> On 15 Jul 2021, at 10:41 am, post...@ptld.com wrote: > > "The time limit for sending a Postfix SMTP server response and for receiving > a remote SMTP client request."
The amount of time that smtpd(8) is willing to wait for a network write to write some data when writing a command-response, or for a network read to return some data when reading an SMTP command. As elaborated under: http://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html#smtpd_per_record_deadline Change the behavior of the smtpd_timeout and smtpd_starttls_timeout time limits, from a time limit per read or write system call, to a time limit to send or receive a complete record (an SMTP command line, SMTP response line, SMTP message content line, or TLS protocol message). This limits the impact from hostile peers that trickle data one byte at a time. Thus the default timeout is per read or write, rather than the complete requested operation. With the deadline timer the timeout applies to the entire I/O operation, possibly spanning multi reads or writes. However, even then it is never the transmission of an entire message body, rather it would be a logical data fragment, an SMTP command or response, a body content line, a TLS protocol record, ... which partly mitigates "Slowloris" attacks, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slowloris_(computer_security) meaningful progress must be made within the deadline timer, just sending a few characters per 300s is not enough. -- Viktor.