Announcing MailScannerGold Beta Repository

This is a new Yum repository for CentOS 5 i386 and x86_64 only. It will always contain the latest MailScanner beta (4.72.2 at the time of writing) along with SpamAssassin (plus DCC, Razor, DKIM, SPF, IP-Country and Rule2XS plug-ins), ClamAV and all Perl module dependencies.

It should be used for beta testing new releases only and should not be used in production.

Why is it different from other repositories?

Because it aims to completely eliminate the problem of package conflicts and to make installations and upgrades as simple as possible. These rpms provide an automatic configuration that contains the regular tuning tips that would be unfamiliar to those who do not have in-depth knowledge of MailScanner and it's configuration. This significantly reduces the amount of time it takes to do an installation. From start to finish, the installation and configuration of all packages takes less than five minutes on a reasonably fast network.

Package conflicts are avoided by creating a new RPM namespace for all the Perl modules required by MailScanner and SpamAssassin and by installing all Perl modules (except SpamAssassin) in /opt/fsl/lib/perl5. This allows the Perl system libraries to be totally independent so they can be updated by the operating system vendor without the possibility of breaking MailScanner or SpamAssassin.

Automatic configuration is achieved by using RPM 'triggers' which allow the installation, upgrade or un-installation of one package trigger to access an action specified by another package. For example - when 're2c' is installed, the fsl-spamassassin package runs a trigger that automatically runs 'sa-update' and 'sa-compile' to get the latest rules and compile them and then automatically enables the 'Rule2XSBody' plug-in in v320.pre, subsequently if 're2c' is uninstalled, then the plug-in is automatically disabled.

How do I use the Beta Repository?

Ideally it should be installed onto a server with a fresh MINIMAL INSTALLATION option of CentOS 5.x or RHEL 5. This will allow the operating system and all MailScanner related applications to be safely updated by simply running `yum -y update.

	Log into your server as the root user. If you want the MailScanner package to automatically mount the MailScanner incoming directory on tmpfs then run the following command before starting the installation: export MAILSCANNER_CREATE_TMPFS=1
	Then simply run: wget http://yum.fslupdate.com/fsl-beta/fsl-beta.repo -O /etc/yum.repos.d/fsl-beta.repo yum -y groupinstall MailScannerGold export PERL5LIB=/opt/fsl/lib/perl5  *(Click Here to Download the blank Repository file directly here if needed)
	Once all the packages are installed, the only configuration required is to MailScanner.conf, Sendmail (/etc/mail/access, /etc/mail/mailertable) and then enable and start them both by running:          chkconfig MailScanner on          service MailScanner start
	Sign-up for the fsl-beta support list at http://listserv.fsl.com/mailman/listinfo/fsl-mailscanner-beta.

How To Install over an existing RPM based installation

This is no different to the procedure above - except you should back-up your MailScanner and SpamAssassin configuration first as a precaution.

The 'stock' MailScanner package has no automatic upgrade procedure you will need to manually run upgrade_MailScanner_conf and/or upgrade_languages_conf if any rpmnew files are created by the new package.

Support

The use of the repository is entirely unsupported by FSL, so use is at your own risk - however we will be happy to answer and questions about the repository or packages on the fsl-beta list.

Sign-up for the fsl-beta support list at http://listserv.fsl.com/mailman/listinfo/fsl-mailscanner-beta.