Another book review from Packt Publishing
Packt Publishing approached me once again to review their upcoming book "ModSecurity 2.5" after my last review of their "Qmail Quickstarter" book. It is supposed to be a detailed book on Apache Module Mod_Security, which I have been using since the very early versions of the product. I agreed to review it and they already shipped it to me, so I will post a review of the book sometime next week, if the time allows.
I really like the books from Packt Publishing, because they cover some specific topics that very few other publishers write about. Their books are a great reference for system administrators and tech junkies like me :)
Qmail Guide has been updated
I finally updated the Qmail Guide after a long while. Since my last update there have been lots of additions and patches to Qmail and there is a lot of useful stuff out there. New anti-spam techniques such as Greylisting, SPF and SRS are being introduced to Qmail. I did not have much time, so none of these patches are incorporated into the guide.
Qmail Quickstarter – Book Review
I have been using qmail for many years and put a lot of effort in keeping my Qmail Howto up to date. I haven't been making many changes to the guide, since qmail is one of those things that once installed, you can leave it running until the mail server is ready to be decommissioned. So, I go back and update the guide whenever I need to install qmail on a brand new server.
Anyway, I was recently approached by Packt Publishing and they requested me to review their newly released book titled "Qmail Quickstarter" by Kyle Wheeler. I received the book in mail within a week or two after I agreed to review it and decided to check it out over the weekend - here is a very short review of the book.
Despite the fact that qmail is the second most popular MTA on the Internet, there are not that many good books on qmail out there. So, it was exciting to review an addition to the short list of qmail literature. In about 130 pages, the author covers everything from compiling and installing qmail to important patches, qmail configuration and monitoring. The book is easy to read for those who are familiar with *nix, so it is definitely a good reference for mail administrators. There is plenty of information on qmail and third party addons (including vpopmail and VMailMgr) and the author does a good job in explaining basic qmail functionality. However, I felt that the book was a little incomplete, because many topics are touched upon, but not in enough detail. For example, in Chapter 6 "Filtering", the author mentions the most popular anti-virus engines, but does not show how to hook any of them up to qmail. In all honesty, it is a little misleading to call it a "step-by-step" guide, because it is not detailed enough to be called that. Personally, I would rename it to something like "Qmail Reference Guide". At the same time, I also understand that putting too many details into such book would make it hard to read and follow, especially with qmail, since it is NOT a simple or intuitive program to learn.
Overall, I really enjoyed reading the book and I can say that it definitely deserves a spot in a system administrator's bookshelf.
Guide updates
The following guides have been modified to work with the latest updates:
Apache Install Guide
Russian GD 2.0.33 Guide
Apache Performance Guide
Linux VPN Guide
The Linux VPN Guide went through a lot of modifications. I updated the patches to compile on Fedora Core 4 and Debian Linux. Installed and tested on a brand new box and it worked perfectly! :) I will be modifying the Qmail Guide soon, so stay tuned!
SPEWS.org problem
Big thanks to Richard Stanway for his valuable feedback on my Qmail guide. I received the following e-mail from him:
From: "Richard Stanway"
I would strongly recommend you remove the relays.osirusoft.com and replace it with a more responsible list such as sbl.spamhaus.org. The relays.osirusoft.com zone contains SPEWS.org data - SPEWS operate by "punishing" ISPs who host spammers by blacklisting huge IP ranges in order to make them lose customers and "pressure" them into booting spammers. I for one do not agree with this tactic that is causing many legit messages from innocent users who happen to use the same ISP to be bounced. My server on which I set up qmail following your guide happens to be on a SPEWS IP range even though my ISP has a strict anti spam policy - a spammer signs up, spams for a day, gets booted from the network and then my IP range is blacklisted on SPEWS for months on end causing legitimate mail to be bounced and no way to our IP range removed.
I am not the only one to be suffering legitimate mail bouncing as a result of SPEWS, I can tell you that for sure. I would greatly appreciate it if you could remove relays.osirusoft.com from your example file to stop users who may not know what they are doing following your guide and accidentally using this SPEWS zone data and blocking legitimate messages. The sbl.spamhaus.org zone on the other hand I have found to be very well maintained and targeted exclusively at spammer IP ranges and not one legit message has been lost as a result of my using this zone. The worst thing is it is next to impossible to be removed from SPEWS - if you are an ISP offering a competitive price and a spammer signs up on your service then you are screwed. Even if you have strict anti spam policies and remove them from the network you do not get delisted, so I do not see how their "pressure tactics" against ISPs will help anything - the ISP has no incentive to boot spammers if they will still remain listed.
I would also appreciate it if you could perhaps do your own research on SPEWS and recommend to people not to use them if you feel the same way as I do. I have put a little article on my website at http://www.r1ch.net. There are also some recent articles on theregister.co.uk and msnbc.com about SPEWS. SPEWS obviously is not going away any time soon so it is up to people to convince mail server admins not to use their zone data. I think a lot of people are using the DNSBL without even realizing it since it is incorporated into the relays.osirusoft.com zone. It really sucks that I have bought a new dedicated server and because my ISP offers good pricing, spammers take advantage of them and SPEWS then goes and ruins it for everyone by listing us and causing mail to bounce from the whole IP range.
Thus, relays.osirusoft.com is gone from my SMTP execution script.
Qmail Howto
I wrote this guide for a couple of reasons. First, the existing qmail guides that I've found on the net did not provide a complete qmail solution. My first qmail installation was such a pain for me, that I had to go through a tough qmail learning process (yes, qmail can sometimes be a real pain, especially for newbies) and discover some things by myself. Of course, such great Internet resources as mailing lists and other qmail contributions made my life a lot easier :-) Konstantin Riabitsev's "Qmail-Vmailmgr-Courier-Squirrelmail Installation Guide" was the first guide that really helped me out. That's where I borrowed some stuff from while writing this guide - of course, with his agreement. Second, I simply love qmail and would like to contribute to its development, even a little bit. Third, I think that many admins out there will find this guide useful and practical. And fourth, every once in a while I do install qmail on different servers for various reasons and I simply got tired of carrying installation notes with me all the time. So, in a way, this guide is for myself too ;-) Continue reading 'Qmail Howto'
