Testing new server

[Alex <my...@gmail.com>]

Hi all,

I've just installed a new server using fedora14 with spamassassin,
amavisd, postfix, and dovecot. I've configured it the same to the best
of my ability as an existing server currently in production that I
would like to replace with this new system. This is a significant
upgrade from the current system, so all software versions are
different.

How can I either use the existing system or emails stored on the
current system to test the new system before putting it into
production?

I'd like to make sure that amavis and spamassassin are configured
properly before switching the two systems and learning I've configured
something wrong and avoid it rejecting mail, marking it incorrectly,
or other possible configuration problems.

Any ideas greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Alex

Re: Testing new server

[Ned Slider <ne...@unixmail.co.uk>]

On 03/04/11 22:04, Alex wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I've just installed a new server using fedora14 with spamassassin,
> amavisd, postfix, and dovecot. I've configured it the same to the best
> of my ability as an existing server currently in production that I
> would like to replace with this new system. This is a significant
> upgrade from the current system, so all software versions are
> different.
>
> How can I either use the existing system or emails stored on the
> current system to test the new system before putting it into
> production?
>
> I'd like to make sure that amavis and spamassassin are configured
> properly before switching the two systems and learning I've configured
> something wrong and avoid it rejecting mail, marking it incorrectly,
> or other possible configuration problems.
>
> Any ideas greatly appreciated.
> Thanks,
> Alex
>


You can inject messages into postfix like so:

sendmail -i recipient < message.txt

both ham and spam, and observe (/var/log/maillog) if they are processed 
as expected. That should test your Postfix/Amavisd/SpamAssassin/Dovecot 
chain. Amavisd provides sample spam messages if you don't have any.

Re: Testing new server

[da...@chaosreigns.com]

On 04/03, Alex wrote:
> How can I either use the existing system or emails stored on the
> current system to test the new system before putting it into
> production?

The best option may be to create a temporary DNS MX Record pointing to the
new server, and just send mail to it.  If normal mail gets flagged as
spam, or mail with http://spamassassin.apache.org/gtube/ gets flagged
as non-spam, the test has failed.

Actually, you don't need an MX record.  Just put the host name of the
server after the @ in the email address.  Or username@[IP_address] (with
square brackets) might work.


You could try forwarding some of your emails from the old system, but you
won't be able to mimic them perfectly because you can't forge the sending
IP.  But you could copy a bunch of them over and run spamassassin on them
after delivery, probably using formail.  

Without formail, if your mailboxes are in Maildir format, you can check
a ham folder for false positives with:

for file in `find /home/darxus/Maildir/{cur,new} -type f` ; do spamc < $file >> output ; done

Then do "grep 'X-Spam-Status: Yes' output" to find false positives.

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