[Mimedefang] Conceptual stage at setting up email gateway

[Ron Aaron]

On Thu, 9 Sep 2004 webmaster+jnsolutions.co.uk at jnsolutions.co.uk wrote:

> I'm looking at setting up an email gateway for myself, due to the number of
> emails that are either spam or viruses I seem to be getting.  I currently
> have about 4 POP3 accounts plus I own two further domains.
>
> The domains won't be a problem, as all I think I need to do is setup
> Mimedefang with an email engine (e.g. sendmail?) on a server and that's
> then covered.
>
> However, I'm not sure whether I can use a linux based email server to
> load the pop3 accounts I use, and then check them for SPAM/Viruses.....
>
> Is it possible?  And what do I need?

It's not *too* hard, don't get frustrated.

First, get a good Linux distro.  I recommend Slackware 10 -- but any current
distro will work just fine.

Even though all distros (I think)  come with sendmail, you'll want to get the
latest sendmail and compile it yourself.  So do make sure you have installed
compilers etc. when you installed your Linux system, even if you don't want to
do development work on Linux.

Get sendmail, ClamAV, MIMEDefang and follow exactly the instructions given on
the MIMEDefang page -- don't get inventive.

Sendmail is a pain to set up properly *even* when you use the recommended 'm4'
macro set -- don't even think about editing its 'cf' files manually unless you
are a masochist or know sendmail very well (or both...).

Use 'fetchmail' to grab your POP emails.  I do that for my mail, and for my
kids' and wife's POP accounts as well -- it all gets pulled down to my server,
where MIMEDefang and ClamAV can get rid of 95% of the incoming mail :-)

Feel free to email me if you have more technical questions - but I will not be
available Thu-Sat of this week -- so again, don't get frustrated! :-)

Enjoy playing with it, Linux gives you a *lot* of rope to either hang yourself
or make a great macrame.



-- 
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