Find the number of times BoxTrapper has to run

In this article we’ll go over how you can find the number of times BoxTrapper is running for your users on your VPS or dedicated server.

Using BoxTrapper can be a good way to help limit the amount of spam you receive on an account. However in some cases it can also lead to elevated server usage if one particular user on your server is getting heavily spammed from a wide variety of email addresses.

If you’ve read my article on advanced server load monitoring and see that your server’s load is spiking, or if you setup a server load monitoring bash script to alert you via email during load spikes, BoxTrapper could be a possible culprit of these issues that you might want to look into.

To find the number of times BoxTrapper is running you’ll need root access to your VPS or dedicated server, so that you have access to the Exim mail logs.

Find users with the most BoxTrapper deliveries

1. Login to your server via SSH as the root user.
2. Run the following command:
   grep "T=virtual_boxtrapper_userdelivery" /var/log/exim_mainlog | awk '{print $6}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n
   Code breakdown:

   grep “T=virtual_boxtrapper_userdelivery” /var/log/exim_mainlog	Locate mentions of T=virtual_boxtrapper_userdelivery in the Exim mail log.
   awk ‘{print $6}’	Use the awk command to print the $6th column of data which is the email address the BoxTrapper message was delivered to.
   sort | uniq -c | sort -n	Sort that data by user, then uniquely count it, and finally sort it from lowest to highest occurences.

   You should get back something like:
   331 <[email protected]>
367 <[email protected]>
422 <[email protected]>
3243 <[email protected]>
   Now we know that the [email protected] user has had BoxTrapper manage at least 3,243 emails.

You should now be able to to figure out which users on your server have an excessive amount of BoxTrapper verfications being used. If you’ve been having issues with your server’s load you might want to consider disabling BoxTrapper for these users and have them seek alternative methods for reducing spam.