[nmglug] Spam filtering

[Karl Hegbloom]

On Fri, 2005-03-11 at 08:21 -0800, Tim Emerick wrote:
>
> I've got my email server running on my home PC but never really used it
> because I like yahoo so much.  Now, I'm thinking of making the switch.  I
> would appreciate any tips/hints/thoughts on what to setup.  Let me know if
> you have a link to a FAQ or HOWTO to setup a complete mail server solution.
> 
> - Mail Server - Exim comes with Debian and seems to do the trick.

Exim4 is very good.  You can easily hook up Spamassassin by installing
'sa-exim'.

> - Webmail - Squirrelmail looks like the way to go.

Yes, it is.  I like the 'dovecot-imapd' for IMAP.  Configure Exim4 for
Maildir delivery by setting:  LOCAL_DELIVERY=maildir_home

The first delivered mail will create the user's Maildir directory
automatically.

It is advantageous to always go through the IMAP server to access mail.
Never use the Maildir directly from your MUA, since each MUA uses a
different indexing scratch file name and format, and may use a different
naming convention for subfolders.  If you always allow dovecot to manage
those things, it works better.  IMAP to localhost is so fast you'll
never notice.

> - Antivirus - ClamAV?

Perhaps.  One that interfaces with SA and sa-exim is best.  RTFM in
the /usr/share/doc/sa-exim for that, IIRC.

> - Spam Filter - I've heard that SpamAssasin is the best out there.  Any good
> startup filters?

SA.

> - Mail Filter - Something to automagically sort incoming email on
> subject/from/body text.

I'm using Evolution for that.  Thunderbird does it too.  For server-side
mail tossing, just use Exim's mail filter.  RTFM.  It works very well
and its language is simple.  If you access your mail via multiple MUAs
then the exim filter is the best way, since it's the same for all.  Set
your MUA to check for new mail in all folders.