Effort to manage MailScanner

[J. Bishop]

I have been using MailScanner on a half dozen or more mail servers for
almost a year now...  On all systems I try to use the latest MailScanner,
SpamAssassin, DCC, Razor, Pyzor.  I also have between 2 and 5 listed RBL's
in MailScanner and use at least 2 virus scanners per system, black and
whitelists with somewhat similar configurations on all.  The hardware used
is typically from low end 2 year old servers to junk pseudo-servers.

On some I have set spam level as low as 2 and high-scoring spam as low as
3.  On other systems I have them set to 6 and 10.  I am not sure why but
based on the type of messages received I find I need to ratchet back the
levels on some systems to avoid false positives and on others I can lower
the #'s way down to improve spam detection with no false positives at all.

I spend a total of at least a couple of hours per week updating spam
software, reading this list and changing config entries to maintain the
systems.  For some servers I forward possible and definite spam and review
it semi-regularly, and on other systems it get deleted immediately.  I have
only ever checked the quarantine a couple of times and only pulled a file
from it once, I contemplated writing a cron script to delete the last
months quarantine each month.

Some of these servers get ~400 emails per day and others get 12,000+ and
the spam rates vary from 20% up to 75% of total messages received so I
guess these variances are why a standard config wont cover all bases all
the time...

I used to be in a no downtime environment (telco) but now have some freedom
to upgrade somewhat at leisure and I can really appreciate the 'only
upgrade if needed' attitude but it does cost somewhat in other ways...

I think spam filtering at this point in time is both art and science.
Thanks to Julian and others users can again use email as a method of
communications.


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
On Thu, 11 Dec 2003 08:36:05 +1100, Pete <pete at EATATHOME.COM.AU> wrote:

are you guys getting some benifit that i am not, or is because you ahve far
greater volumes of mail that you get more spam  through MS aqnd have to
work harder to stop it?