MailScanner 101, take two.

[Julian Field]

At 23:33 02/07/2003, you wrote:
>Last time I had a time constraint to get something up and running.  This
>time I can relax, take a deep breath, and go about the process in an orderly
>manner.  So, here's the particulars:  I'm running on SuSE 8.0 with sendmail.
>The SuSE updates have been applied, but it's basically a vanilla box at the
>moment.  I'll be loading the current stable versions of:
>
>MailScanner
>Spamassassin
>Webmin
>MailScanner-mrtg or mailstats (or both)  Probably go to mailstats.
>Antivirus
>
>Starting with MailScanner, which is the better way to go, rpm or tar?

rpm. The SuSE one, not the RedHat one.

>   I'm
>usually a bit leery of rpms on SuSE as they're often written for Redhat, and
>do things a bit differently on SuSE (or is it SuSE does things a bit
>differently <g>), thus I end up doing a tarball anyway.  But they're great
>when they work.  So, how does the rpm pan out on SuSE 8.0/sendmail?

I haven't tested the RPM on SuSE 8.0, only 8.1. But I've only heard anyone
having any problems with it once, and they were using 7.x which is quite a
lot different from 8.x. So you should be okay.

>If rpm is the way to go, I presume the perl patches are included (previous
>emails to this list indicated that was the case).

Yes.

>Does the rpm load spamassassin as part of it's processing or do I have to
>load that after the fact (or before)?

Do it separately. And don't use the RPM of SpamAssassin. Either download it
and build from source or use CPAN to install it. To build it by hand,
unpack the .tar.gz archive, "cd" into it and do this:
         perl Makefile.PL
         make
         make test
         make install


>I don't see it referenced in the instructions for either the tarball or the
>rpm though I see there's a page about it at
>http://www.sng.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailscanner/install/spamassassin.shtml.  This
>references 2.6 - I'll be going with 2.55 and leave the bleeding edge to
>others.  Are there any significant differences if I follow those
>instructions with the 2.55 version?

2.55 will be just fine. I don't run 2.60 myself on production systems.

>If it's not loaded/installed by the MailScanner scripts, should I install it
>before or after MailScanner?

Doesn't matter. Just set "Use SpamAssassin = yes" in
/etc/MailScanner/MailScanner.conf.

>The last go-round, I think I did the tarballs, including installing
>spamassassin from a tarball.  When I was trying to get Razor2 going, I
>downloaded some perl stuff from CPAN which either the spamassassin site or
>the Razor site said I needed, which made my system sort of grumpy.  Said
>modules weren't installed that were, or version errors or some such.  It's
>been several weeks since I've been able to play w/it, so I can't remember
>the specifics.  Instead, I just wiped the machine, and reinstalled and
>figured it was better to do it right rather than try to fix what I probably
>hosed last time.  Thus this tome.

Don't install Perl modules from RPM packages, unless they are provided by
SuSE themselves for 8.0.

Different versions of Perl want things installed in different places, and
3rd-party providers of RPM's cannot know what version of Perl you are
running and therefore cannot always install them in the right place.

This is why I distribute MailScanner as a bunch of SRPM's (source RPMs)
which are automatically rebuilt specifically for your system during the
installation process.

>For the antivirus I got a copy of F-Prot, but then they changed the license.
>Aargh.  A grand more to do the same thing.  So I'm looking at a different
>antivirus solution now, probably RAV.  I don't mind paying for
>support/updates and I thought the original $300 F-prot cost was quite
>reasonable, but the new scheme isn't exactly competitive.  Does RAV auto
>update both the signatures and the program?  I want something I can put in
>and ignore until it's time to send 'em another check in a year.  A friend is
>using Sophos, and he says he has to put in a new user license quarterly or
>some such.  Life's too short for that.  All the docs seem to refer to
>installing Sophos as a step however.  Can I presume that I can substitute
>whatever flavor of antivirus there and *not* have to install Sophos?

Yes. Just set "Virus Scanners = f-prot" or whatever is appropriate for your
scanner, in /etc/MailScanner/MailScanner.conf.
--
Julian Field
www.MailScanner.info
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