SpamAssassin – OS X Server Mail Server

[legacyb4]

Not sure if I’m missing the whole point here, but can SA be installed on Server without Exim for use as a spam filtering system?

[legacyb4]

I’ve set up GFI’s MailEssentials for another network I deal with and have it set up as:

Incoming mail (outgoing mail also piped through the SMTP relay server)
Internet => SMTP relay (with GIF ME) => Exchange 5.5 server

So, in similar fashion, I assume that SA is used as:

Internet => MTA (with SA) => Apple Mail Server

with all components residing on the same machine? Logic then says that I should be able to run the MTA (with SA) on a physically separate machine from AMS and pipe filtered mail through to either mail server, right?

However, SA merely “tags” the incoming mail so that the user can identify what is spam or not. I think I caught a glimpse in the docs, but there is also server-side filtering so that tagged mail never even reaches the mailbox, right?

[quote:58ed54fa57=”MacTroll”]Sure. There are a lot of ways you can use SA. Either through an MTA, like Exim or Postfix, or you should be able to get procmail to feed it on a user by user basis also.

I’ve got an extra Intel box sitting around; would it be worth it to dump a simple Linux server on it and set up SA on top of that?

Cheers.

Joel[/quote:58ed54fa57]

[legacyb4]

Joel,

Got it. Thanks for the feedback.

I’ve got a Linux box already running as my SSH server which has postfix already installed. Guess I’ll give SA a shot and see if it’s any more effective than the GFI box.

The biggest problem I’m realizing with the GFI solution is that it runs on a set of static filters and rules rather than an adaptive rating system like SA does. I’m also assuming that Postfix/Exim will allow forwarding by domain so that mail addressed to each domain goes to the respective server.

Thanks.

[quote:96814a426c=”MacTroll”]There is no reason why you can’t run SA on another machine from your final mail server.

The key here is the rules that you put into your MTA. For example:

Internet > Exim (MTA) with SA > local network > Apple Mail Server

Just make sure that your MTA with SA is doing two things. 1. That it bounces or dumps mail flagged by SA instead of forwarding them on. This is a simple rule that looks at the spam header from SA and then acts accordingly. 2. you need a final delivery rule that forwards all mail over SMTP to your Apple Mail Server. Now AMS doesn’t have to do anything fancy, it just accepts mail from the MTA.

Joel[/quote:96814a426c]

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