[nycbug-talk] spamd

[Ray]

On Fri, May 20, 2005 at 10:20:47AM -0400, michael wrote:
> I am updating a mail gateway that runs with tools added to fight spam:
> amavisd-clamav-spamassassin-etc. I have been pretty satisfied with the
> results.  Now, I am going to add spamd(8) to the mix and wanted
> opinions.  Do I really need to run all that extra stuff? 

I'm assuming you mean OpenBSD's spam trapping daemon and not the
spamd that comes with SpamAssassin.

spamd (with greylisting) cuts down spam a lot.  A LOT.  And it's
lightweight, much more lightweight than spamassassin, which will
ease your load overall.

> I know "more layers" is "more protection" but that is a LOT of perl
> modules.  This would also require a lot of extra packages, some are
> required to be built from source due to licencing issues.  All that
> would have to be maintained...

spamd is not a perl module.

> That extra stuff also means extra cycles and extra time during EVERY
> SMTP conversation; ultimately slowing down the gateway.

spamd will reduce the amount of spam that has to be filtered, cutting
down the SMTP conversations that will happen with your mail server.

> I suppose I could just do spamd and measure the results myself, but I
> was wondering if someone else has been there / done that.

I use spamd exclusively and get about ten spam a day now.  Before
that I got several hundred.  If I used any other filtering methods
I could probably remove those ten as well, but it's come to a point
where it just doesn't bother me anymore.  Simplicity is best.