mailscanner vs spamassassin

[Red Squirrel]

I've always used spamassassin for anti spam. While it is very configurable, you do need to do tons of tweaking and add lot of custom rules for it to be effective.

I just learned of another filter called mailscanner (http://www.mailscanner.info/).

Wondering if anyone has used it, and how good it is? There is also a program called mailwatch which integrates with mailscanner to show stats. I really like this idea for the application I'll be setting this up for.

Has anyone had experience with these two programs? How good does it work, and how easy it is to setup? Also will it work ok in a virtual hosting environment?

 

[Netopia]

I don't really think they are the same. I think MailScanner is more like Amavisd. From their own page, here:
http://www.mailscanner.info/intro.html

Protection against spam is mostly based on the widely acclaimed SpamAssassin package, which again is free and open source. It is supplemented with fast blacklist lookups that can be used to reject a large proportion of messages with minimal overhead.[/b]

Looks interesting though... I'm pretty used to Amamvisd, but I think I'll read up on this.

Joe

 

[Netopia]

What MTA are you using? Do you use black lists like SpamCop and such?

Joe

 

[Red Squirrel]

Using postfix. Currently there is no scanner at all. I'm in the process of deciding how I want to do it. This will be an ISP style setup and think I only want to use RBLs, and maybe basic word filters, as I don't want too much load on the server from just email. It does http and dns as well. So what I really want is 1: basic spam filter and 2: way to look at email stats to get an idea of email traffic. mailscanner and mailwatch look like the best setup for what I want.

 

[Netopia]

For blacklists, postfix is sufficient by itself. Here's an excerpt from one of my main'cf 's:

smtpd_client_restrictions =
check_client_access hash:/etc/postfix/client_access,
reject_rbl_client sbl.spamhaus.org,
reject_rbl_client dnsbl.njabl.org,
reject_rbl_client list.dsbl.org,
reject_rbl_client cbl.abuseat.org,
reject_rbl_client dul.dnsbl.sorbs.net

For stats, you could use awstats... or you could just get a summary of what postfix has done by installing pflogsumm.pl

Joe

 

[Red Squirrel]

hmm thats good to know, that means less overhead and easier to manage. I'll look further at that, and whether there are options to do it on a per mailbox basis or not.