my other FREQ of the day

[S Mohan]

1. From what I have seen and read of postfix, it is a drop in
replacement for sendmail. Which means it works the same way and uses the
same configuration files. The one thing that could possibly vary is the
command line invocation with options that MalScanner script does.

2. I think the current design of MailScanner is ideal as it allows us to
use the MTA we want (atleast 2) and does not mess around trying to be an
MTA. As more options come around in the MTA like sendmail, we should be
able to use them. I'd trust a software that has been around and stable
for a long while instead of experimentation. Atleast in the current
scheme, if I know something is wrong with MailScanner, I shut it down
and start up sendmail as usual and I'm on without virus or spam
scanning.

3. Deamonised approach Vs individual instances. I'm not an expert but
hey, if either does the job with a 5% difference in efficiency, why
change?

Mohan
-----Original Message-----
From: MailScanner mailing list [mailto:MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On
Behalf Of Julian Field
Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2003 3:28 PM
To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: Re: my other FREQ of the day


At 23:38 15/02/2003, you wrote:
>The three main weaknesses I see in mailscanner at the moment are:
>
>1) the dual queue approach combined with the "wait and see if anything
>arrived while we were asleep" approach to scanning messages

MailScanner 4 has multiple child processes all watching the queue, so
the response is very fast.

>2) its difficulty in working with certain mta's (it's not immediately
>obvious to me how I'd use it with courier, qmail, or communigate pro,
>and we're evaluating switching to courier or communigate pro ... but
>I'd like to stick with mailscanner)

It currently works with sendmail and Exim. Postfix is next on the list,
but that is going to take quite a while to write.

>3) somewhat related to #1 is that you cannot reject messages based upon

>results.  You can try to bounce them, after the fact, but that isn't
>reliable (because you cannot trust the return addresses).  I'd rather
>reject them outright.

That's your MTA's job.

>I have an idea that would solve all 3 problems, I think.
>
>Have an option for MailScanner to run as an SMTP daemon.

I don't mean to be rude, but sorry, there is no way that is going to
happen. I wouldn't trust it. Being an SMTP daemon is very hard, and the
MTA's are already very good at it. I don't re-invent the wheel.

>Am I the only person who would find that to be a useful direction for
>Mailscanner?  I could probably help some with implementation (in fact,
>I might even be able to convince my boss that it's important enough to
>our services that I could make it one of my front-burner projects), and

>I would definitely be able to provide a machine or two for testing.

Feel free to write your own email virus scanner :-)
--
Julian Field
www.MailScanner.info
MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support