Where can I find out about setting up email/spamassassin?
 

Hi all!

I'm really new to Linux, but have worked with it and Unix in the past.

I need to setup a box that will act as a pop2/smtp mail server, and will use SpamAssassin to check incoming email for some accounts (opt-in).

After several failed attempts to get everything I think I need installed on Mandrake and Debian, I'm hoping that someone out there has written something to guide me through the maze. I'm not clear on what exactly I need to setup.

The idea is that incomming mail would be received by the mail server. Once received, it would send it through SpamAssassin to be checked/scored, and then put back into the mail server (or a second one on the same box) for the user to retrieve using Outlook Express or similar.

If anyone has been through a similar setup, I'd really appreciate your insight!

Thanks!

Sloan

I do that with postfix as my MTA. I set it up with this guide: http://www.goblet.net/spamkill/.

Thanks! I'll check that out

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

Newbie advice
 

Kmail and Mozilla Thunderbird and the M2 mail client in Opera all have spam and junk busters included.

A a newbie it's wiser to use these.

Alas, doing the spam elimination on the client side, or specifying which client to use, isn't possible.

The howto mentioned by jtshaw really made it pretty easy