0.0.7 Alpha: Delivery analysis via Insights

Sam Tuke Sep 25 2020 Share

Lightmeter Control Center 0.0.7 introduces real-time postfix mailserver delivery analysis, and easier upgrading.

A new mail log monitoring system crunches mail-delivery data in real-time and generates Insights, while automatic upgrading and downgrading of Control Center versions at the database level is now supported. 41 Merge requests and 195 commits went into this release.

Please note this release is still in Alpha. Share your feedback using the link present on every application page.

Insight engine

Every few seconds the new “Insight” email log data analysis engine checks email delivery data for patterns indicating a problem. Individual “Insights” are generated whenever a problem is identified and displayed on the homepage. Insights can be sorted, and filtered by type.

This initial release supports two insights:

• High bounce rate triggered by 20% or more of messages being bounced within the last 6 hours
• Mailserver inactivity triggered by no mail being sent or received within the last 24 hours

Limits are also in place to prevent the same problem resulting in multiple identical insights within a similar time frame.

Currently analysis is forward-looking — Insights are generated for events which happen while Control Center is running. Historical data is not currently analysed for problems.

The Insight Engine is designed to support many different Insights — more will be added soon. Next up is detection of RBL blocklisting / mailhost IP blocking. Separating detection and viewing of Insights by domain and IP is also planned, together with optional push notifications via Slack and Email.

Automatic database migration

Each time Lightmeter Control Center is run it now checks if existing Control Center databases exist (within the same workspace), and if so, the versions of the data structures found there. It then self-upgrades or downgrades the data to match the currently running Control Center version.

This avoids runtime errors and data loss when upgrading or downgrading Control Center versions. Progress and status of these processes is printed to the terminal.

Changes

• New Insights analysis engine, including sorting, filtering, and color-coded priorities
• Two new Insights: high bounce rate and mailserver inactivity
• Updated interface design, including greeting section
• Extensive codebase refactoring for improved structure and error handling
• Additional browser automation tests

The full list of merge requests and commits is on GitLab.

Contributors

Committers to this release are: Leandro Santiago, Marcel Franke, and Sam Tuke.

Download

• Docker Hub: https://hub.docker.com/r/lightmeter/controlcenter/tags
• Binaries & source code: https://gitlab.com/lightmeter/controlcenter/-/releases

Missing your favourite packaging system? Tell us in the comments.

Supported by

This release was funded through the NGI0 PET Fund, a fund established by NLnet with financial support from the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet programme, under the aegis of DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology under grant agreement No 825310.