Messages scanned twice

[Julian Field]

At 23:33 08/07/2002, you wrote:
>I have installed MailScanner on my server.  I am very impressed.  I'm
>running Debian "Woody", Exim and Sophos.  Currently, it's scanning
>approximately 300 messages per day.
>
>I have one question-  Is there any way to tell MailScanner to only scan
>messages once?  I run a mailing list for a local Linux Users Group, and
>when a message to the list is received it gets scanned.  So far, so
>good.  When it gets delivered, it gets scanned again.

There is no foolproof way of deciding that a message has already been
scanned. Anything in the content of the message could have been faked by
someone.

>It's not a major problem, but I have the inline text signature enabled
>because I want people to easily see that the message was scanned.  Each
>time the message is scanned, the signature gets appended to the message.

Unfortunately it's pretty much impossible to detect that the signature has
already been added as well :-(
The simplest solution is to use a different server to handle outbound mail,
separately from internal mail. I have one pair of servers handling incoming
mail, one pair handling outgoing mail, and about 4 or 5 in the middle that
deliver mail to users and handle all internal mail.
--
Julian Field                Teaching Systems Manager
jkf at ecs.soton.ac.uk         Dept. of Electronics & Computer Science
Tel. 023 8059 2817          University of Southampton
                             Southampton SO17 1BJ