Home > Configuration Parameters
| Parameter | Type | Description | Default |
| verbose | Replace | When True, messages about rejected articles will be posted to the INN news.notice log file. | 1 |
| aggressive | Replace | If set to 0, bad_body will be ignored and some elements of the scoring filter will not be processed. Unless you're very paranoid about dropping articles, this is best left at default. | 1 |
| maxgroups | Replace | Maximum groups to allow in a crosspost. The default is very high and can safely be reduced if you see much crosspost spam. | 14 |
| block_binaries | Replace | Should Cleanfeed reject articles posted to non-binary groups. Unless you have very special requirements, please leave this enabled. Misplaced binaries can have a serious performance impact on both the local server and its downstream peers. | 1 |
| block_all_binaries | Replace | If enabled, Cleanfeed will reject all binary postings, regardless of the distribution. This is useful for text-only services that wish to avoid the bandwidth overhead of propagating binaries in the event of a misconfigured upstream peer. | 0 |
| block_late_cancels | Replace | Should Cleanfeed block cancels of already rejected articles. This only applies to specially formatted Message-ID's (<cancel.[message-ID]>). | 0 |
| block_user_spamcancels | Replace | Prevent users from using bots to cancel what they consider to be Spam. This parameter addresses a specific bot and is unlikely to catch much on Usenet in current times. | 1 |
| block_user_cancels | Replace | When set to True, this will cause all user issued cancels to be rejected. This is one you may wish to change; in modern times, cancels are not honoured by a lot of News providers. | 0 |
| block_extra_reposts | Replace | Prevent bot wars where a cancelbot cancels an article and a repost bot tries to put it back again. | 1 |
| do_md5 | Replace | MD5 checking prevents multiple identical posts being sent to Usenet in high volumes. This is a typical characteristic of Spam so it's strongly advised to leave this enabled. The name of this check is slightly misleading: All the EMP type filters in Cleanfeed use MD5 but this is the only one that applies to the posted payload. | 1 |
| do_phl | Replace | An EMP check seeded by the NNTP-Posting-Host and number of lines within the message payload. Some spam evades the MD5 filter above by adding a signature (a random series of characters) to the posting. This filter attempts to address that issue although it can only function if the posting host applies an NNTP-Posting-Host header. | 1 |
| do_phn | Replace | An EMP check seeded by the NNTP-Posting-Host and the Newsgroups headers. This attempts to address flooding of a specific Newsgroup from a single source. It can cause false positives in some groups where individuals post high volumes of brief messages in a short period of time. These groups can be excluded from the filter using the phn_exclude parameter. | 1 |
| do_phr | Replace | A special EMP filter that will do nothing in default configuration. It relies on the operator specifying groups that are considered at a high risk of being flooded. These groups are specified in the flood_groups parameter. An additional parameter of phr_aggressive makes this filter seed on the Path header if no NNTP-Posting-Host is supplied. | 1 |
| do_fsl | Replace | An EMP seeded using the From, Subject and Lines headers. Similar in function to the PHL filter, it attempts to trap spam that evades the MD5 filter but also doesn't have an NNTP-Posting-Host header. | 1 |
| do_scoring_filter | Replace | When enabled Cleanfeed scores each article according to various spam characteristics. If the score exceeds a threshold, the message is rejected. | 1 |
| do_emp_dump | Replace | Enables dumping of hashes from the various EMP filters to disk. This means the filters are retained between INN restarts. This parameter requires emp_dump_file to be defined. | 1 |
| emp_dump_file | Local | The location to dump the EMP hash entries to if do_emp_dump is enabled. | |
| MD5RateCutoff | Replace | How many identical MD5 hashes to allow before rejecting further duplicates. | 5 |
| MD5RateCeiling | Replace | When the count against a specific MD5 hash reaches this number, stop incrementing any further. | 85 |
| MD5RateBaseInterval | Replace | After this many seconds, begin to decrement the count against a specific hash. | 7200 |
| PHLRateCutoff | Replace | See MD5RateCutoff | 20 |
| PHLRateCeiling | Replace | See MD5RateCeiling | 80 |
| PHLRateBaseInterval | Replace | See MD5RateBaseInterval | 3600 |
| PHNRateCutoff | Replace | See MD5RateCutoff | 150 |
| PHNRateCeiling | Replace | See MD5RateCeiling | 200 |
| PHNRateBaseInterval | Replace | See MD5RateBaseInterval | 3600 |
| PHLRateCutoff | Replace | See MD5RateCutoff | 10 |
| PHRRateCeiling | Replace | See MD5RateCeiling | 80 |
| PHRRateBaseInterval | Replace | See MD5RateBaseInterval | 3600 |
| FSLRateCutoff | Replace | See MD5RateCutoff | 20 |
| FSLRateCeiling | Replace | See MD5RateCeiling | 40 |
| FSLRateBaseInterval | Replace | See MD5RateBaseInterval | 1800 |
| fuzzy_md5 | Replace | If the message payload is less than fuzzy_max_length lines then modify it before hashing. The modification strips out white spaces, converts everything to lowercase and does some other simplification to help match payloads that would be identical except for minor formatting differences.. | 1 |
| fuzzy_max_length | Replace | Only do fuzzy_md5 if the payload is less than this number of lines. | 700 |
| md5_max_length | Replace | Don't attempt to produce MD5 hashes for messages that exceed this number of lines. This is largely down to system performance as producing cryptographic hashes can take time and CPU. | 2000 |
| trim_interval | Replace | How frequently (in seconds) to review the EMP hash tables to see if any entries can be decremented. | 900 |
| stats_interval | Replace | How frequently (in seconds) should Cleanfeed produce its status file. In order for stats to be produced, either statfile must be defined or inn_syslog_status must be set to True. | 3600 |
| MIDmaxlife | Replace | How long (in hours) to remember rejected Message-ID's. | 4 |
| md5_skips_followups | Replace | If True, the MD5 filter will not be applied to articles containing a References header. As it's trivial for an abuser to add such a header, enabling this is not recommended for normal Usenet operations. | 0 |
| phn_aggressive | Replace | The PHN Filter tries to create hashes based on the NNTP-Posting_Host of the sender. If this header doesn't exist, then setting phn_aggressive to True will cause it to fall back on the Path header instead. The implication of this is that messages to a specific newsgroup will be rejected if too many originate from the same service provider instead of merely the same poster. | 1 |
| phr_aggressive | Replace | See phn_aggressive. As the PHR Filter only applies to defined newsgroups, it's advisable to leave this enabled unless you have a PHR group where multiple people use the same provider, one of whom is flooding the group. | 1 |
| do_mid_filter | Replace | If True, use the Message-ID checking filter. This works in combination with the refuse_messageids Regular Expression. | 1 |
| do_supersedes_filter | Replace | Supersedes headers enable users to indicate that a new posting supersedes the information in a previous one. Whilst useful, they are also often used for abuse purposes. This filter checks that a message isn't excessively superseded. The actual limit is evaluated on the Newsgroups being posted to. Also check the supersedes_exempt Regular Expression. | 1 |
| drop_useless_controls | Replace | Reject control messages of types sendsys, senduuname and version. If drop_ihave_sendme is True, additionally ihave and sendme control messages will also be rejected. | 1 |
| drop_ihave_sendme | Replace | If drop_useless_controls is True, then setting this to True will cause ihave and sendme control messages to also be dropped. | 1 |
| bad_rate_reload | Replace | After this many articles have passed through Cleanfeed, all the bad_* files will be re-read from disk. The default value causes a reload approximately every hour on a full text-only news server. For a server processing less articles, the value will need to be dropped accordingly. | 10000 |
| low_xpost_maxgroups | Replace | Override the default maxgroups setting for distributions that include a group considered unsuitable for broad cross-posting. These groups are defined in the low_xpost_groups Regular Expression. | 6 |
| meow_ext_maxgroups | Replace | Meow groups date back to 1996 when the most famous Usenet flame-wars erupted. More details about them can be read here. The actual Meow groups are defined in the meow groups Regular Expression. This parameter controls how many other groups are allowed in a distribution that includes a meow_group. | 2 |
| binaries_in_mod_groups | Replace | Setting this to True will allow binaries to be posted to moderated newsgroups. This is probably a bad idea and the moderators of the groups in question are unlikely to appreciate it. | 0 |
| block_mime_html | Replace | Block MIME encapsulated HTML. HTML is considered evil on Usenet. MIME encapsulated HTML doubly so. | 1 |
| block_html | Replace | Block text/html encoded postings. In some groups such as the Microsoft hierarchy, HTML postings are considered acceptable. The list of groups where it's accepted is defined in the html_allowed Regular Expression. | 1 |
| off_topic1_maxgroups | Replace | Define how many off-topic groups are permitted when a distribution contains a number of groups defined in topic1_groups or topic2_groups. The number of on-topic groups required to trigger the filters is defined in on_topic1_mingroups. | 2 |
| on_topic1_mingroups | Replace | This relates to the above off_topic1_maxgroups It defines how many groups must match topic1_groups or topic2_groups in order to trigger the topic filters. | 2 |
| on_topic1_maxgroups | Replace | This relates to the above off_topic1_maxgroups. It defines the maximum permissible number of groups that match topic1_groups. | 5 |
| off_topic2_maxgroups | Replace | See off_topic1_maxgroups. | 2 |
| on_topic2_mingroups | Replace | See on_topic1_mingroups. | 2 |
| on_topic2_maxgroups | Replace | See on_topic1_maxgroups. | 5 |
| active_file | Local | The location of the INN active file. If defined, Cleanfeed will use the active file to check if groups are Moderated instead of using the in-built &INN::newsgroup function. As Cleanfeed only reads the active file on startup/reload, it's best to go with the internal function by leaving this undefined. | |
| debug_batch_directory | Local | The directory to which Cleanfeed will write any log files generated through the saveart function. If this points to a non-existent directory, your News Server's logfiles will contain lots of "No such file or directory" messages. By default, (without a cleanfeed.local file) this parameter is unset which results in no logfiles being generated. | |
| statfile | Local | Location where Cleanfeed should write it's text status file. For a default install, /usr/local/news/cleanfeed/log/cleanfeed.stats is probably a good choice. | |
| html_statfile | Local | If defined, Cleanfeed will write a crude HTML status file to this location. I find the text version fine, your milage may vary. |