[Eug-lug] MTA thoughts?

[Elijah Buck]

l've setup Postfix amavis clamav spamassassin before and that seemed
to work pretty well. you might consider graylisting as well. l think
some have had good results with that.
On 7/18/07, Brad Guillory <brad.guillory at ipgear.net> wrote:
> I am not sure what the policy is on cross posting so I have just replied to
> euglug.
>
> I have used postfix almost exclusively as my MTAs since about 1999 when I as
> casting about for anything but sendmail.  It takes a bit of configuration to
> get it working with Amavis but after you have that working SPAM Assassin and
> ClamAV are very easy add ons.
>
> I haven't used exim so I can't compare it.
>
>
> -How well do they do spam filtering in practice? I assume they operate in a
> fashion similar to Sendmail milters. Does the quality of the available
> filtering mechanisms compare to that of Sendmails?
>
> The spam filtering is the real resource hog.  I heavily use RBL to kill as
> much spam as possible because of this.  Postfix makes it easy to do this,
> but I don't recall that there is anyway to cache the results from the RBL
> lookup and pass that information on to spam assassin.  So you either won't
> use RBL information for spam assassin or you will be making multiple
> lookups.
>
> -How "heavy" are they? Sendmail can process huge volumes of mail on
> surprisingly low-powered hardware, even while doing a fair amount of
> mail-munging.
>
> If you are doing spam and virus checking your MTA will not be the limiting
> factor.
>
>
> -What's the maintenance experience like, say 6 months or a year after
> installation? I don't want something I have to constantly poke. I already
> have an Exchange box for that....
>
> After configuration it chugs away.  As a matter of policy you should update
> your RBL lists periodically and update the spam assassin and clamav as
> needed.  But you can automate the rule updates and virus definition updates.
>
> On another note, if want all of this functionality and want some support
> with it I would recommend checking out the Spam Firewall by Barracuda
> Networks; in my opinion the UI is work the cost alone.
>
> If you need configuration examples email me offlist.
>
> Good luck, BMG
>
> From: euglug-bounces at euglug.org [mailto:euglug-bounces at euglug.org] On Behalf
> Of Quentin Hartman
> Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2007 10:33 AM
> To: Eugene Unix and Gnu/Linux User Group; Mid-Willamette Valley Linux Users
> Group; General Linux/UNIX discussion and help, civil and on-topic;
> discuss at itproforum.org
> Subject: [Eug-lug] MTA thoughts?
>
> It's getting to be time to setup a mail gateway at the edge of my network to
> sanitize stuff before it hits the company Exchange box. Originally I had
> planned on setting it up using Sendmail, but I have had some recent exposure
> to both Postfix and Exim, and they seem to be nice pieces of software and
> are generally well respected online. The most attractive thing about them is
> that they seem to "do the right thing" for the most, but maintain a fairly
> good level of flexibility, without the configuration voodoo required by
> Sendmail. As much as I like Sendmail's power, escaping from those arcane
> texts is appealing. I did some looking about for comparisons among Sendmail,
> Postfix, and Exim and the newest one I came upon was from 2003. I doubt very
> much that conversation reflects the world as it is now. For any of you who
> have used Postfix or Exim (or ideally both of those and Sendmail) in a
> production or production-like environment I ask:
>
> -How well do they do spam filtering in practice? I assume they operate in a
> fashion similar to Sendmail milters. Does the quality of the available
> filtering mechanisms compare to that of Sendmails?
> -How "heavy" are they? Sendmail can process huge volumes of mail on
> surprisingly low-powered hardware, even while doing a fair amount of
> mail-munging.
> -What's the maintenance experience like, say 6 months or a year after
> installation? I don't want something I have to constantly poke. I already
> have an Exchange box for that....
>
> I'm also open to other suggestions, except Qmail. That looks more complex
> than Sendmail, and I'm already familiar with Sendmail's weirdness. I know
> that asking admins about MTAs is like asking coders about languages or
> editors, so please keep the flaming to a minimum... :D
>
> --
> -Regards-
>
> -Quentin Hartman-
>
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