Piratefish Introduction
The Piratefish is a dedicated anti-spam and anti-virus email gateway server using software available for free on the Internet.
If you run a dedicated mail server of any kind, and wish to take a bite out of spam, get the eBook and build a Piratefish Anti-Spam Server for yourself. This documentation will provide you with an economical anti-spam solution that is as web configured and manageable as is possible right now with open-source software. This solution works well for small to medium businesses that have dedicated connections and extra computers lying around.
If you don’t have a firewall, it’s strongly recommended you get one. The Piratefish anti-spam and anti-virus system is not designed to be a firewall security device. Instructions are included on how to configure the free Linux firewall included with the open-source operating system used to build the Piratefish Anti-Spam System.
The Piratefish is intended to be an anti-spam server that any system administrator can setup with little Linux experience. For those without any Linux experience this will be a good confidence builder. Little needs to be known to set this up. If you can use a web browser, burn a CD, and use a mouse - you have all the skills you need to do this.
The Ubuntu Linux Server OS is used for the Piratefish because it contains all the packages needed to build a fully working system, and all the packages can be downloaded online very easily. No compiling needed.
Total setup time, not including downloads, is dependant on the skills of the reader. For an experienced administrator, setup can take less than 2 hours.
What you will need to know to do this
- How to download a Linux OS ISO image and burn it onto a CD
- How to integrate this into your email system (some help provided)
What you will need to build this
A computer to dedicate to anti-spam services:
- Intel, AMD or compatible PC CPU, 700mhz
- At least 512mb RAM
- 2 gigabytes of hard disk space
- Supported Ethernet Card
- CD-ROM drive
Access to the Internet so that the Piratefish server can get the needed packages.
A workstation PC with a web browser (your desktop PC will work fine)
An SSH client (For Windows users, Putty is free and works nicely)
A Ubuntu Server 10.04 Installation CD.
The instructions provide information on how to download and burn the CD if you don't have it!
The Piratefish Process - how it works
The Piratefish Anti-Spam System design integrates a number of different programs together to do it's job, here's a summary explanation as to how it works.
To help understand things, it's important to know that Postfix is not just a single program, but rather, it's a collection of programs that make up an entire mail server system. The Piratefish implementation of the Postfix system is very basic - we're only using Postfix as a smart email relay.
Mail Arrives: When an email is received, it's automatically placed into the Postfix hold queue.
figure 1
Mail is Processed: The message will then be processed by MailScanner, which uses both SpamAssassin and Clam Anti-Virus to perform it's analysis of the message. SpamAssassin also checks the various blacklist servers out on the Internet as well. Once that's done, if the message is not spam, it's moved into the Postfix Incoming directory for Postfix to continue processing the message.
figure 2
Mail is Delivered: A different part of Postfix is notified when a new message appears in it's incoming folder. When it finds a message in that folder, it immediately processes the message for delivery.
figure 3
