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This week just passed has been very busy (hence the lack of posts), but one of my tasks was to modify an open-source mail infrastructure I support to include a virus scanner. Given the amount of spam we all receive, spam reduction would also be handy.

The mail server is running the solid Redhat Enterprise Linux, and - as is always my preference - sendmail is well and truly switched off, and postfix installed in it’s place. I find sendmail to be one of the most finicky, complicated and inappropriate pieces of software out there.

I already knew I wanted to install Clam AV for the virus scanning component. It’s open source, free, and often more up to date than the commercial products, as the virus signatures are submitted by the many sites using the product. For the spam component, Spam Assassin was also my preferred product. Anything from the Apache project deserves consideration, but Spam Assassin had a reputation that again proceeded it.

Of course, after having downloaded the products, I was faced with how to integrate them into postfix. There’s plenty of documentation and articles about integrating them individually with postfix, but very little about both of them.

What does cover both (such as here) mostly seem to be wraps around filter plugins such as Amivis/Amavis-new/Amavis-ng. Useful technology, but almost all failed my “KISS” test: As much as I’m a systems administrator who’s very happy fiddling with software configurations, messing with a live mail infrastructure has a habit of upsetting the people who pay my invoices. Simple is preferable, and minimal interruptions best of all.

Thankfully, help is at hand. Courtesy of my colleague Dave, I took a look at Mail Scanner, out of Southampton University and delightfully free. Exceedingly simple to install, it integrates very well with postfix and other MTA’s, comes complete with all the software necessary, and consolidates configuration files in an exceptionally simple manner. It turned a task of a few hours into a few minutes. Reading and tuning the configuration file on the running installation took longer than installing it, which has to be a good thing: I was getting a working install fine-tuned pleasingly quickly.

So, that’s what I went with, and after activating it immediately started to pay dividends and flag mail as spam, and catch a few viruses. Marvellous stuff. Some fine tuning was required (We mainly have Mac desktops, so tweaked the Spamassassin headers to the ones Mail.app’s Junk mail/ISP trust option expects), but I’m delighted to see all mail into the organisation being well protected. Even though we have mainly Apple users, complacency is to be avoided: I fear it’s only a matter of time before a virus hits the platform. Mail Scanner has made for an excellent external defence to our armoury.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 5th, 2006 at 5:10 pm and is filed under Apple, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.