Mail Server

[Don Russell]

Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-07-25 at 06:19, Vinayak Mahadevan wrote: 
>   
>> I am basically confused as to what mailing system I should use. Sendmail or
>> qmail? Because in one site they had mentioned that sendmail is not that good
>> compared to qmail.
>>     
>
> Sendmail has been fixed since then...  But, 2 pieces of advice:
> first consider the supported life of fedora compared to other
> distros like RHEL or Centos before building a service that you
> expect to run for a long time on it.   Second, for a mail server
> you really want a spam/virus filter that can reject during the
> smtp conversation so you don't have to return bounce notifications.
>   

Never automatically send e-mail "bounce notifications" for spam after 
your SMTP server has received a message. This accomplishes nothing 
because in all likelihood the headers are forged and you will be sending 
a notice to an "innocent third party" at best, or an invalid address, 
from which you will receive a rejection notice, or to somebody/something 
that simply ignores your "reply" anyway.

See "joe jobbing" on google....

If you want to reject spam, do it at the smtp level where your server 
can reject the message by reporting an error code to the sending 
client... then your machine does not even receive the message in the 
first place.

> One way to do that is to use sendmail with MimeDefang running
> as a milter: http://www.mimedefang.org

Yes.... and keep in mind you do not have to configure everything at 
once....  I use sendmail/procmail and spamd (spamassassin) and 
clamAV.... very little configuration was needed.... go through the 
/etc/mail/sendmail.mc file line by line ... if you change anything, 
simply restart sendmail. That file is well documented, and there is lots 
of information via google.

It is quite straightforward to use spamassissinand clamAV from within 
procmail, I have not been able to get the milter-approach working, 
though I think it may be "better" in some cases.

As for configuration enhancements... I have spamassassin and clamAV set 
up "after the fact"... being called from procmail. I handle such files 
within procmail and do not "reject them" at the smtp level. But, I NEVER 
auto-reply to spam/virus-infected messages either... (See above)