postfix before qmail, has it been done before ?

[buddaaa]

hi,

i'm new to plesk and sadly qmail and from what i read in this forum i'll have to compile qmail with several patches and additional tools to even get the most basic antispam features. now my idea is to put postfix on the external IPs port 25, filter spam with it and forward the rest to qmail on 127.0.0.1:25.

it would also be needed to convert rcpthosts with a cronjob to postfix localdomains to avoid the open relay.

advantages:
- 80% of spam can be sorted out by the mailserver (i've just switched from postfix to qmail, RBL and SPF already switched on)
- several antispam features out of the box
- easy possibility to delete or hold spam with a certain spam-assassin-score
- possibility to delete the spam which comes to used and unused adresses at th same time.
- no need to recompile ever, security fixes come from linux-distro

disadvantages:
- another mail queue, but that's no big deal in postfix
- security problems of 1,5 mailservers (probably postfix doesn't pass every exploit to qmail)
- SMTP-auth needs to be solves someway (maybe run postfix & qmail on different IPs)

are there more disadvantages i didn't think of ?

ciao
arnim

 

[atomicturtle]

you can do a fair bit of that with qmail-scanner as well. Barring that, you can also put together an anti-spam pre-processing box running postfix or qmail (project gamera on my site) and then have that system forward to your PSA box. Either option would be a lot less work to maintain than doubling up MTA's on the same box.

 

[buddaaa]

Originally posted by atomicturtle
you can do a fair bit of that with qmail-scanner as well.

so why should i install qmail-scanner to get a fair bit when i can use postfix and get it all? i doubt it's more work.

Barring that, you can also put together an anti-spam pre-processing box running postfix or qmail (project gamera on my site) and then have that system forward to your PSA box. Either option would be a lot less work to maintain than doubling up MTA's on the same box.

yeah, and pay and administrate and update and backup another box.

i'll rather get a 2nd IP for my box, run postfix on that and change all my MX to it.

 

[atomicturtle]

"yum install qmail-scanner" or if you want the whole toaster "yum install project-gamera"

 

[buddaaa]

Originally posted by atomicturtle
"yum install qmail-scanner" or if you want the whole toaster "yum install project-gamera"

and what's that on suse 9.3 x86_64 ?

 

[atomicturtle]

You're on your own with that, although at least one person did port my rpms over to that platform.

 

[eugenevdm]

atomicturtle,

do any of your RPMs work with 64-bit platform, or alternatively, what would you recommend for 64-bit platform Linux OS for Plesk?

 

[buddaaa]

Originally posted by atomicturtle
You're on your own with that, although at least one person did port my rpms over to that platform.

thanks for effort but the postfix rpm installed quite smoothly (had double /ur/sbin/sendmail, some changes in xinetd.conf) and i'll soon change my 1st MX

 

[atomicturtle]

I just got the 64-bit build tree going this weekend, so I'll have 64-bit rpms for FC3/FC4/FC5 and 4ES/CentOS4.

It might take another week or two for me to get the archive in order for the new platforms, and reorganize the archive.

If you're looking for the latest features, Id go with FC4/FC5. The down side with those is you'll be on an 18 month upgrade cycle. If you're looking for a stable platform you wont have to update for 3 years or more, check out CentOS4/4ES

 

[buddaaa]

Originally posted by atomicturtle
I just got the 64-bit build tree going this weekend, so I'll have 64-bit rpms for FC3/FC4/FC5 and 4ES/CentOS4.

It might take another week or two for me to get the archive in order for the new platforms, and reorganize the archive.

If you're looking for the latest features, Id go with FC4/FC5. The down side with those is you'll be on an 18 month upgrade cycle. If you're looking for a stable platform you wont have to update for 3 years or more, check out CentOS4/4ES

sorry, but i won't reinstall my server to get mailfiltering for qmail. thanks for the effort anyway.

i've put together a howto install postfix before qmail for antispam if anyone cares.