MailScanner on Mac OS X

[JLM]

Ryan Finnesey asked:

> Can I ask why OS X?

Because my particular production environment is using Xserve hardware, and
because that's the OS I'm most familiar with. Nearly all the other XAMS team
members use some flavor of Linux.

John Rudd helpfully suggested:

> f sounds like you're using the HPUX stanza instead of the BSD stanza in
> the check_mailscanner script.  Make sure the BSD stanza is the one
> you're using (make sure the conditions work out, etc.).

Thanks for the suggestion, John. I'll take a look at that and see what I can
figure out.

Regarding item [4] below... After looking through the MailScanner code, it
appears that the CustomConfig.pm routines are called from several different
places. It seems that in some cases the ($message) is passed to the custom
routines, and in some cases it is not. So when our custom routine is called
from sendmail2...

sendmail2 = &XAMSTMDAMailer

.for some reason MailScanner isn't passing the ($message) to the
XAMSTMDAMailer custom routine. We can't seem to determine why.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

Also, as I mentioned before, it would be great if we could figure out a way
to get MailScanner to successfully run as the "mail" user on OS X. I've
searched the archives, and it seems people on other platforms have
experienced the same problem in the past. I seem to gather that it's been
fixed for most environments, but perhaps not for OS X. Any suggestions for
troubleshooting this would be *most* appreciated.

Sincere thanks,

Justin


> -----Original Message-----
> From: MailScanner mailing list [mailto:MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK]On
> Behalf Of JLM
> Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2004 12:50 AM
> To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> Subject: MailScanner on Mac OS X
>
>
> Hi folks,
>
> I'm trying to get MailScanner (4.26.8-1) functioning properly on Mac OS X
> Server (10.3.2), and I'm running into a few trouble spots. I'm using
> MailScanner along with XAMS 0.0.15-RC4, which is a flexible and intuitive
> email management system that is designed to work along with Exim,
> Courier-IMAP, and MySQL.
>
> http://www.xams.org/
>
> The trouble spots I'm running into are:
>
> [1] At launch, MailScanner complains: "ps: illegal option -- f"  This seems
> to be related to check_mailscanner, but other than that I don't anything
> about this error, how important it is, and whether there's anything we can
> do to fix it on Mac OS X. Any thoughts or suggestions would be much
> appreciated.
>
> [2] I can't seem to get MailScanner to run as mail:mail (GID=6, UID=6). This
> occurred on both the Jaguar (10.2.6) and Panther (10.3.2) versions of Mac OS
> X that I have installed MailScanner on. I have to comment out the "Run as
> user = " and "Run as Group = " lines in order to get MailScanner to run.
> Does anyone have any suggestions as to how we might fix this? We'd rather
> not have MailScanner running as root if we can avoid it.
>
> [3] Other than the above, MailScanner appears to function normally. However,
> after a few hours of normal operation, the following error began repeatedly
> appearing in the mail log:
>
> Feb 17 12:44:31 localhost MailScanner[2965]: File containing list of
> incoming queue dirs (/var/spool/exim-incoming/input) does not exist
>
> There is indeed a /var/spool/exim-incoming/input directory. I'm a bit
> puzzled as to why MailScanner thinks there is a file containing a list of
> incoming queue dirs at that location. Both the incoming and outgoing queue
> directories are specified in the mailscanner.conf file.
>
> MailScanner appears to continue functioning normally, so once again it's not
> clear how important this error is. Nonetheless, can anyone shed any light on
> what's causing this and how I might fix it?
>
> [4] After mail has been scanned for viruses and run through SpamAssassin, it
> may then be fed to TMDA if the spam/ham analysis is inconclusive.
>
> [I fully realize that many people are not big fans of challenge/response
> systems such as TMDA. Please keep in mind that messages with low spam scores
> are delivered unchallenged, and messages with high spam scores are discarded
> outright (again, without being challenged). The only messages that will be
> challenged are the very rare messages that SpamAssassin can't convincingly
> classify as either spam or ham. It is our hope that this method will address
> many of the objections against challenge/response systems.]
>
> I'm working with the other folks on the XAMS team to put together a few
> routines to pass mail from MailScanner to TMDA. The following test routines
> were added to the CustomConfig.pm component of MailScanner:
>
> ### Begin: Test routines added to CustomConfig.pm ###
>
> use Data::Dumper;
> sub InitXAMSTMDAMailer {}
>
> sub XAMSTMDAMailer
> {
>   my ($message) = @_;
>   $|++;
>   open XAMS_TMDA_FH, '>>/tmp/xams_tmda_mailer.log';
>   print XAMS_TMDA_FH Dumper($message) . '=' x 80 . "\n";
>   print XAMS_TMDA_FH "XAMSTMDAMailer was here\n";
>   close XAMS_TMDA_FH;
>   return '/usr/local/exim/bin/exim -DMAILSCANNER_OUTGOING=On';
> }
>
> sub EndXAMSTMDAMailer {}
>
> ### End: Test routines added to CustomConfig.pm ###
>
> When a message is received by MailScanner and triggers the above routines,
> it delivers the mail but does two unexpected things:
>
> 1. The output of the first print command is:  "$VAR1 = undef;"
>  Can anyone think of why that might be? Any suggestions would be very,
>  very helpful.
>
> 2. It repeats the output five times (see below). I realize that MailScanner
>  has five processes running at any given time, but why are all five
>  processing these routines when a message is received?
>
>  Output:
>
>    $VAR1 = undef;
>    ====================================================================
>    XAMSTMDAMailer was here
>
>    (repeated another four times)
>
>  Does anyone have any ideas as to why this is being repeated five times?
>
>
> I realize this is a lot of questions to throw to the list at once. I and the
> other members of the XAMS team would be most grateful for any advice you can
> offer.
>
> On behalf of the XAMS team, thanks in advance for any pointers you might
> have for us!
>
> Best,
>
> Justin
>
> PS:
>
> I'd like to take a moment to recognize the superb support I've received so
> far from Nick Phillips, who has selflessly devoted his time to help me get
> MailScanner running on Mac OS X (in at least a basic incarnation). Without
> his guidance, I would never even made it this far. Many thanks, Nick!
>