[Mimedefang] A little confusered

[Nels Lindquist]

On 20 Jun 2002 at 14:47, Weyland wrote:

> On Thursday 20 June 2002 02:26 pm, David F. Skoll spake:
> 
> > > Is MD set up to do *any* kind of filtering once installed?
> >
> > If you leave the default filter in place, then yes.
> 
> Okay, then I'm good there...
> 
> > > I've tried sending test messages through that
> > > would obviously be spam, and they make it through.
> >
> > Do you have SpamAssassin installed?  Otherwise, MD does not scan for
> > spam.
> 
> Yep, sure do.
> But they're getting through anyway.

By default, MIMEDefang/SpamAssassin doesn't reject mail.  It merely 
adds headers reporting the spam "status" of the message.  It's 
usually not difficult to configure mail clients to filter mail based 
on these headers, which leaves the decision about whether or not to 
drop mail in the hands of the end user.

If you do eventually decide that you want to reject spam at the SMTP 
level, it's quite easy to configure MIMEDefang to do so.  However, 
you'll probably want to study the issue for a while--determine what 
score you should use to eliminate false positives, figure out whether 
there are any mailing lists or senders/recipients who should be 
whitelisted, etc.  SpamAssassin is never going to be 100% effective, 
so making the decision to reject mail based on its criteria shouldn't 
be done lightly.

> > > Is there another resource that I might understand a little
> > > better regarding configuration, as a Linux semi-newbie?
> >
> > The man page: man mimedefang-filter is a good place to start, assuming
> > you know Perl.  If you do not know Perl, then good luck... you have a
> > steep learning curve ahead. :-)
> 
> Crap. 
> No, I don't know Perl.

Well, once you've figured out exactly what you want to do, there are 
probably many people on this list who could help you out with code 
fragments.  As I said above, it's not complicated to do, but some 
planning should be involved. :-)

----
Nels Lindquist <*>
Information Systems Manager
Morningstar Air Express Inc.