QMR as a gateway

[tom11011]

Any information on using QMR as a mail gateway? Where it strips of virus' and spam and then forwards on to the mailserver?

thanks.

[tom11011]

I have figured it out, actually it was quite simple.

It will work with any qmail server without special configuration. The qmail rocks project is perfect with it's anti spam and anti virus for this app. Setting up a mail gateway server means no need for user accounts or anything related to user accounts on the server!

In a nutshell, here is what you do.

1.) Determine a qmail server to serve as a gateway.

2.) Make sure the dns mx points to this gateway server for the domain in question.

3.) On the gateway server, in /var/qmail/control create a file called smtproutes. Populate it like this.

domain.com:mail.somewhereelse.com

(where domain.com is the domain name and mail.somewhereelse.com is the name of the mailserver where the message will be forwarded on to.

4.) also on this gateway server, enter the domain like normal in the rcpthosts file only.

5.) setup the domain and user account on the other remote server like normal. This can be an exchange, qmail, whatever server you want.

6.) I'm not sure on this, but I think relay may need to be opened on the second server to allow the first server (gateway server) to forward. I couldn't tell because both of my servers were on the same network and we allow relay from the lan.

hope that helps! qmailrocks is the perfect solution for an email gateway also.

[rvoelker]

I've setup qmail as a relay and your instructions here pretty much nail the proper configuration but I cant figure out how to strip out the "Spam" tagged messages. Does anyone have any ideas?

[JMC]

Hmm,

Got another question: How could i tell Qmail to forward the outgoing mail to the gateway server? Getting it from the gateway to the second mailserver is no problem with the smtproutes file

Greets

JMC

[mazg]

I'm about to set up a system like this. Can anybody tell me what kind of hardware I can expect to need? We will most likely be using spamassassin and ClamAV. Currently we have about 5000-7000 messages a day, including spam.

Our current mail server is running qmail, vpopmail, courier, squirrelmail on apache. Obviously, I'll need less hardware for the spam filter.

[jtowne]

I process that many in a day with no problem on an old Pentium 500 with 256M RAM.

I am lookiing for a GUI that that I can use to edit just my rcpthosts and smtproutes files. I have many domains on three gateways and it gets tedious to add one domain. If I can't find anything I may have to max out my programming skills and figure something out. I am thinking a php/MySQL GUI with a cronjob running on my gateways up@#$%!@#$%!@#$%!@#$%!@#$%!@#$%! every 15min or so.

Jeremy

[jukas]

qmailrocks is the perfect solution for an email gateway also.


Pretty concise nutshell, however I have to argue the last statement. I tried setting up qmr as a email gateway and found the server absolutely could not keep up with my flow of incoming mail (average 200k smtp connections and approximately 750k emails a day).

Unfortunately since qmr was acting as a gateway only, and had no way to validate the recipient address (I looked into chkusr patch, but it appeared to only work with local users) even without invoking SA scanning the server couldn't keep up with the load, and had remote queue pile ups.

I did things, like routing double bounces to /dev/null, and adding in RBL checks, but with the amount of dictionary based spamed we get the qmr server couldn't keep up with the volume of email in real time, much less be reliable enough to be a gateway/spooler in front of our primary mail server.

QMR indeed rocks for a local mail server, and I run it for hosting my domains, but beyond a SOHO environment I don't consider it enterprise ready without substantial outside scripting work.