been working ok then? If the server
>times out then we have no chance of seeing if the software works (or
>rather if it works well). Definitely needs sorting out.
>
>Don't misunderstand me, I appreciate that these things take a lot of
>time to maintain. But the 'impression' is that it isn't being
>maintained. Unfortunately I'm more a perl-person, only having looked at
>python for a short while, otherwise I may have been able to help out
>with the code. However, the server issue can only be resolved by those
>in charge of the server.
>
>
>
>John.