Just, FYI, it took be a while to install SpamAssassin. In PostFix, I had to make changes to master.cf, then integrate it with my spamqueue thing, but I guess it was all that customization that took the time. The actual install went pretty quickly. I would say about 30 minutes just installing it, setting up master.cf, and editing local.cf and adding in a couple extra rules. The rest of the time was for "add-on stuff". But, if somebody is new to SpamAssassin, I can see how it could take them an hour, to figure out what path the mail needs to take, etc, as mail is something that requires a lot of thought and planning.
Richard -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kenneth Porter Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2003 8:49 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [SAtalk] Re: An Open Letter to the SA-talk forum BTW, Logan, can you say (on the list, use "reply all") why it took an hour to install SA? I can imagine it taking me that long only because I'm very careful and look at the installation scripts to make sure nothing will break my existing setup. That option of course doesn't exist with closed source, and the best I can do instead is to study the release notes. I also compile from source to tune SA to my system but could in principle use a canned RPM, eliminating the build time. The only real "setup" I had to do was to add the line to my procmailrc to invoke SA. That's about the same level of complexity as changing MX records for the two services you reviewed. I'd be curious to see how Brightmail installs on Unix systems. Installing on Exchange is likely to be easy because Exchange is such a closed system and the options and unknowns for an installer are so small. On Unix it has to handle both sendmail and postfix (and whatever delivery system is used) and the list of supported OS's includes RH7.2, which lacks milter, so it can't use that for the connection. For quick reference, here's the relevant part of the InfoWorld article: > I installed SpamAssassin Version 2.44 along with Red Hat Linux 9. > Installing Red Hat 9 is easy, and the SpamAssassin package is included > with the mail server installation. But just because the software is > installed does not mean it will work -- filtering criteria must be added > manually, and until that's done nothing is filtered out. Getting the > various configuration files edited properly so that the whole package > worked was not simple. Documentation was difficult to find, and not > always easy to follow. > > There are blacklists available that you can subscribe to, and some are > updated regularly, but these are noncommercial lists with no guarantees. > The whitelist is not difficult to add to, but there is no mechanism for > end-users to add to the whitelist or to automatically notify the > administrator to add senders. Filtering rules are relatively basic, and > although there is a Bayesian filter available, it is not part of the > distribution -- and I wasn't able to get it working for this review. I found documentation in two places. The first, familiar to anyone using Red Hat, is the /usr/share/doc tree, which contains a subdirectory for each installed package. The second is the SA website. What made these "hard to find"? You mention that filtering must be set up, but note that SA doesn't filter, by design. It simply tags and leaves it up to other components (eg. procmail, MIMEDefang) to filter. (Admittedly the text on the SA home page is a little confusing on this issue.) If you say that noncommercial blacklists offer no guarantees, are you implying that there are commercial lists with guarantees? What's the guarantee? As I mentioned in another message, end users *can* edit the whitelist. It requires editing a text file (which admittedly is beyond the capabilities of the average PHB), but it can be done. In fact, a test for the ability to do this might make a good prerequisite for allowing someone in one's company an email account! The lack of the Bayesian filter is of course due to the ancient version you reviewed, and I think you've taken enough grief for that. ;) Ken ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: SF.net Giveback Program. Does SourceForge.net help you be more productive? Does it help you create better code? SHARE THE LOVE, and help us help YOU! Click Here: http://sourceforge.net/donate/ _______________________________________________ Spamassassin-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/spamassassin-talk ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: SF.net Giveback Program. Does SourceForge.net help you be more productive? Does it help you create better code? SHARE THE LOVE, and help us help YOU! Click Here: http://sourceforge.net/donate/ _______________________________________________ Spamassassin-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/spamassassin-talk
