[quote user="Greenman"]
Hi
How about an annotation for each connection control entry in the SMTP settings?
I was reviewing these and had to spend some time tracking down a couple of entries that I had made several years ago.
It would be useful if there was an extra column after Allow/Refuse called Notes or something similar. It would allow the entries to be quickly identified. It would also be useful in case a new administrator needed to quickly understand what each of the entries related to.
[/quote]
I realize I'm following-up to a rather old post, but I thought I'd throw in my 1.87 cents-worth (inflation, you know...).
What I do is, I keep a text file on a local system, in which I log each and every new ACL entry, including not only the "why", but also the "when" and all the supporting evidence I used to reach the conclusion that I don't want traffic from that IP range or network. That way, if I'm ever asked why so-and-so can't send mail to my domain, all I need is the source IP (or often just the e-mail address) in order to not only answer the question, but (usually) mete out a bit of education regarding incompetent/malicious mail service providers & ISPs.
Alas, over the years that text file has by now grown rather huge -- just under 2MB as we speak. So while it is still usable (specifically, full-text searches still run acceptably fast), a "better way" would be welcome. I probably ought to put it into some form of DBMS (perhaps an SQL database); but converting it at this point would be a fair amount of work. Still, if I had the database, then that "extra column" you speak of potentially could -- and IMHO *should* -- be a key into that database, which would make lookups even more painless.
That said, using the ACL list itself as the index would NOT be all that useful unless it could be sorted (presumably by IP Address) on-the-fly -- i.e., *without* shutting down and restarting Mercury. If anything, that sorting feature in and of itself would be MORE useful, at least to me. As it stands, I have to periodically shut down Merc, then MANUALLY sort the ACL file, resave it, then restart Merc, just to keep it from becoming an utter mess. Pretty crude.
So my "vote" wold be to first make the ACL sortable from within Mercury. *Then* maybe add the additional field.
[quote user="Greenman"]
Hi
How about an annotation for each connection control entry in the SMTP settings?
I was reviewing these and had to spend some time tracking down a couple of entries that I had made several years ago.
It would be useful if there was an extra column after Allow/Refuse called Notes or something similar. It would allow the entries to be quickly identified. It would also be useful in case a new administrator needed to quickly understand what each of the entries related to.
[/quote]
I realize I'm following-up to a rather old post, but I thought I'd throw in my 1.87 cents-worth (inflation, you know...).
What I do is, I keep a text file on a local system, in which I log each and every new ACL entry, including not only the "why", but also the "when" and all the supporting evidence I used to reach the conclusion that I don't want traffic from that IP range or network.  That way, if I'm ever asked why so-and-so can't send mail to my domain, all I need is the source IP (or often just the e-mail address) in order to not only answer the question, but (usually) mete out a bit of education regarding incompetent/malicious mail service providers & ISPs.
Alas, over the years that text file has by now grown rather huge -- just under 2MB as we speak.  So while it is still usable (specifically, full-text searches still run acceptably fast), a "better way" would be welcome.  I probably ought to put it into some form of DBMS (perhaps an SQL database); but converting it at this point would be a fair amount of work.  Still, if I had the database, then that "extra column" you speak of potentially could -- and IMHO *should* -- be a key into that database, which would make lookups even more painless.
That said, using the ACL list itself as the index would NOT be all that useful unless it could be sorted (presumably by IP Address) on-the-fly -- i.e., *without* shutting down and restarting Mercury.  If anything, that sorting feature in and of itself would be MORE useful, at least to me.  As it stands, I have to periodically shut down Merc, then MANUALLY sort the ACL file, resave it, then restart Merc, just to keep it from becoming an utter mess.  Pretty crude.
So my "vote" wold be to first make the ACL sortable from within Mercury.  *Then* maybe add the additional field.