>Is there an easy guide to create a windows version of SpamAssasin? >Or is there a precompiled windows version?
SA comes in two fundamentally different forms. At the primitive level, there are all-in-one processes: spamassassin.pl (interpreted by the ActivePerl script engine) and spamassassin.exe (actually a perl2exe bundle with the Perl runtime module inside, since the base language of SA is always Perl). I've found that neither of these are suitable for Windows mail servers over a few thousand messages per day. The main reason is startup overhead. Each process runs independently -- just like old Declude and Sniffer before they introduced their "persistent" processes -- and so your system endures loading Perl, the regex rulesets, the add-ons, etc. with every message, even before *running* the rules. It's notable that Windows is relatively poor at such process-based architectures, regardless of the application; there are *nix users who use spamassassin.pl who are able to handle much higher loads. However, any platform is handicapped by the process-per-message overhead as load grows. The alternative to process-per-message is SPAMD, the SA persistent process. With SPAMD, the rules are loaded only once, so there is no repetition of this step for every message, giving vast increases in performance. Better yet, SPAMD is a TCP/IP server that doesn't have to run on the same box as your mailserver. Your mailserver only needs to run SPAMC32 (the client portion), which has 0% overhead after it spools the message over to SPAMD -- it spends the rest of its time waiting silently for a response from SPAMD. If you run multiple SPAMD servers, SPAMC32 can load-balance requests among them, so you can continually shed load off your mailserver (obvs. especially valuable if it is also a mailbox server). I answered in such an extended fashion because it's vital to know _which_ SpamAssassin you are trying to find/compile/run. If you want to run SA in process-per-message mode, you want spamassassin.exe. If you want to run SPAMD on Windows, Google 'spamd cygwin'. If you have a spare workstation, though, I would recommend that your very first step be finding a *nix distro on CD that includes SPAMD. SPAMC32 can connect to a remote SPAMD regardless of platform. I am _never_ one to claim that a Windows shop can support a production *nix install at the same level that they support their Windows servers. But using a CD-based *nix to get SPAMD running quickly is likely the best way to test the functionality, instead of (a) getting lost in the admittedly complex setup of SPAMD on Windows, or (b) using process-per-message SA and finding its performance unacceptable. --Sandy -- ------------------------------------ Sanford Whiteman, Chief Technologist Broadleaf Systems, a division of Cypress Integrated Systems, Inc. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------ -- --- This E-mail came from the Declude.JunkMail mailing list. To unsubscribe, just send an E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], and type "unsubscribe Declude.JunkMail". The archives can be found at http://www.mail-archive.com.