Re: [exim] Looking for a simpler replacement to SA

Peter wrote:
> But if you define which bits of SA you actually use, you might be
> better placed to look for substitutes. You've mentioned DSPAM - this
> is a self-learning Bayesian system with no pre-defined rules - is that
> what you want? Could you live with just that, rather than that plus
> the huge pile of pre-defined (and regularly-updated) set of rules in
> SA? If so, DSPAM's definitely a good option.

For the longest time I have simply used SA for its pre-defined rules and
minor other checks it does - none of the learning stuff has been enabled
(since I have a virtual config and haven't had the time to devote to setting
something up to allow learning with SA). So yes, moving to something like
dspam would be a complete 180, but I wouldn't mind trying it out at the very
least.

The one other plus I see to using something like dspam over SA is that I
don't have to maintain updates to the software (as much) to ensure good spam
filtering. This is for a smaller-scale mail server, and as such I don't
check for updates all the time. Having to update SA to get new rules to
catch new spam doesn't really jive well with my daily routine. I would much
rather be able to drag an email to a spam folder and have the system do its
thing for me.

The only big hurdle in my way though, is that SA holds the only ACL hook for
spam right now. There's no way (that I've found) to plug dspam in to Exim
in the ACL stages like you can with SA via spamd. So as much as I'd like to
try dspam, and maybe others that exist as well - I can't implement them the
way I want.

I do have the dl() function available in Exim to load a dynamic module, and
I can patch Exim as well - but I haven't found either for any spam filtering
systems that I'm aware of. I suppose I could try to make a module/patch
myself, but sadly my C is quite poor compared to real programmers (still no
excuse to try though) :P

So yeah, I guess what I'm saying is that it's not so much that I'm looking
for an spam filtering replacement on a per-feature basis, rather which ones
work for filtering spam with similar accuracy to SA and have Exim
integration in the ACL stages (via some kind of patch or plugin for Exim).

Eli.