Ah, thanks for the prompt and thorough response, Ken! I've actually spent some time myself digging on the internet and came to a similar conclusion, but was just hoping that I was wrong. :/ Every now and then, I'd find something that vaguely mentioned a SpamAssassin DLL, and became hopeful. Chances are, they are just talking about a hacked-together compile of the perl version, which would still stick me with the pain of the perl installation.
Basically, the problem lies in the network management side here. We have a small facility, and only process about 500 E-Mails a day (total, including spam. I personally get more than that by myself on my home server.) About a year ago, some hackers took a notice of us, and found a Microsoft Exchange exploit and that number went to about 100,000+ a day almost immediately. Unfortunately, Microsoft flatly refused to fix the exploit, requiring the purchase, instead, of a new version of Exchange. Mostly out of sheer spite, I wrote this app to stop the hackers, and it's become quite a useful tool for monitoring our traffic. All of this being said, the reason the tool continues to be used is for the sole reason that installation of it consists of one mouse-click, which brings us to the network management. The two folks they have working on the networks are nice enough, but a little on the "we know just enough to get by" side. Anything more complicated than a straightforward install of a Win32 app just simply isn't an option for them, which is the reason I wanted to implement SA into my application. Personally, I use SpamAssassin on my personal E-Mail server (which is hosted by someone else for me, and is a Linux server) and I love it. I'm particularly depressed that as long as it's been in development, nobody's thought to simplify the install process. Heck, the "installing on windows" page is a complex 14 step process JUST to install it, not to mention configuration. This isn't to say I don't appreciate the work the devs have put into it, as I've reaped the benefits for years on my own server. Just an niggling annoyance that we won't be able to use it here at the facility because of the install complexity. If anyone's working on any sort of port, or compile of this sort, I'd be willing to pitch in a $50 donation towards the effort. :) -Aaron Boyles ITC Applications Programmer -----Original Message----- From: Ken Goods [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2005 12:27 PM To: 'SpamAssassin' Subject: RE: Newbie looking for info... Aaron Boyles wrote: > New to the list, all, and looking for some info on SA. > > First, my background: I'm an applications developer using VB, and > have no experience with Linux, and only passing experience with > Exchange. I am, however, well versed on the SMTP/POP3 protocols, and > have written a number of applications for both. > > Here's the drill: I've got an SMTP filter application currently > running that allows us to monitor traffic real-time on our servers, as > we tend to get "hackers" trying to pry quite often. The application > currently receives all E-Mails, dumps them to a folder (to allow our > virus scanner a chance at them) and then forwards them on to our mail > server. I was hoping I could impliment SpamAssassin at this point in > the loop with a simple API or some such. > > I know that the version of SpamAssassin available on the website can > be run in Windows as a server after a 43 step set-up process, but this > isn't exactly what I'm looking for. Does anyone know of a compiled > API version of SpamAssassin that would allow a programmer to simply > add the library to an application, and call it through API? > > Any ideas would be appreciated! > > -Aaron Boyles > ITC Applications Programmer Greets Aaron! I am also a developer and have worked a lot with email on the windows side. I tried installing SA on win32 using the documented way a while back as a first step in developing a hook into my own applications. I struggled for quite a while to get something that would work as well as a native SA installation and while it worked, it turned out to take more time and to be more maintenance than I was up for. AFAIK there is no "API" for spamassassin (others may know better) but I looked pretty hard a year and a half ago. I'm afraid you'd have to get pretty deep into the internals of SA (and Perl) and develop something on your own. At least this was what I finally figured out. But I still needed something between the mean old internet and our exchange server. So I hit the boneyard and found an old P233 and loaded Linux, MailScanner/Spamassassin/ClamAV and stuck it behind the firewall and in front of the exchange server. Took an afternoon to get it up, running, and configured. Couldn't be happier. I'm processing 5-8k emails a day with a 100% virus detect rate and a 97%+ spam detect rate. I'm sure I could get the spam detection up a little more if I wanted to spend the time but this is fine for both me and management at this time. Updates are easy thanks to Julian (the developer of MailScanner) as he supplies a script to update both ClamAV and Spamassassin along with the frequent MailScanner releases. I can tell you're a "I want to do it myself" kind of guy (as am I), but I'm hoping to save you a little time here. By the time you got something working you'd might as well become one of the Spamassassin developers. :) Just offered as an option to think about. But if you have tons of time and want to pursue hooking into SA at the level you're talking about I'd certainly be interested in seeing what you come up with. Hint... you'd probably be looking at passing the email to spamscan and then deciding how to handle it based on the spamscan markup much like what MailScanner and amavis-new does. You may get some hints from the source of those programs but then you've got the perl thing to think about.... my head hurts... :) Good luck, Ken Ken Goods Network Administrator AIA/CropUSA Insurance, Inc.
