[TriLUG] Mail Server options.

[Benjamin Reed]

Tanner Lovelace [lovelace at wayfarer.org] wrote:
> For real-time virus scanning, I don't actually 
> know of any products to do this on unix, since
> unix seems to be more resistant to virii than
> MS Windows.  Perhaps some others can suggest something?

At work I have set up amavis (A Mail Anti-VIrus Scanner --
http://www.amavis.org/) along with F-Secure (at
http://www.europe.f-secure.com/products/anti-virus/)
and it works just great.  Amavis is set up to scan
mails with attachments, and will automatically send alerts
to the administrator and sender and recipient of the
message.

Despite the fact that they make it sound like you need
the "server" edition of amavis for linux, the single-user
("workstation") one is fine.  A single-license version of
the workstation one is about $125 -- but it was well
worth it.  In the month I've set it up we've caught at
least 10 viruses destined for sales guys that don't know
how to scan for 'em.  ;)

If you use postfix, I can help you in setting up amavis to
be integrated with it, but it shouldn't be too different for
any other MTA.

> they were great!).  I was always getting
> e-mail from people complaining they couldn't
> post to the list.  For a mailing list, I would
> suggest a better way to keep down spam is to
> restrict the list to members only posting. 
> Mailman has a very nice interface so that
> if someone does post to the list from an 
> unsubscribed e-mail you can easily review
> the posting and decide whether to let it through
> or not.

I'll second this.  Most of the RBL stuff I've used has too many
false positives to be useful -- especially nowadays with them
splintered and charging money.

The best I've seen for getting rid of spam is SpamAssassin -- it
can be used as a filter globally or in conjunction with procmail
for individual users, and with the proper threshold I get *no*
false positives with 1 or 2 sneaking through a day (out of 30 or
40).  And if I were to get Vipul's Razor re-installed (I just
rebuilt my firewall), that would probably catch the other 2%.
SpamAssassin can integrate the razor check automatically -- you can
get that at http://razor.sourceforge.net/.

Just remember that there are no bad answers -- sendmail has become
more manageable and less insecure over time, so it's not too bad,
but sendmail, qmail, postfix, exim, and probably others are all
decent for mail delivery.  It's all in what you prefer as far as
extra (more obscure) features and configuration styles.

-- 
Ben Reed a.k.a. Ranger Rick (ranger at befunk.com)
http://defiance.dyndns.org/ / http://radio.scenespot.org/
Frankenstein was the creator -- not the monster.  It's a common
misconception, held by all truly stupid people. -- Kryten
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