I spent most of yesterday fighting with DSpam and Postfix and arrived at the same point I’d started from! It was another reminder of just how messy and complex dealing with email really is.

I’ve been using amavis for a long time now and it works, but even with SpamAssassin and the other tools it still isn’t great at stopping spam. After being told about DSpam I went and had a look and I like it’s concept. Having the ability to train via forwarding on mails that it incorrectly marks seems like such a simple solution I’m surprised I’ve not come across it before. Of course things that look too good to be true usually are, and this was no different.

Integrating with Postfix isn’t too hard and getting a simple setup where DSpam was used for content filtering didn’t take long, but getting the training setup was a totally different proposition. Regardless of which of the methods I tried it kept failing. Having a spam filter that isn’t trained is as bad as having no spam filter, so I’ve reverted back to the old amavis solution for now.

I’m keen to try it again, but without some solid advice about where I was going wrong I’m hesitant to spend too much time and effort on it. Besides, it’s time for a holiday! 🙂