Can't seem to get my Linode's IP off of Sorbs DUL [RESOLVED]

SORBS is run by idiots - don't waste your time contacting them. Contact the people who are using the SORBS lists and get them to use a proper blacklist instead.

Yeah, one that doesn't discriminate against people who want to run their own servers.

@arjones85:

I submitted a removal ticket a few weeks ago, an automated response was received saying "Sorry, your IP is considered a dynamically assigned IP and can't be removed."
We have a ticket in on the netblock, as well, if you're talking about the same netblock as I'm thinking of. It's been over a week and I haven't heard a thing; the only response I have received was an automatic response showing me lots of /29s and /30s from the block that aren't eligible for delisting.

The rub they have is that we use "li12-345.members.linode.com" as default reverse DNS. Based on their idea of an Internet Standard (and an Internet Draft that has been expired for years; Trend Micro uses this too), they interpret this as a dynamic IP – i.e., one given to dialup customers, or DSL customers -- which should not be sending mail. I have approached this issue with Trend Micro (who run DUL) and SORBS, and both want us to put "static" in the reverse DNS. While technically possible, it would be a drastic change and would break all of you for up to a few days. We're just not willing to do that to our customers.

While I cannot slight a provider on the Internet, I can say it has been extraordinarily difficult to get this netblock removed. Most of the blocklist entries were put into place before we even received the netblock in question -- I think it was with a home ISP before us. We will continue fighting this fight, but the complete yawn of silence from SORBS is not reassuring.

@pclissold:

SORBS is run by idiots - don't waste your time contacting them. Contact the people who are using the SORBS lists and get them to use a proper blacklist instead.

Completely agree. I had a run-in with them in the past (with another hosting co). The hosting company ended up getting completely new IP's from the datacenter because they couldn't get off SORBS due to idiocy.

Thanks for updating me on what you guys are going through as well Jed.

While technically I haven't had any emails bounced back yet, I did notice that SpamAssassin checks Sorbs and assigns a positive score if the sending IP is listed. My fix on this on my server? Set the score to 0 for RCVDINSORBS_DUL in local.cf.

I have also removed Sorbs from my DBL on my other Exim server.

I was not aware that Sorbs was so crappy at what they do.

Ugh just got my first bounce back from AT&T. Looks like they use Sorbs.

This is frustrating.

You could always file a support ticket and ask linode for an IP address that isn't blacklisted. I imagine they will be more than happy to help you.

Worst case you could migrate to a different datacenter and get a new IP that way.

I will probably do that tonight. Hopefully they can let me have both IP's for a day or two since I have several sites already setup on the old IP. Give me time to adjust the DNS records, apache configs, etc.

Okay, new IP received and everything moved over. Virtualmin made it quite a bit easier to deal with the new IP address, so that was kind of nice to not have to go in and manually edit config files.

Very quick and painless. :)

I seem to have run into the same issue for a new VPS here (new customer, looking to transfer over my email/web services from another provider). I've put in a support ticket with Linode asking for advice, but figured I'd post here as well to see if the community had any more recent wisdom on the matter.

My contribution: SORBS does appear to have an automated self-help exclusion for single addresses mentioned at http://www.us.sorbs.net/faq/dul.shtml – the downside is that the requirements are quite demanding and may be undesirable for many people.

I had a problem with sorbs as well when i was hosting my server at home. However with Linode i have changed the reverse DNS to a static hostname (route-69-164-192-12.woo-core.lns5.cha.ktsaustralia.com.au) anyway.

Sorbs isn't a very good blacklist provider if they are resorting to old reasons for blacklisting people.

This issue is resolved; we have worked successfully with SORBS to get the IP range delisted.