[CentOS] postfix as default MTA

Timothy Murphy gayleard at alice.it
Wed Jul 10 16:37:30 UTC 2013


Ron Loftin wrote:

> I can't speak directly to RedHat's reasoning, but I can say that I find
> Postfix MUCH easier to deal with than Sendmail.  After 20+ years in
> Unix/Linux system admin, I still find Sendmail arcane and confusing,
> while Postfix configuration details are much more comprehensible to the
> ordinary mortal mind.

For a contrary opinion, while sendmail.cf is difficult to follow,
I've never found sendmail.mc too difficult.

However, I'm finding postfix very difficult to configure with spamassassin.
Postfix/dovecot works well enough,
but the recommended addition of amavisd-new with clamav and spamassassin
seems extraordinarily complicated and spaghetti-like,
and I haven't found any documentation in *.centos.org
that describes the specific spamassassin side of the setup.
[The alternative sendmail/procmail/spamassassin combination
I run on another server seems much easier to follow.]

Everything on my server appears to be running as it should,
but I don't think any spam is being caught.
Eg I have set
ok_languages en it fr de ga
in /etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf (and re-started spamassassin)
but I am still inundated with chinese spam.

If anyone knows of any documentation on the recommended CentOS setup
of postfix/dovecot with amavis, clamav and spamassassin
I should be grateful for a pointer.

What I'd really like is to see what happens to a given email
as it goes through its rather complicated journey through my system.

In particular, I don't really see the point of amavis,
since as far as I can see spamassassin can be used directly with postfix.
(I don't care about clamav, as I don't think I'd be tempted
to read any email likely to infect my system.]

Any advice or elucidation gratefully received,
especially from anyone running this 5-program email combination.

-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland





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