[Mimedefang] MIMEDefang coverage in Sys Admin Magazine, June 2003

[listuser at numbnuts.net]

Ok, I'm posting more or less the same thing to the SpamAssassin mailing 
list because both were mentioned.  I didn't however want to blatently 
cross-post and generate lots of bounces and replies.


Howdy all.  I thought I'd point out that June Sys Admin Mag (vol 12, #6)  
had an article titled "Integrating SpamAssassin into Qmail and Sendmail."  
The article is pretty well written although it had some notable admissions
and things that I personally would have rather seen handled differently.

The article did mention Bayesian filtering, Razor, and DNSBL support.  
However it didn't mention Pyzor or Auto-Whitelisting (AWL).  Use of SQL or
flat text files for per-user configuration wasn't mentioned (mentioning
SquirrelMail integration would have been good too.)  Also absent was any
mention of integration via Procmail, which I believe is still probably the
most common installation method at present, MailScanner, or Amavis* (pick
the current fork of the week).

I don't know Qmail so I can't comment on what the author wrote in that
section.  The Sendmail section described milters and then more or less
turned it over to MIMEDefang (which I don't mind at all :) ).  The
MIMEDefang section was more or less complete for a basic MD installation.  
The author states that the mimedefang-milter "requires some hefty changes"  
and states that his personal changes can be found on Sys Admin Mag's
website.  It appears that his code didn't make it into their zip file for
this month's code snippets.  I for one am interested to see what he 
defines as "hefty changes."

The article really didn't say anything about what to do with tagged mail 
in a MUA.  To me an article about SpamAssassin would require more than 
just installing it.  A HOWTO for a car wouldn't stop at turning it on I 
wouldn't think.

One thing that I didn't like is how the author provided a direct link to a
the SA release he used for his article.  That release was 2.53.  Surely
the author releases how long it takes for a magazine to go to press and be
distributed.  IMHO it would have been much wiser to provide a link to the
download page so that people following the article wouldn't download old
code from the word 'go.'

All in all the article provides enough information for someone to get 
started with SpamAssassin.  It did however leave out some rather important 
things.  It could have touched on how often new versions of SA are 
released and emphasized that users keep up with those releases.  It could 
have mentioned something about the scoring system or shown a sample report 
from a piece of spam to give new users an idea how SA really works.  All 
in all it's a pretty good article and more good exposure for SpamAssassin 
and MIMEDefang.

http://www.samag.com/current/

Also, MIMEDefang was mentioned as an answer in the Q & A section.  Any
publicity is good publicity, right?  It would be nice if these articles
would also mention the commercial companion to MIMEDefang.  I'm sure David 
would like that too. :)

Justin