HOWTO: Install MailScanner

[blacknight]

As this keeps coming up and there seems to be a lot of confusion surrounding it I've put together a working howto:
http://www.mneylon.com/blog/archives/2006/01/16/installing-mailscanner-on-directadmin-with-exim/

[nobaloney]

Only two points:

1) quote...

wget http://www.sng.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailscanner/files/4/rpm/MailScanner-4.50.8-1.rpm.tar.gz

tar -zxvf MailScanner-4.50.8-1.rpm.tar.gz

cd MailScanner-4.50.8-1

Relax and have a cup of coffee.
This is a bit confusing. I read it a total of seven times before I realized you didn't leave anything out because this was a specific example of a more general description just above.

2) System admins who do this will hopefully never need to ask on the exim list for help with the spamd issue that a few people have reported on these forums lately...

Some did recently, and the list response was why are you using MailScanner when you can use the built in exiscan function?.

Jeff

[blacknight]

Jeff

I've edited it so that it's hopefully a small bit clearer (I hope).

Spamd should not be running if you are using MailScanner and follow my instructions as it removes it during the install :)

[nobaloney]

Much better :) .

Jeff

[blacknight]

I aim to please :)

[betoranaldi]

following your directions i have run into some problems.

when editing the exim.conf file, once i add the required code exim will not start again. does it need to be put into a specific place?

also when i run

/etc/init.d/MailScanner restart;tail -f /var/log/maillog

all deamons are "OK" but it is spitting out an error

Jan 17 21:43:20 host MailScanner[27360]: Cannot create temporary Work Dir /27360. Are the permissions and ownership of correct?

any guidance will greatly be apreciated

[blacknight]

That sounds like a permissions issue.
Please ensure that the ownership of
/var/spool/MailScanner/

is set to mail.mail

ie. chown mail.mail /var/spool/MailScanner

The addition to exim's config should go towards the top of the file

[betoranaldi]

i just ran the chown command and still getting the error...


Jan 17 22:22:08 host MailScanner[31618]: Your "Incoming Work Directory" should be specified as an absolute path, not including any links. But I will work okay anyway.
Jan 17 22:22:08 host MailScanner[31618]: Cannot create temporary Work Dir /31618. Are the permissions and ownership of correct?


actually is there anyway i can put everything back to the begining? i would like to start from scratch


---------- Update -------------

I reset my server and will try to go through the installation again.
I will let you know how I make out, thank you for all of your help.

[paul-w]

Originally posted by blacknight
As this keeps coming up and there seems to be a lot of confusion surrounding it I've put together a working howto:
http://www.mneylon.com/blog/archives/2006/01/16/installing-mailscanner-on-directadmin-with-exim/

Hi Michele

I ran into the problem of putting the additions to exim.conf too near the end of the file. I knew this because I got the following in /var/log/exim/paniclog:

2006-01-30 22:29:12 Exim configuration error in line 750 of /etc/exim.conf:
option "spool_directory" unknown

My problem now is that when I try to send mail to my server I get:

421 Unexpected failure, please try later

I have checked:

/var/spool/exim/msglog/mainlog
/var/spool/exim/msglog/paniclog
/var/log/maillog
/var/log/exim/mainlog
/var/log/exim/paniclog

and don't get much out of any of them.

/var/log/maillog shows MailScanner starting but not exim. /etc/rc.d/init.d/exim confirms this with just MailScanner showing as running OK.

/var/spool/exim/msglog/mainlog and paniclog just show:

2006-01-31 00:30:34 failed to open /etc/virtual/whitelist_domains for linear search: No such file or directory

/var/log/exim/mainlog shows lines like this:

2006-01-31 00:06:20 exim 4.60 daemon started: pid=22608, -q15m, not listening for SMTP

Any ideas?

[blacknight]

Read my reply to your comment on my blog :)

You should make the additions near the top of the file - sorry if that wasn't clear

Michele

[paul-w]

Originally posted by blacknight
Read my reply to your comment on my blog :)

You should make the additions near the top of the file - sorry if that wasn't clear

Michele

Still no joy I'm afraid, Michele. I still get the "421 Unexpected failure, please try later" message.

I note that my original /etc/exim.conf file is entitled:

SpamBlocker.exim.conf.2.0-release

It has lots of references to rbls and this line:

system_filter = /etc/system_filter.exim

It seems to me that this is duplicating spamassassin and mailscanner. Is this the exim.conf file you used when you wrote the howto?

[paul-w]

Originally posted by paul-w
Still no joy I'm afraid, Michele. I still get the "421 Unexpected failure, please try later" message.

Managed to fix it. For anyone else with this problem, please see the following link:

http://www.directadmin.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2000&highlight=421

and look for the post from DirectAdmin Support who points to http://help.directadmin.com/item.php?id=51

It seems this was a problem for installs done in January 06.

[paul-w]

Originally posted by blacknight
As this keeps coming up and there seems to be a lot of confusion surrounding it I've put together a working howto:
http://www.mneylon.com/blog/archives/2006/01/16/installing-mailscanner-on-directadmin-with-exim/

When MailScanner finishes installing it prompts the user to ensure MailScanner starts at boot time by adding MailScaner using the chkconfig command.

Is this a sensible thing to do? If so, surely it's best to turn exim off using chkconfig?

/sbin/chkconfig exim off

does it on my CentOS 4 box.

[mbear]

OK, so I've installed MailScanner and ClamAV on top of my SpamAssassin in my Cent OS DA installation. Seems to be all OK, except when I installed ClamAV it updated my SpamAssassin, which might have stuffed things up.

Anyway, question is, in my system maillog it seems to show entries for Spamd and for MailScanner. From everything I've read I shouldn't be running Spamd. How do I stop it?

Also, an aside, is there any way to get Spam delivered straight into a 'probably spam' folder for each of my users?

PS - looking at the mail headers there's definitely two sets of scanning going on, the SpamAssassin settings for the MailScanner batch of scanning are set to a threshold of 6, whereas the per-domain settings of the SpamAssassin filter are set to 5. Any ideas where the MailScanner settings are for each domain?

[Umpol]

why are you using MailScanner when you can use the built in exiscan function?.

Jeff

I tried with exiscan and I found it work great. exiscan and clamav can detect emails which contains virus. example log is


This message contains a virus or other harmful content


I also tried install MailScanner and I found many problems so I remove it.

[nimafire]

hello.
is it work great for all?
can i install it now without any problem?

TNX