[Mimedefang] Re: compare mimedefang to mailscanner

David F. Skoll dfs at roaringpenguin.com
Tue Jan 16 13:55:13 EST 2007


Scott Silva wrote:

> But can you run multiple virus scanners with mimedefang?

Sure.

> How will that add to the startup costs of more than one virus scanner?

If they are command-line virus-scanners, performance will be terrible.

If you have as a requirement the need to run multiple command-line
virus-scanners on large quantities of e-mail, then MIMEDefang is the
wrong choice.  (Well, actually, a non-daemonizable virus-scanner is the
wrong choice, but I won't get too deeply into mudslinging. :-))

> I am currently running mimedefang for check_against_smtp_server and
> mailscanner with spamassassin for virus scanning and spam. If I add a
> supported virus scanner in mailscanner, I just have to add its name to the
> config file and reload. How much code do I have to write in mimedefang to do
> the same?

If the virus scanner is already supported, not much.  There are probably
examples on the wiki.

[...]

> Sure, mimedefang is like a swiss army knife. In the right hands, it
> can do almost everything. ...but I am no McGyver, so I can't save
> the world with just a swiss army knife! I need more tools in my tool
> chest!

MIMEDefang is not for everyone.  I'm not trying to say that MIMEDefang
is better or worse than Mailscanner.  I was just trying to objectively
(as much as possible!) compare their behaviours under different
load conditions.

--
David.



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