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Posted to users@spamassassin.apache.org by Lee <uk...@btinternet.com> on 2009/06/23 22:37:47 UTC
SA on Windows XP + POP to desktop client?
Hello SpamAssassin fans,
Having read and tried various things on the SA site and elsewhere, even
including some technically dead stuff in the Web Archive, I'm wondering
if anyone knows how to achieve the following set up (for free) and is
willing to share it :-
Install the latest SpamAssassin 3.2.5 (or at least 3.2.4) on Windows XP,
whether that be in a convenient point-and-click .exe manner or the more
complex procedure of installing Active Perl, making SA, etc in the
command line
and importantly
a method to pass incoming POP emails through SA on the way to a desktop
email client such as Thunderbird.
I'm currently achieving the above using a very nice program called
SAwin32 on Sourceforge, which uses SA 3.2.3 and is almost two years old.
It doesn't offer the entire functionality that SA is capable of, but
appears to work fine. However, the project appears to be discontinued
and I have no idea if it can be updated to run a newer SA version.
Thanks in advance if you can help; of course very specific build details
may be required for others like me to be able to set it up successfully.
I also appreciate some parts/modules of SA may not be workable on Windows.
Lee
UK
Re: SA on Windows XP + POP to desktop client?
Posted by "richard@buzzhost.co.uk" <ri...@buzzhost.co.uk>.
On Tue, 2009-06-23 at 22:50 +0200, Yet Another Ninja wrote:
> On 6/23/2009 10:37 PM, Lee wrote:
> >
> > Hello SpamAssassin fans,
> >
> > Having read and tried various things on the SA site and elsewhere, even
> > including some technically dead stuff in the Web Archive, I'm wondering
> > if anyone knows how to achieve the following set up (for free) and is
> > willing to share it :-
> >
> > Install the latest SpamAssassin 3.2.5 (or at least 3.2.4) on Windows XP,
> > whether that be in a convenient point-and-click .exe manner or the more
> > complex procedure of installing Active Perl, making SA, etc in the
> > command line
> > and importantly
> > a method to pass incoming POP emails through SA on the way to a desktop
> > email client such as Thunderbird.
> >
> > I'm currently achieving the above using a very nice program called
> > SAwin32 on Sourceforge, which uses SA 3.2.3 and is almost two years old.
> > It doesn't offer the entire functionality that SA is capable of, but
> > appears to work fine. However, the project appears to be discontinued
> > and I have no idea if it can be updated to run a newer SA version.
> >
> > Thanks in advance if you can help; of course very specific build details
> > may be required for others like me to be able to set it up successfully.
> > I also appreciate some parts/modules of SA may not be workable on Windows.
>
> Lee
>
> I'd advise you not to try this path much longer. The effort to get the
> full functionality is not worth it. You will never get it all, unless
> you're prepared to port a lot of the stuff to W32 (been there - done
> (part) of it - never again)
>
> Suggest you look around for some VMware "appliance" image which will run
> a SA/pop3 proxy for you and you'll get "instant happiness" :-)
>
I have a VirtualBox Barracuda Spam Firewall 300 which does pop
retrieval, but it's still looking for an SMTP server to dump it in to.
My own temptation would to be go along the lines of building a small
proxy machine with something like Ubuntu server and put in Postfix -v-
SpamAssassin + Dovecot and set that up with Fetchmail to grab the pop
stuff from your current server. Then get the windows machines to look at
your local Dovecot 'proxy'. There are probably countless other ways to
do it as well.
Re: SA on Windows XP + POP to desktop client?
Posted by Lee <uk...@btinternet.com>.
Thanks for the below, René,
I think you mentioned SpamAware earlier but I either forgot or I
couldn't find it; I'll certainly look into what you've suggested.
By the way, you've inspired me to add something I thought about earlier
but didn't write: it seems a viable idea for an individual or group to
hire web hosting which has SA on it, just to forward/redirect our emails
through the hosted domain and thereby get the SA headers to filter on in
a POP desktop client. Without fully thinking it through, I imagine that
idea may work without mangling headers. The assumption here of course
is, to make it worthwhile, we trust the host has correctly installed and
fully configured SA for it to work optimumly (if that word exists).
Lee
René Berber wrote:
> Lee wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>> I appreciate however those instructions may be aimed at a mindset and
>> application at server level rather than desktop, but I assume there are
>> others like me who would love SA's excellent spam filtering in a Windows
>> desktop email client.
>>
> [snip]
>
> The best choice for this (desktop) is SpamAware :
> http://www.jam-software.com/spamaware/
>
> As you pointed out, most solutions are implemented as proxies that need
> spamd or spamassassin running somewhere.
>
> SpamAware is a real MS Outlook (and O-Express) plugin that also includes
> ClamAV. Just as the proxy solutions I think it can only be used with
> POP servers, no IMAP, that's a real heavy downside; but I haven't used
> it or looked in a long time.
>
> Since I had SA running under Cygwin I used to update rules, change the
> ones I wanted, even tried to add plugins (FuzzyOCR and SpamBot)... those
> didn't work in SpamAware (but do work on Cygwin SA, which by the way, is
> not a package distributed with Cygwin but easy to install with CPAN).
>
> If you use Thunderbird which has integrated SA score awareness there is
> nothing currently like SpamAware, one experimental plugin Spamness,
> http://ryanlee.org/software/mozilla/thunderbird/spamness/, also needs SA
> scoring on the mail server.
>
> Perhaps there are options using tools like fetchmail and similar, I
> haven't searched for those but it could be relatively easy to set them
> up alongside SA.
>
Re: SA on Windows XP + POP to desktop client?
Posted by René Berber <r....@computer.org>.
Lee wrote:
[snip]
> I appreciate however those instructions may be aimed at a mindset and
> application at server level rather than desktop, but I assume there are
> others like me who would love SA's excellent spam filtering in a Windows
> desktop email client.
[snip]
The best choice for this (desktop) is SpamAware :
http://www.jam-software.com/spamaware/
As you pointed out, most solutions are implemented as proxies that need
spamd or spamassassin running somewhere.
SpamAware is a real MS Outlook (and O-Express) plugin that also includes
ClamAV. Just as the proxy solutions I think it can only be used with
POP servers, no IMAP, that's a real heavy downside; but I haven't used
it or looked in a long time.
Since I had SA running under Cygwin I used to update rules, change the
ones I wanted, even tried to add plugins (FuzzyOCR and SpamBot)... those
didn't work in SpamAware (but do work on Cygwin SA, which by the way, is
not a package distributed with Cygwin but easy to install with CPAN).
If you use Thunderbird which has integrated SA score awareness there is
nothing currently like SpamAware, one experimental plugin Spamness,
http://ryanlee.org/software/mozilla/thunderbird/spamness/, also needs SA
scoring on the mail server.
Perhaps there are options using tools like fetchmail and similar, I
haven't searched for those but it could be relatively easy to set them
up alongside SA.
--
René Berber
Re: SA on Windows XP + POP to desktop client?
Posted by Lee <uk...@btinternet.com>.
Thanks for your further replies on this.
It indeed appears what I have now may well currently be the most
convenient approach, all things considered.
To clarify, when I talk about running the SAwin32 program, what I am
actually running on my desktop is SAproxy which is part of the
click-and-install SAwin32 2007 download from Sourceforge.
SA-update is available for it there, but that's only for updating filer
rules isn't it, rather than SA itself? I have an error/warning when I
run it anyway, which I've been trying to troubleshoot without success on
the SAwin32 Sourceforge mail list. I currently have no idea if the
SAwin32/SAProxy build I am using can work with current SA rule updates.
Regarding VMWare; I'm only a 'moderately technically minded' XP user,
and from what I can see, the VMWare stuff is aimed at non-Windows users
.... having a quick look around the site there, it seemed to be aimed at
scenarios and applications beyond my grasp. I literally only have a home
user XP desktop pc; I'm not running anything else including any servers.
I was going to quote and query a couple of helpful posts at this point,
but essentially it is simpler to say:
I earlier had some success in my experiments using the SA Windows page
(below) and Micheal Bell's archived guide, but I perceived the
experience as lacking a fully descriptive and up to date picture, making
it hard to pinpoint where I was going wrong versus what exactly should
be happening. Especially regarding the most suitable Active Perl
version, perl module names, and using PPM or PPM3 or PPM4 to find and
install perl modules.
http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/InstallingOnWindows
If any of you have the time and will to look at that Windows page and
confirm it is fully up to date and clear, then I may again look into
installing SA 3.2.5.
I appreciate however those instructions may be aimed at a mindset and
application at server level rather than desktop, but I assume there are
others like me who would love SA's excellent spam filtering in a Windows
desktop email client. The initial reason I looked into all this, is that
I couldn't find a free email client for XP that included SA filtering.
Did I miss one?
I would strongly suggest the Windows instructions should include a
section on XP/Vista desktop use, stating clearly how to build the latest
SA and what can and cannot be achieved, explicitly with a section on
using a suitable pop3proxy script/program through to a desktop client,
so you're not left with SA and nowhere to go with it. :)
Lee
Re: SA on Windows XP + POP to desktop client?
Posted by René Berber <r....@computer.org>.
Lee wrote:
[snip]
> But of course, if getting a newer version of SA than 3.2.3 to work with
> it on Windows is a nightmare, [snip]
Just to add my experience: using SA under Windows is not difficult but
you have to use Cygwin which allows you to use all the functionality
(spamd and spamc work just like in Linux).
Doing the same with "native" tools (Strawberry or ActiveState perl) is
more difficult and some of the functionality is very difficult to
activate (not the above tools fault, there are old? modules that never
where ported to anything but Linux, so you have to do the porting). In
fact, ActiveState perl has SA as a ready-made downloadable, i.e. using
ppc but only works with the commercial GUI version IIRC (which I haven't
used).
On the other hand SAWin, or better yet, SpamAware can be tweaked to use
more rules (sa-update installed rules for instance).
--
René Berber
Re: SA on Windows XP + POP to desktop client?
Posted by John Hardin <jh...@impsec.org>.
On Wed, 24 Jun 2009, Lee wrote:
>> Suggest you look around for some VMware "appliance" image which will run a
>> SA/pop3 proxy for you and you'll get "instant happiness" :-)
>
> What do you mean in your second paragraph? I didn't really follow you there.
http://search-www.vmware.com/socialsearch/query?cn=vmware&cc=www&st=1&adv=0&bn_uf=VMware_Site_appliances_dir&bn_if=VMware_Site_appliances_dir&q=spamassassin
--
John Hardin KA7OHZ http://www.impsec.org/~jhardin/
jhardin@impsec.org FALaholic #11174 pgpk -a jhardin@impsec.org
key: 0xB8732E79 -- 2D8C 34F4 6411 F507 136C AF76 D822 E6E6 B873 2E79
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
USMC Rules of Gunfighting #12: Have a plan.
USMC Rules of Gunfighting #13: Have a back-up plan, because the
first one won't work.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
11 days until the 233rd anniversary of the Declaration of Independence
Re: SA on Windows XP + POP to desktop client?
Posted by Lee <uk...@btinternet.com>.
Yet Another Ninja wrote:
>
> Lee
>
> I'd advise you not to try this path much longer. The effort to get the
> full functionality is not worth it. You will never get it all, unless
> you're prepared to port a lot of the stuff to W32 (been there - done
> (part) of it - never again)
>
> Suggest you look around for some VMware "appliance" image which will
> run a SA/pop3 proxy for you and you'll get "instant happiness" :-)
Hello Yet Another Ninja and thanks for replying;
So, getting a better / more up to date equivalent of SAwin32 is
essentially a pain and likely to end in severe frustration? If that's
what you're saying, I'm not surprised from what I've found/not found
over the last week or so :)
What do you mean in your second paragraph? I didn't really follow you
there. Did you mean a commercial product for Windows which already
includes SA and also acts as a desktop POP proxy? I'm aware there may be
a few of those. Indeed, the SAwin32 I'm using gave way to a commercial
product, I believe?
I might also throw in here, I've seen a page (below) by somebody using
the free Delegate proxy program to work with SA, but on Unix, not on
Windows. He's using Delegate as a Pop3Proxy type tool. I haven't looked
into this seriously yet, but I've had a little attempt at running
Delegate on XP (it's cross platform), and so far failed to fully
understand how to configure it on its first run and indeed beyond
that(!). I suspect it is actually quite simple, however.
But of course, if getting a newer version of SA than 3.2.3 to work with
it on Windows is a nightmare, sticking with what I have now would
certainly be the most viable option.
I assume I'm not the only person here using the Sourceforge SAwin32
package from 2007?
http://www.deepsea.force9.co.uk/pop3proxy.html
Lee
Re: SA on Windows XP + POP to desktop client?
Posted by Yet Another Ninja <sa...@alexb.ch>.
On 6/23/2009 10:37 PM, Lee wrote:
>
> Hello SpamAssassin fans,
>
> Having read and tried various things on the SA site and elsewhere, even
> including some technically dead stuff in the Web Archive, I'm wondering
> if anyone knows how to achieve the following set up (for free) and is
> willing to share it :-
>
> Install the latest SpamAssassin 3.2.5 (or at least 3.2.4) on Windows XP,
> whether that be in a convenient point-and-click .exe manner or the more
> complex procedure of installing Active Perl, making SA, etc in the
> command line
> and importantly
> a method to pass incoming POP emails through SA on the way to a desktop
> email client such as Thunderbird.
>
> I'm currently achieving the above using a very nice program called
> SAwin32 on Sourceforge, which uses SA 3.2.3 and is almost two years old.
> It doesn't offer the entire functionality that SA is capable of, but
> appears to work fine. However, the project appears to be discontinued
> and I have no idea if it can be updated to run a newer SA version.
>
> Thanks in advance if you can help; of course very specific build details
> may be required for others like me to be able to set it up successfully.
> I also appreciate some parts/modules of SA may not be workable on Windows.
Lee
I'd advise you not to try this path much longer. The effort to get the
full functionality is not worth it. You will never get it all, unless
you're prepared to port a lot of the stuff to W32 (been there - done
(part) of it - never again)
Suggest you look around for some VMware "appliance" image which will run
a SA/pop3 proxy for you and you'll get "instant happiness" :-)