Thoughts on Barracudas?

[David Nalley]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

> You need to maintain the SA side of things, make sure you 
> have RulesDuJour etc installed and picking up the SARE and 
> other rules.
> 
> Spam is an evolving thing and therefore you need to spend a 
> little time making sure you system can auto-update. It's not 
> a install/forget system
> - I think this way of thinking is another example of M$ 
> skewing the market, you don't need all  those expensive well 
> trained/experienced sys-admins!

I can't agree more! I installed my first MailScanner system ~4 years
ago, and like the person who is abandoning MS, it worked great for many
months before slowly degrading into only catching about 75% of spam. The
problem wasn't MailScanner it was the admin (me). I had not run any
updates to the rulesets, installed any optional rulesets  etc. The
constant everchanging nature of spam and my failure to react was
problematic. That being said, it still requires precious little
maintenance once properly setup. RDJ constantly updates my rulesets. My
biggest administrative task now is white/blacklist maintenance, which is
neglible. Unfortunately SA is such a key component, and you have made
things so easy with the installation script that the 'admins' need know
nothing about SA to install it. I think that one of two things, either
A, the requisite plugins should be installed along side SA, along with
FSLs's RDJ script to make things really simple, or their needs to be a
great howto document that covers end to end 'appliance' setup for new
users. There are many howtos out there, but the really slick completely
automated setup requires that you pick pieces from different articles on
the wiki/website. (this may have changed recently, I haven't read the
docs in 5 or 6 months.)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.4 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFE6cnzU7rV35qFz0QRAtOdAKCQ/rCocpwACJsZE3UGDeHxa8+u2QCeLafF
9VcADUxfcrqXCQHl0lWYGyM=
=btDV
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----