I'm still very much a linux intermediate (flattering myself, a oldnewbie, would be better), but I've been asked - as a favour - to install some spamfiltering software on a RH7.2 server running qmail and vpopmail. I'm wondering, if it might not take up too much* time, or whether it's above my reach.

I'm OK with general fileadmin tasks, compile my own stuff, do my own scripts to help me, but ... I always find that application specific stuff, has its own learning curve, and basically, mail is not my forte. I've even had trouble with my own client (never mind an MTA) ... never got mutt working ... dislike thunderbird.

So I'd like to know if anybody has done a spamassassin-qmail type setup and how exhausting it was, the first time. To be honest, I don;t think I'm up for it

* I could give it a day, max. Two days, nope, I'd have to tell my mate to spend a little cash on an external supplier.

Any advice, advices or advicii :-). Cheers.

PD. I should have put this in the software category, I suppose, if nay mod could oblige ... cheers.

You might want to look a spam appliances then, something like ESVA. They have both a centos live CD and a vmware image. It's free and pretty easy to setup and even has a web interface for managing it. http://www.global-domination.org/ESVA.php

I'm sure if you look around there are probably other things like esva.

thanks for your answer estabroo.

the fact that I don't even understand the ESVA means I'll be telling my mate to go to someone specialist for this. It's clearly out of my depth.

Thanks anyway!

Cheers.

Don't give up just yet :}

Look at this one
http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/255

thanks for the suggestion ... I'm having a look at it.

But I'm a real numskull ... the virtual machine thing, I've never "got it".

VMWare's site has always scared me off with the different product names, though I did once, with one of the vmplayers, and got this cringey overelaborate GUI .. though I'll admit it did work .. but I was clueless as to how to be productive with it.

In this case, Spamvigilante (BTW, you've heard good things about it, or you've tried it yourself, Tinkster?), well I stop at the instructions where it says "simply boot up the virtual machine".

Sorry I don't know how to do that. Especially as this is a remote machine ( thanks, but no GUI's ... ).

I could think a little harder, and imagine that a daemon (server) would need be be in place, for this bootup, and that this is what the vmware server is for ... but actually, I'm surmising.

I'm doing some googling on this, but the webpages and forums all seem to involve virtual machine practitioners and this sort of elementary background knowledge is assumed (it seems like).

I'm sure there's got to be someone who's written a newbie guide to it .. off a-googling I go...

OK, the three hour mark has passed.

During that time I've come up against new concepts that I have not been able to understand.

Much of this is due to the ambiguity of the words that occur because of the virtual machine context. When you say CDROM, which CDROM are you talking about? The virtual one, or the real one? Well, it couldn't be the real one. Bu tif it is a virtual machine's CDROM, it's not really real, it;s a virtual CDROM ... Oh my, I'm all-a-flutter. I feel like Paris Hilton right now.

ANother prob is that on Spam Vigilante,it mentions vmware-tools. It says you go into vmware server and after a few steps you ivoke the perlscript "install-vmware.pl". I don;t get it ... you must have Vmware server running in order to "install vmware"? Th sis all circular reference.

SOrry but three hours making no progress, well, it's a wee bit masochistic.

Maybe just go with the basics: http://search.cpan.org/~jmason/Mail-...pamAssassin.pm
See also the links at the bottom of that page.