[BlueOnyx:02156] Re: ClamAV Spamassassin Milters

[Michael Stauber]

Hi Phil,

> So it would appear its better to flow the mail directly into spamassassin
> first with a milter, then send it to mailscanner for virus scanning and
> ultimate handling. 

Actually I'd recommend to skip MailScanner altogether. Clam AV can also be 
tied into Sendmail through a Milter. So you'd use Sendmail, Clam AV Milter, 
Clam AV, Spamass-Milter (it's really called that way) and SpamAssassin. 
Ideally your SpamAssassin (if it uses the Bayes database) should store the 
Bayes information into MySQL for the best possible performance and least 
hassles with UID and GID of the bayes database(s).

> I take a guess here that using spamassassin miltere’d
> first from sendmail rather than through mailscanner brings the server
> overhead down as mailscanner is quite processor dependent. 

Yeah, MailScanner is a CPU hog. If you use Milters instead - and the 
daemonized versions of SpamAssassin and Clam AV, then the load goes down 
considerably. A box with the miltered approach can handle like 10x more emails 
a day without breaking into sweat.

> At some point in time YUM UPDATE always had problems with Perl updates
> (always caused by mailscanner).

True. When you use the miltered approach all you have to worry about is that 
your milter settings in sendmail.cf might get reversed at one point or 
another, although that can be prevented easily.

-- 
With best regards

Michael Stauber