A new setup

[Mike Wallace]

Will,

I have a somewhat similar use and setup. I too run mail for my private  
consulting company and my family and had problems with lots of spam in  
the past.

But in my case my internet provider is my cable company and restricts  
smtp access so I have to have all of my incoming email go through  
DynDNS.com MailHop Relay and all of my outbound mail has to go out  
through their mail server.

My MailScanner is a Centos 5.3 x64, mailscanner-4.77.10-1,  
spamassassin-3.2.5-1, clamav-0.95.2-4, postfix-2.3.3-2.1, dcc-1.3.103,  
pyzor-0.5.0 and razor-agents-2.84-1. I have a separate mail server  
running Zimbra 5.0 with spamassassin turned off.

In my setup I have postifx first check for valid recipient user names  
using ldap queries of the Zimbra user directory. I was getting a lot  
of spam where the "From:" or "envelope-from" would be a valid or  
invalid account name from my own domain, so I now reject all of those  
messages too.

As for MailScanner, I use the spamhaus-ZEN and spamcop.net Spam Lists.  
For all spam, I tag them {SPAM?} for low scoring spam and {SPAM??} for  
high scoring spam and forward them to a specific account on my mail  
server where I review them daily.

Since this configuration went live on June 3rd, I have significantly  
reduced spam. For example, yesterday Postfix rejected 198 messages,  
MailScanner processed 221 messages  of which 146 were marked as spam.   
Out of the remaining 75 messages, there were no false positives and 18  
false negatives that got through.

I report all of the false negatives to spamcop and then feed them back  
into spamassassin using sa-learn. Soon I will start dropping all of  
the high scoring spam once I get enough evidence that no ham gets  
marked as high scoring spam.

Mike

> On Jun 25, 2009, at 2:45 PM, Martin Hepworth wrote:
>
>>
>> Will
>>
>> have a look at the "getting most out of spamassassin" section of  
>> the wiki.
>>
>> 2009/6/24 <aragonx at dcsnow.com (aragonx at dcsnow.com)>
>>
>>> Hello all,
>>>
>>> Perhaps you get this question a lot.  If you can point me to the
>>> appropriate thread, I would greatly appreciate it.
>>>
>>> Anyway, I'm currently running Fedora 9 x64, mailscanner-4.70.7-1,  
>>> ClamAV
>>> 0.95.1, spamassassin-3.2.5-1 and sendmail-8.14.2-4.
>>>
>>> Fedora 9 is eol so I am going to do a reinstall.  This time, I  
>>> want to do
>>> a little better keeping the spam down.  This system mainly serves  
>>> as my
>>> email for my private consulting business and the family.
>>>
>>> Any suggestions on things I should add or whole setups?  Should I  
>>> add some
>>> milters?  Razor?  SPF?  etc...  I'm looking for some guidance  
>>> because I
>>> have not given this much effort so far but that has to change.   
>>> The wife
>>> is complaining (about spam) and you know how that can be.  :)
>>>
>>> Thanks in advance.
>>>
>>> ---
>>> Will Y.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> MailScanner mailing list
>>> mailscanner at lists.mailscanner.info (mailscanner at lists.mailscanner.info 
>>> )
>>> http://lists.mailscanner.info/mailman/listinfo/mailscanner (http://lists.mailscanner.info/mailman/listinfo/mailscanner 
>>> )
>>>
>>> Before posting, read http://wiki.mailscanner.info/posting (http://wiki.mailscanner.info/posting 
>>> )
>>>
>>> Support MailScanner development - buy the book off the website!
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Martin Hepworth
>> Oxford, UK
>> -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content  
>> by MailScanner (http://www.mailscanner.info/), and is believed to  
>> be clean.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -------------------- m2f --------------------
>>
>> Sent using Mail2Forum (http://www.mail2forum.com).
>>
>> Read this topic online here:
>> http://www.bluequartz.us/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=344064#344064
>>
>> -------------------- m2f --------------------
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> This message has been scanned for viruses and
>> dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
>> believed to be clean.
>>
>>
>>
>> This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by  
>> MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.
>>
>