Daring Fireball is host to an interesting introduction to the Email:: hierarchy of CPAN modules. While few of us actually have the need to parse mbox mail archives via Perl, the new Email:: modules appear to be the best way should the need arise.

Posted at 6:43 PM PDT with these tags: email, cli

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While most people will be better off storing extra mail locally in archived mail folders, some people need to be able to access all of their mail from multiple locations all the time. For such folk, creating a local IMAP server would enable archiving of mail from the ISP’s IMAP server to a local IMAP server where one would (presumably) have much more disk space available for mail storage.

Posted at 2:50 PM PDT with these tags: email

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Version 2.1 of Postfix, the open source mail server included with the Panther release of Mac OS X Server, has been released for public consumption. Release notes, although difficult to find from the main site, provide detail as to what is new in this update.

Posted at 7:38 PM PDT with these tags: email

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Sam Thorne has put together a SpamBayes installer package for Mac OS X. The author even thoughtfully lists what the installer places on your system, a practice other installer authors should emulate. Nicely done, Sam!

Posted at 7:26 PM PST with these tags: mac, email, spam

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One of the areas Apple’s Panther Server could have really differentiated itself is rule-based filtering. Providing a GUI to powerful filtering for viruses, spam, and other criteria would really set Panther Server apart from nearly every other server solution on the planet. Of course, you can always add non-GUI tools to achieve this, as Jason Deraleau explains in Sanitizing Mail on Panther Server. His MacDevCenter article describes how to install and configure tools such as procmail and Anomy Sanitizer for rule-based filtering on Mac OS X Server 10.3.

Posted at 12:14 PM PST with these tags: mac, email, cli

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Charles Arthur talks about PostArmor in a recent review for TidBITS. He lauds PostArmor’s ability to stop spam at the server, which unfortunately isn’t really what’s going on (it still downloads all the message headers). PostArmor appears to be a decent solution for those without direct control over their mail servers, but a better solution would be to find an ISP with powerful server-side spam filtering.

Posted at 5:13 PM PST with these tags: mac, email, spam, tools

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As MacServers readers already know, Apple has wisely replaced sendmail with Postfix in Mac OS X 10.3, and a tip was recently posted on Mac OS X Hints on how to enable the Postfix mail transfer agent (MTA) in Panther. We’ll have more tips coming regarding mail server configuration in the near future, but at least this will allow folks to get their feet wet in the mean time.

Posted at 9:39 AM PST with these tags: mac, email

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SpamAssassin users with certain configurations may find that messages they receive are mistakenly flagged as spam coming from open relays. The problem, discussed in more detail on the Use Perl site (along with a fix), appears to be caused by a distributed denial of service attack on open relay blacklist maintainer Osirusoft, who is now returning back every IP as a spam source when queried.

Posted at 8:22 PM PDT with these tags: email, spam

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There are a number of good alternatives to the veteran Sendmail — including Exim, Postfix, Qmail, and Courier — all of which compile on Mac OS X. While Apple has given Postfix the nod for inclusion in Panther Server, everyone has a different opinion as to which mail transfer agent (MTA) is the reigning king of the hill. Hop on over to Slashdot and join in the flame war — there’s plenty of FUD to go around, but there are a few nuggets of wisdom to be found amongst the vitriol.

Posted at 8:09 PM PDT with these tags: email

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When mail servers are configured as open SMTP relays, anyone who knows the mail server address can send email through that server. Predictably, spammers often take advantage of open relay capability on mail servers to deluge the world with junk email. Apple has a new Knowledge Base entry on preventing open SMTP relay on Mac OS X Server 10.2.4 and later. A restricted relay only allows trusted users and IP address ranges to send mail, decreasing the odds that your domain will end up blacklisted by other ISPs because a rogue spammer hijacked your mail server.

Posted at 7:47 PM PDT with these tags: mac, email, spam

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