Bug 1394: Document how to do per host conn limits

Since the max connections per host setting is computed and enforced
  in the master listening process before the fork, there is no easy
  way to get an accurate connection count once the Proxy Protocol
  negotiation has been done (i.e. in a child process, after the
  fork). Rather than try to use a shared mmap file using CAS in the
  children to manipulate it, we just advise of a crude version of
  max connections per IP be achieved by using ratelimit per_conn in
  the connect ACL.

diff --git a/doc/doc-txt/experimental-spec.txt b/doc/doc-txt/experimental-spec.txt
index 031c5f4c120eb38c6490629828130d753d063e24..7872f24e2664c0329b6e1acc470cb0e97c864104 100644 (file)
--- a/doc/doc-txt/experimental-spec.txt
+++ b/doc/doc-txt/experimental-spec.txt
@@ -1108,11 +1108,27 @@ an example, in my connect ACL, I have:
        logwrite = Internal Server Address: $received_ip_address:$received_port
 
 
-4. Runtime issues to be aware of:
+4. Recommended ACL additions:
    - Since the real connections are all coming from your proxy, and the
      per host connection tracking is done before Proxy Protocol is
      evaluated, smtp_accept_max_per_host must be set high enough to
      handle all of the parallel volume you expect per inbound proxy.
+   - With the smtp_accept_max_per_host set so high, you lose the ability
+     to protect your server from massive numbers of inbound connections
+     from one IP.  In order to prevent your server from being DOS'd, you
+     need to add a per connection ratelimit to your connect ACL.  I
+     suggest something like this:
+
+  # Set max number of connections per host
+  LIMIT   = 5
+  # Or do some kind of IP lookup in a flat file or database
+  # LIMIT = ${lookup{$sender_host_address}iplsearch{/etc/exim/proxy_limits}}
+
+  defer   message        = Too many connections from this IP right now
+          ratelimit      = LIMIT / 5s / per_conn / strict
+
+
+5. Runtime issues to be aware of:
    - The proxy has 3 seconds (hard-coded in the source code) to send the
      required Proxy Protocol header after it connects.  If it does not,
      the response to any commands will be:
@@ -1131,7 +1147,7 @@ an example, in my connect ACL, I have:
      mail programs from working because that would require mail from
      localhost to use Proxy Protocol.  Again, not advised!
 
-5. Example of a refused connection because the Proxy Protocol header was
+6. Example of a refused connection because the Proxy Protocol header was
 not sent from a host configured to use Proxy Protocol.  In the example,
 the 3 second timeout occurred (when a Proxy Protocol banner should have
 been sent), the banner was displayed to the user, but all commands are