Setting up MIPSpace (RBL)
If you have chosen to use the RBL method of MIPSpace, then you have chosen the simplest method of using it and one that is supported by most email servers. One point to always consider is how your mail server will handle an outage of the RBL service. This CAN occur during DDOS attacks at your name server or ours. That is one advantage of the alternate method, where outages do not affect your ability to check IPs. Make sure your mail server can handle outages gracefully.
Almost every mail server already has clearly documented procedures for the use of the RBL, but in order to use the MIPSpace service there is a few simple things to check first:
1) Did you register?
This is a paid service, and you WILL NOT be able to connect unless you are registered.
2) Can you connect?
To confirm that your service is active, you should be able to run the following and get some sort of result.
# host 1.1.168.192.bl.mipspace.com
You should get either a HOST NOT FOUND, or 127.0.0.2. IF you get any other errors, your registration may not be complete, or you are doing something wrong in the way your network is setup. (Note: The format for the IP Address is IPv4 backwards. Ie 192.168.1.1 is looked up as 1.1.168.192.bl.mipspace.com)
3) Is your mail server configured to use MIPSpace RBL?
This will be specific to each and every mail server, and there are far too many to include documentation for every example.
However, here is a short list of common opensource mail servers, and links to their configuration:
(If you wish to have your mail server listed here, please send in an enhancement request)
SendMail
This is very simple and a standard procedure is listed here. The easiest approach is to open /etc/sendmail.mc in your favorite text editor and add a line like this:
FEATURE(dnsbl, `bl.mipspace.com', `Rejected - see http://www.mipspace.com')dnl
After adding those lines to your sendmail.mc file all you need to do is, as root, execute the following command from the /etc/mail directory:
m4 sendmail.mc > ../sendmail.cf
(Admin Note: Back up your old /etc/sendmail.cf first, and then restart sendmail and it should then be active. Always check your logs)
Qmail
Qmail uses tcpserver for most RBL related activities and you should look at the web page for tcpserver for full instructions, however the short answer is simply to configure your qmail startup scripts so that the tcpserver is able to use the rblsmtpd tool and that it points to using the MIPSpace list. (Simply by adding -r bl.mipspace.com to the command line).