Re: RPM Installed SpamAssassin

[Al Sparks <data345 yahoo com>]

I have a different take on installs.  If I'm setting up a mail 
server, I install sendmail (or qmail) from the original distro, 
eschewing RPM's.  Same with apache.  If I'm setting up a web server, 
I go ahead and install apache from the distro (as well as 
openssl/mod_ssl).

I tend to use RPM's for the more ubiquitous parts of RedHat, such as 
the libraries, and the base utilities.

I used to install much more from distro's, (such as sudo or ntp) but 
I'm not seeing a benefit from it, and it's more productive of my 
time to just let RedHat handle it.

What that does for me is understand the software better for which 
the server's primary function is.  I recommend that you do installls 
of sendmail, and SpamAssassin as per the distro.  The SpamAssassin 
distro uses perl's CPAN engine for isntalling, and that's worth 
learning, as it keeps track of its own sets of dependencies.

I'm learning SpamAssassin myself, so I wish I could be more help, 
but I did go to http://SpamAssassin.org, download the README and 
INSTALL files, and read them over.  Since those are dry docs, I 
printed them out, and went to my favorite coffee shop to read them.  
One thing I missed but should have printed out was their USAGE doc.  
I'll add that if you are installing into a sendmail environment, 
using and knowing procmail as well is a big help.

As to your question on squirrel mail, I'm about to install that on a 
web server (in a production environment, I recommend you separate 
out your web server and mail server).  If you have apache, along 
with php installed, then all you do is copy squirrelmail somewher 
into the php directory structure.  This is my first run at 
installing squirrelmail (I prefer IMP, but I was outvoted at work).  
There's no install/make script to run in that case.

Hope this wasn't too wordy.
   === Al