[SA-exim] Not feeling too adventurous...

[Derrick 'dman' Hudson]

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On Fri, Jun 14, 2002 at 11:07:37PM +0200, Kjetil Kjernsmo wrote:
| Hi there!
|=20
| I've been reading up on the features of SA-Exim, and it really does all=
=20
| I'd like to see from the spam filter. It is really beautiful! Great=20
| work, Marc!
|=20
| However, I'm not feeling so adventurous right now.

If you want to see what happens, send test mail to either
devnull@dman.ddts.net or bounceme@dman.ddts.net.  Spam scoring over 10
(and other junk I catch) will be rejected at SMTP time.  Otherwise
devnull messages vanish and bounceme messages bounce back to you with
a message.

| I'm on the standard woody debs of Exim and SA, and being
| inexperienced as sysadmin, I'd like to stick to that...=20
|=20
| It didn't become quite clear to me, but there is no way to avoid to=20
| rebuild Exim or using Exim4?

Yes and No.  The "local_scan" interface is a new feature of exim 4.
You can't embed SA into exim 3 at smtp-time without recoding part of
it ... and if you did that you might as well just use exim 4.

OTOH, Marc has custom .debs on his site so _you_ don't have to
compile exim 4.  His packages aren't identical to the official debian
ones in several ways.  (I choose to compile it myself, and am using
the new dynamic loading recently posted on exim-users.  You can find
more info on it on my site).

| My learning curve is a bit too steep allready, so I don't know if I
| should.... People keep saying "stick to your distro unless you know
| what you're doing" and I'm not sure I know what I'm doing... :-) So,
| should I?=20

It depends on how you like learning.  If you go out on a limb, you're
likely to learn stuff, but you can give yourself a headache in the
process :-).

| Another important issue for me is to keep the system resource use down.=
=20
| My server running everything is just a Pentium PRO 180MHz with 96 MB=20
| RAM. Would I have an issue there?
=20
It depends on the volume of mail you want to process and how you want
to process it.  A certain exim/sa user has a P133 w/ 24MB RAM (or
something like that) and retrieves his mail in batches using
fetchmail.  He has lots of load problems because he slams the system
with 1K+ messages in a short period of time, but otherwise it sits
idle.  I have a "permanent" connection and receive mail directly, so
messages tend to arrive one at a time whenever they feel like it, so
the load is distributed over a larger period of time.  (my system is
also more powerful, but that is not a significant factor)  If you're
an average "home" user and don't receive thousands of messages daily,
you'll probably have few or no load issues.

| BTW, the volume of sa-talk is rather large, so I was wondering whether=20
| it is encouraged to post Exim and SA questions here, even if they are=20
| unrelated to SA-Exim, to keep the sa-talk volume down, or if it is just=
=20
| for SA-Exim-specifics? I've got some troubles with dman's instructions=20
| too, you see (but I haven't really started digging in it).

If it is SA-specific, sa-talk is the best forum.
If it is exim-specific, exim-users is the best forum.
If it is sa-exim specific, this is the best forum.

The reasons for that are each forum has a different group of members
(with some overlap) and each has a different amount of expertise in
each component of the system.

My instructions (I presume you're referring to the exim3 version since
you're using the woody package) have very little in common with
sa-exim, so they would be better suited for the exim-users list.

If you're using the debian 'spamassassin' package, you shouldn't be
having any sa-specific problems.

HTH,
-D


PS. It's also best to keep messages on-list because you have a wider
    audience to help with specific problems and someone else may know
    better than I or simply answer first.  It can also help others who
    search the archives.

--=20

A violent man entices his neighbor
and leads him down a path that is not good.
        Proverbs 16:29
=20
http://dman.ddts.net/~dman/


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