CentOS - Feb 2007 - Advice, Please.

Hello,

I have a home setup where I am using Centos 4.4 as a sort of mail server.  
This is what I have done.

I have it configured to pop mail locally.  I have fetchmail configured to dl 
from my provider my families mail through a cron job and .fetchmailrc in 
their home directories.  They then pop the server to retrieve their mail.  
They send their mail directly through the provider.

I have been relying on spamassasin on their local boxes to learn and filter 
out the spam but find it is only doing about half of the job even after 
months of training.

I guess my question is this.  Is there a way to do further spam filtering on 
the mail server incorporating my method of doing mail or am I not just doing 
this right?

Any thoughts, please?  Thank you,

Phil

On Sat, 17 Feb 2007, Phil Savoie wrote:
> I have a home setup where I am using Centos 4.4 as a sort of mail 
> server. This is what I have done.
>
> I have it configured to pop mail locally.  I have fetchmail 
> configured to dl from my provider my families mail through a cron 
> job and .fetchmailrc in their home directories.  They then pop the 
> server to retrieve their mail. They send their mail directly through 
> the provider.
>
> I have been relying on spamassasin on their local boxes to learn and 
> filter out the spam but find it is only doing about half of the job 
> even after months of training.
>
> I guess my question is this.  Is there a way to do further spam 
> filtering on the mail server incorporating my method of doing mail 
> or am I not just doing this right?
My experience is that the version of spamassassin that ships with 
CentOS 4 is simply out of date. What works best for me using the Dag 
Wieers/RPMforge version (currently at 3.1.7).

Semi-tricky is that fact that it requires some other packages as well. 
Here's my /etc/yum.repos.d/rpmforge.repo (which also includes some 
packages unlikely to be of interest to you, like cfengine and 
conserver):

----- %< -----
# Name: RPMforge RPM Repository for Red Hat Enterprise 4 - dag
# URL: http://rpmforge.net/
[rpmforge]
name = Red Hat Enterprise $releasever - RPMforge.net - dag
mirrorlist = http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el4/en/mirrors-rpmforge
enabled = 1
gpgkey = file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-rpmforge-dag
gpgcheck = 1
includepkgs = cfengine clamav clamav-db clamav-milter clamd conserver 
perl-Archive-Tar perl-IO-Zlib rpmforge-release spamass-milter 
spamassassin subversion
----- %< -----

Make sure the includepkgs list is all on one line. Then "yum upgrade 
spamassassin" should get you the new packages.

After installing the new spamassassin,

1. Run sa-update to grab the latest stock ruleset from
    updates.spamassassin.org, though I suggest you read the
    sa-update(1) man page first to understand what you're doing.

2. For each SpamAssassin user, at the very least, run (as that user)
    'sa-learn --import' to update their Bayes databases. It's
probably
    most helpful to read the MIGRATION section of the sa-learn(1) man
    page. You'll most likely want to disable the fetchmail runs during
    the migration.

-- 
Paul Heinlein <> heinlein at madboa.com <> www.madboa.com