MailScanner v5 Beta Available

Wed May 4 10:33:05 UTC 2016

John,

I have no desire at this point to get MailScanner into any of the mainstream distros. Would it be nice? Yeah. After I make your suggested change from /var/lib/ to /usr/lib, the RPM and deb packages are compliant as far as I can tell. Symlinking an init script is common on Debian. Not so much on RHEL, but I don’t see where it is not allowed. The way the current ms-init is built it follows the general theme of both Debian and RHEL. It simply does not use their canned functions, which you do not need to do anyway. They are different on Debian and RHEL, of course. 

The problem with making it compliant long term is that as soon as you set the “requires” for packages so everything get installed nice and neat, some asshat working on another project changes the name of their package. ClamAV is famous for doing this, especially with the user and group names the program runs under. Recently perl-modules was changed to perl-modules-522 or some shit on RHEL-7, which totally broke the MailScanner install. 

So if you want to develop a Gentoo compliant thing, feel free to do so. Most of the work is done. 

-
Jerry Benton
www.mailborder.com

> On May 4, 2016, at 6:21 AM, John Wilcock <john at tradoc.fr> wrote:
> 
> Hi Jerry,
> 
> Yes, I'm well aware of the history, notably Julian's worthy but doomed attempt to install packages his own way! 
> I'm willing to help with your standardisation efforts (as well as with the documentation) though my coding skills are somewhat rusty! Would you like me to work on patches to harmonise use of the defaults file for the ms-* scripts?
> 
> Regarding the init script, there's no way gentoo would approve an ebuild for their portage repository if it used a generic shell init script, and I wouldn't be surprised if the same was true for systemd-based distros. (Is getting MailScanner into official repositories a goal?) In any case, it can't do any harm to allow for the possibility of using a different init script, even if you don't actually provide any distro-specific scripts yourself.
> 
> -- 
> John
> 
> 
> Le 04/05/2016 à 11:38, Jerry Benton a écrit :
>> - Good point. I will think about that.
>> 
>> - Because I did not write every single ms-* file. I wrote some of them, rewrote some of them, cleaned up a bunch of them, and some stayed the same. You should be able to tell which ones I wrote as they all follow the same basic logic and operate the same basic way using the /etc/MailScanner/defaults file.
>> 
>> - The init script was standardized. Perviously it was not. Having to maintain 10 different init scripts for 10 different distros was a pain in the ass. There is now one init script. Based on your distro you can symlink to that file and now the same exact init script works across all distros. The /usr/sbin/MailScanner executable maintains its own PID file, loads itself into the background, and handles all of the Child processes. There is no need to write a distro specific init system for it. You just need something that can start/stop/reload/restart/kill/status the same way. You can also create a systemd-based thing if you like, but you don’t have to. (On RHEL 7 anyway.)
>> 
>> 
>> You need to realize that very few people actually help me with MailScanner. Mark and Andrew put sanity checks on user submitted bugs and tweak the base code where needed. Mark also helps me test things and sanity checks my ideas. You have volunteered to help with the documentation. But other than that, even when I ask the community for help, I hear crickets most of the time. All of the update servers, the website, the repository, and everything else costs me a lot of time and, usually, money as well. (Thank you to the two people that have taken the time to donate a little money over the years. It is only $110 total, but it help pay for a month or two and I appreciate the gesture.)
>> 
>> 
>> So when I set out to standardize v5, I did it in a manner that would be easier to learn and maintain across multiple NIX platforms. Stuff was, and still is in the Perl code to a large degree, all over the place. You have said you were a long time MailScanner user. You should then be able to remember how MailScanner used to be packaged and installed with multiple sources that would get dated. Install scripts were not standardized, CPAN was not used, locations were different, and a lot of how things worked was a total mystery. 
>> 
>> 
>> I have brought this project a LONG way in standardizing how it works and improving totally replacing things like the phishing update system. Not everyone is going to like what I do, but I can guarantee you that everyone on every NIX is going to be doing it the same way. 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -
>> Jerry Benton
>> www.mailborder.com <http://www.mailborder.com/>
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On May 4, 2016, at 4:45 AM, John Wilcock <john at tradoc.fr <mailto:john at tradoc.fr>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi Jerry,
>>> 
>>> Started to take a look at this for gentoo, based on your nix tarball and the existing gentoo ebuild for MS 4.84. I haven't got as far as a working ebuild yet, but I do have some initial questions and suggestions:
>>> 
>>> Why put the init and wrapper scripts in /var/lib/MailScanner? /var is for files that are expected to vary during normal operation. The wrappers used to be in /usr/lib/MailScanner/ on gentoo (/opt/MailScanner/lib in the old tarball) but they aren't really libraries as such anyway. Wouldn't it make more sense to put them in /usr/sbin/ms-* or possibly /usr/share/MailScanner/wrappers? 
>>> I'm not sure where the init script ought to go though. On gentoo with OpenRC I won't use it anyway, I'll reuse the one in the existing ebuild. Dunno about other init systems.
>>> Not all of the /usr/sbin/ms-* scripts actually source the defaults file, yet some of them define their own equivalent variables and others use hardcoded paths in places where they ought to be using the directory variables.
>>> How about adding a variable in the defaults file for the command used to reload the MS daemon (the update-bad-emails script already has $mailscanner_restart for this)? You're currently using /var/lib/MailScanner/init/ms-init reload, but this command needs to change depending on the init system used. I haven't looked to see what you've done in the other distro versions but presumably you have different commands especially for systemd-based distros anyway, so a variable will improve cross-distro maintainability. 
>>> -- 
>>> John
>>> 
>>> Le 04/05/2016 à 00:14, Jerry Benton a écrit :
>>>> Ok, corrected the upgrade issues.
>>>> 
>>>> RHEL
>>>> https://s3.amazonaws.com/msv5/beta/MailScanner-5.0.0-2.rhel.tar.gz <https://s3.amazonaws.com/msv5/beta/MailScanner-5.0.0-2.rhel.tar.gz>
>>>> 
>>>> Debian
>>>> https://s3.amazonaws.com/msv5/beta/MailScanner-5.0.0-2.deb.tar.gz <https://s3.amazonaws.com/msv5/beta/MailScanner-5.0.0-2.deb.tar.gz>
>>>> 
>>>> SUSE
>>>> https://s3.amazonaws.com/msv5/beta/MailScanner-5.0.0-2.suse.tar.gz <https://s3.amazonaws.com/msv5/beta/MailScanner-5.0.0-2.suse.tar.gz>
>>>> 
>>>> NIX
>>>> https://s3.amazonaws.com/msv5/beta/MailScanner-5.0.0-2.nix.tar.gz4 <https://s3.amazonaws.com/msv5/beta/MailScanner-5.0.0-2.nix.tar.gz4>
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> -
>>>> Jerry Benton
>>>> www.mailborder.com <http://www.mailborder.com/>
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> On May 3, 2016, at 4:50 PM, Jerry Benton <jerry.benton at mailborder.com <mailto:jerry.benton at mailborder.com>> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Thanks. I will run a test this evening. 
>>>>> 
>>>>> -
>>>>> Jerry Benton
>>>>> www.mailborder.com <http://www.mailborder.com/>
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On May 3, 2016, at 4:44 PM, Peter C. Ndikuwera < <mailto:pndiku at gmail.com>pndiku at gmail.com <mailto:pndiku at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Obsoletes: MailScanner
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> -- 
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>>> http://lists.mailscanner.info/listinfo/mailscanner <http://lists.mailscanner.info/listinfo/mailscanner>
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> 
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