Re: spamassassin

[Jeff Warnica <jeffw@chebucto.ns.ca>]

Im in a simmilar enviroment (ISP, tag, delete on only extreemly high
scores). We have dedicated hardware to the task, using an incomming
$POSTMASTER, and MailScanner to handle the Spam, and Virus filtering.

It works, but how MS deals with its internal IPC (or rather, dosent),
and how it deals with the queue, is concerning... Each MS process, once
its done processing its batch, rescans the incomming queue.. So when the
incomming queue gets 'large' things start bogging down significantly.. I
dont remember the specific numbers, but our PIII 1GHz 512Mb (linux,
ext3, IDE) started serious thrashing when the queue got >5000 messages.
MS is so busy scanning the queue little mail moves through... Which only
happened three times in a year or so of production, during spam / virus
storms that Im sure bogged down mail servers everywhere :) Durring the
last storm we purchesed a second scanning machine.. All is good so far,
but OTOH, no mail storms either.

So far as I can tell, this only exists in the graphics in the zmailer
manual, but there is mention of a $POSTOFFICE/input queue "possible
pre-router spool for eg some email virus scanner"

In the last week I was thinking about asking aobut this.... Clearly
ZMailer has a good idea of whats in its queues, ZMailer should direct
some more limited scanner to individule messages, rather then a
sepearate system handling its queue and what not. (even if MS was
'fixed' and was less stupid about its love affair with scanning the
queue). I diddnt get as far as stumbling accross process.cf :) But that
idea agrees with my somewhat vague idea of the Right Idea.

Im not sure what happens if (when!) process() fails.. But Im going to
reinstall a machine tonight, so Ill have a platform for testing.. Not
that I can guarentee any level of sucuess, or even sanity of this idea.

As for a practical solution that you can implement 'today': Dedicated
hardware with MailScanner. Scan, tag, and send on....

On Thu, 2003-11-06 at 16:12, Mariano Absatz wrote:
> I know, I know... every 2 months someone (like me) comes to the list 
> asking how to integrate spamassassin with zmailer...
> 
> I also know what Eugene will say: "spamassassin is waaaaay too slow to 
> handle any real traffic" :-)
> 
> However, I'm being asked to do AntiSpam tagging (not deleting) for a 
> relatively high volume ISP, and the only open tool I know is 
> spamassassin...
> 


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