I'm finding Spamassassin is maxing out the RAM and IO on my Linode. I'm wondering if there's anyone offering a hosted Spamassassin service that I could pay for? All I'd want is to be able to pipe my mail to it (stunnel?) and receive it back with SA headers added. Some method of updating Bayes stuff might be needed.

I've thought of buying one of the vpsland $10/month Xen accounts just to do this, but it seems kinda overkill...

Any suggestions?

Maxing IO tokens? Sounds like you are getting dozens of emails per second ?!?!

I had the same problem -- spamassassin is a memory hog and was making my linode swap until it ran out of tokens.

I instead hosted spamassassin on my home linux machine and had the mail relay to it then back to the main server. If the home machine isn't available then the mail bypasses spam checking and goes directly to the inbox.

I use 'balance' to handle the automatic failover. Since the home machine is on a dynamic IP, it uses autossh to connect to the mail machine and open a remote-forwarding port. That secures the mail in transit and if the IP changes then autossh reconnects and reopens the port, so all 'balance' has to do is pick between two local ports when sending the mail.

This allows me to host a reliable mail service on my Linode and host the memory and computationally expensive portions on a non-hosted machine that may not have the same reliability. My home machines runs dspam / amavis / clamav / dcc checks on all the incoming mail, so most of the time my mail is very thoroughly checked for spam or viruses.

I haven't heard of a spamassassin hosting service, but I see one at http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/Spa ... ngServices that charges $50/month.

Thanks for that link. I tried searching the Wiki without success. I've found this one, which sounds reasonable and well-set-up:
http://www.junkemailfilter.com/

Anyone have any experience with this?

I'm thinking I'll go for it as dealing with spam has just become a headache. I'd rather pay someone to do it for me, rather than have to keep up with the latest attacks and countermeasures.

Hi Shermozie,

Perhaps your spam filtering setup is flawed.

Have a look at:
http://www.spamhaus.org/effective_filtering.html

I've also found this Postfix anti-UCE guide very useful:
http://jimsun.linxnet.com/misc/postfix-anti-UCE.txt

In my case, using just "Stage 1" of the Spamhaus filtering guide along with some additional SMTPD measures from the anti-UCE guide, my server rejects roughly 5000 "spam" connection attempts each month at the SMTPD stage (near zero cost in CPU/RAM resources).

I've had a couple of false-positives in the last several months from mail servers that are poorly configured or spam tolerant, but it is worth it considering the measures have stopped an estimated 35,000 spam/virus attempts.

I still get a trickle of spam coming through, but at a manageable level.

Perhaps adapting your spam strategy just slightly, the spam headache will largely go away ... .


Cliff

root 32227 1 0 Aug27 ? 00:00:03 /usr/bin/perl -T -w /usr/bin/spamd

I get maybe 50 emails a day. Spam Assassin has used 3 CPU seconds in the last month.
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To get the problems reported here people must be getting multiple emails per second. ??? Sounds more like running a spam factory than blocking spam.

In that case SA memory issues will probably be resolved by adopting measures given in this document:

http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/OutOfMemoryProblems


Cliff

I get a fair bit more than 50 (non-spam) emails/day, so the load is quite significant. I already use the front-line stuff in Postfix, and that rejects an enormous amount of spam. The problem is the remaining stuff, which goes to Spamassassin.

I've tried out the Out Of Memory page's suggestions. Problem is, the one that has the most impact is removing Bayesian stuff, which also happens to be the thing that is most effective at blocking spam...

Think I'll give this service a go for a month or so. Will report back here.

SpamAssassin is a memory hog no matter how many emails you get.

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