[Mimedefang] Question about virus scanning

[Rich West]

 From what I remember (which may be a bit dated), email messages over 
1MB are not reliably sent over the internet because most mail servers do 
not accept messages that large.  I usually recommend to users to use FTP 
or another method for transferring large files.

However, to more address your question, wouldn't it defeat the purpose 
of scanning for viruses if you restricted the size of the messages?  Not 
all viruses are spread via small attachments.. many 'tag along' MS Word, 
Excel, etc documents...

-Rich

Anthony Giggins wrote:

>What are everyone's thoughts about only scanning file smaller then a set
>size for example I was thinking 1MB? Unless someone has any reasons why not
>to do this.
>
>The reason for this is our current mail-relay gets hammered when a large
>attachment gets stuck in mimedefang and gets continuesly scanned causing
>load avereages to go above 12 causing sendmail to stop receiving untill the
>load average drops below 12. So with the new server its twice as fast twice
>as much memory and will be running 2.7 + multiplexor + NAI on sendmail
>8.12.3 so the multiplexor should also help the performance.
>
>Any comments are welcome
>

-- 
Richard West                            mailto:richard.west at divatv.com
Sr. Systems Administrator
Diva - Princeton, NJ                    http://www.divatv.com