Hi Christoph > I never knew that this is possible. I only use it via unix domain > socket. Can you sent me a configuration example for sendmail and > mimedefang using IP connections?
Sure... MIMEDefang (spamassassin / virus scanning) cause high IO, Memory and CPU load on the machine doing the filtering. Sharing this load on multiple designated milter machines would take the load of the actual mailserver and spread this load among multiple machines increasing overal performance. This scales very well. Unfortunately my actual working config is installed from the sources. I just wanted to try to migrate to the Debian Packages so I don't have to worry about updates :-) Assume, you have one Mailserver (mx.example.com 192.168.0.1) and three Milter Machines (filter.example.com 192.168.0.10 192.168.0.11 192.168.0.12). On the three milter Machines (which don't need sendmail to be installed) you use: In mimedefang.conf (or /etc/init.d/mimedefang or wherever you set the MIMEDefang variables). # SOCKET=$SPOOLDIR/mimedefang.sock SOCKET=inet:33333 (and you make sure by using iptables that only mx.example.com is allowed to connect). On the MX you configure sendmail to connect to the round robin DNS name of those milters: sendmail.mc INPUT_MAIL_FILTER(`mimedefang', `S=inet:[EMAIL PROTECTED], F=T, T=S:600s;R:600s;E:10m') So you get some nice load balancing. If you want to scale the environement you can add more milter machines or even more MXes connecting to this milter 'cluster'. Another advantage ist, you can take down one milter machine without the operation of the mail-servers being affected. (by using round-robin DNS sendmail automaticly reconnects to the next IP if one reports unreachable). Mit freundlichen GrĂ¼ssen Benoit Panizzon -- I m p r o W a r e A G - System Services ______________________________________________________ Zurlindenstrasse 29 Tel +41 61 826 93 00 CH-4133 Pratteln Fax +41 61 826 93 01 Schweiz Web http://www.imp.ch ______________________________________________________