blackhole list vs spamassassin

[pcthuglife]

Alrighty I'm setting up a new postfix mail server and I had a question about spam. I've read that using RBLs and spamassassin can really slow down the mail server so I'm probably going to start out with just one. If one method can block a lot of the spam then I'll be set. If a lot of spam still gets through then I'll probably use both.

So which should i use, a blackhole list like spamhaus, or spamassassin?

Also for those who recommend spamassassin, if you have any good links that explain how to configure spamassassin with postfix id appreciate it. Thanks.

 

[pcthuglife]

bumpy bumpy

 

[Gooberlx2]

My hosting service uses spamassasin, think it works very well. Spam's gotta pretty damn tricky to get past it.

[edit]
Unfortunately I have no idea how my hosting service has it configured. Nor have I ever tried to play around with it.

 

[pcthuglife]

spamassassin is a great program. we had it configured and running on our old dedicated mail server. the only problem is by default it doesnt actually delete spam, it only "tags" the spam. from what I remember you had to configure it to delete spam on a user by user basis instead of using a gobal setting. the other problem is that it takes a few weeks for spamassassin to get a really good understanding of what spam is. on our old server we setup a spam account and forwarded our spam to that mailbox, we then ran the sa learn command on that mailbox to tell spamassassin that all of its contents were spam.

the blackhole list would give us an immediate solution to our spam troubles. the only problem is that its hosted by a 3rd party which controls the filters. if a particular blackhole list decides a domain name is an open relay theres nothing I can do to stop it from being filtered out.

I think Im going to setup the blackhole list now, and if it does a good job at blocking a majority of our spam, and I dont get any reports of email not being received I'll stick to that. If the blackhole list doesnt work I'll setup spamassassin and see how the two together effect my email performance. If using both is too taxing I'll eliminate the blackhole list and stick with sa.

Should be a lot of fun.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Grey listing > *

 

[pcthuglife]

I don't want to jinx it but after almost a full day with the new server I only received about a dozen spam messages. This is much better than the 50 I was receiving before. I few extra filters on my thunderbird e-mail client and I should be all set.