Ok, currently we are running all Microsoft Solution for E-mail, but I want to be able to get rid of the Spam at our company.

Currently out setup is:

FIREWALL -----> SMTP (PUBLIC IP in DMZ) <----> Exchange Server (Private IP in LAN)

Exchange Server POPS the e-mails from SMTP, and delivers all through SMTP. Our SMTP server runs DNS as well to help route e-mail..

Now I want to introduce a Linux Distro in the mixture with SpamAssassin installed to handle all incoming mail..

So questions are:

#1 - I plan to use RedHat 7.3 (I'm a bit familar), can I insert this server to just SCAN e-mails, as an additional server? Or will this need to take over the SMTP server's place?

#2 - When installing RH 7.3 what packages do I need for the install? (taking in account I'll need DNS, Sendmail?, no web server, etc..)


Any and all help is appreciated.

I have installed spamassassin on my Mandrake 9.2 and it finally works. But not easy.
I use fetchmail to retrieve my email from my ISP and postfix to deliver it to my local mailbox.
In between, I use procmail which call spamassassin to tag spam.
I use spamd / spamc which is more efficient than calling spamassassin directly.
It is possible also to add filtering rule in Evolution (your mail reader for example), but this is also very slow.

Please find herafter the content of my .procmailrc file :

# SpamAssassin sample procmailrc
#
# Pipe the mail through spamassassin (replace 'spamassassin' with 'spamc'
# if you use the spamc/spamd combination)
#
#
# The lock file ensures that only 1 spamassassin invocation happens
# at 1 time, to keep the load down.
#

:0wf:spamassassin.lock
| spamc

# Work around procmail bug: any output on stderr will cause the "F" in "From"
# to be dropped. This will re-add it.
:0
* ^^rom[ ]
{
LOG="*** Dropped F off From_ header! Fixing up. "

:0 fhw
| sed -e '1s/^/F/'
}

and hereafter the configuration file for spamd:


# SpamAssassin config file for version 2.5x

# How many hits before a message is considered spam.
required_hits 1.5

# Whether to change the subject of suspected spam
rewrite_subject 1

# Text to prepend to subject if rewrite_subject is used
subject_tag *****SPAM*****

# Encapsulate spam in an attachment
report_safe 1

# Use terse version of the spam report
use_terse_report 0

# Enable the Bayes system
use_bayes 1

# Enable Bayes auto-learning
auto_learn 1

# Enable or disable network checks
skip_rbl_checks 0
use_razor2 1
use_dcc 1
use_pyzor 1

# Mail using languages used in these country codes will not be marked
# as being possibly spam in a foreign language.
ok_languages all

# Mail using locales used in these country codes will not be marked
# as being possibly spam in a foreign language.
ok_locales all

Hope this can help,

Regards,

Vincent