Managing MailScanner on multiple hosts

[Furnish, Trever G]

Not to steal any thunder from FSL, especially since they seem to be working
with Steve (Freegard) to include MailWatch as part of their solution, but
you can also have multiple mailscanner hosts log to a single mysql database,
which is then used by MailWatch.  Then you'd only need mysql/apache/php
installed on the mysql database system, not the distributed MailScanners.

That's only addressing your logging issue though - I suspect FSL (see Julian
F's post) will bundle additional features that meet most of your other
needs...

-t.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Julian Rawcliffe [mailto:jrawcliffe at LONDON.EDU]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2004 11:06 AM
> To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> Subject: Managing MailScanner on multiple hosts
>
>
> I've recently introduced MailScanner, Sophos and SpamAssassin
> on a number of Sendmail servers feeding outgoing email and
> two iPlanet (or whatever it is now called) Messaging Server
> instances.
>
> Most of the documentation I've read refers to one machine
> running MS and delivering to local users; SA seems especially
> geared toward this kind of setup.
>
> Three things concern me: reporting, user preferences and where to go
> after the basic service is up and running.
> Reporting: Currently my six machines log locally, but I'm looking
> at a centralised loghost. I don't especially want MySQL, PHP and
> Apache running on all my gateways. Is anyone aware of a reporting
> tool that allows logs to be dumped to another server and then
> processed; I'm not too bothered about capturing server load and
> memory stats, just mail volume, spam and viruses.
> User preferences. Whilst SA is doing a great job and has been
> beneficial
> to most of the user community, there are some that are extremely
> irritated by the filtering. None of the users have a home directory on
> any of the mail gateways, so ~/.spamassassin/user_prefs is a
> non-starter. I had thought about using MySQL for storing prefs wih a
> PHP script to manage the contents (as described elsewhere).  This may
> be possible but there are other obstacles. Anyone do anything
> different?
> Lastly, moving on from a basic install. I know I could hit the mailing
> lists and scour them for how to get Bigevil and bayes working without
> completely disabling all spam detection, but is there anywhere that
> describes how to do this without the lists (not that I am in any way
> knocking the sound advice and help found on the lists).
>
> None of the above is a moan about how these tools work - they all
> do a fantastic job - it's just an attempt to find out what other
> people do when running the scanner across more than one host that
> only relays email.
>
> --
>
> Julian Rawcliffe
>
> London Business School, Sussex Place, Regents Park, London. NW1 4SA
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>