1 Nov
2005
1 Nov
'05
1:55 p.m.
Pete Turnbull wrote:
On Nov 1 2005, 16:09, Jules Richardson wrote:
possibility?
Yes, I went and missed the Spamassassin point in the original message :(
It probably does change things unfortunately as it means that a much
more powerful machine's needed than otherwise, and memory requirements
go up too.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
>This may be appropriate for another list, but it seems to me that
there's
>plenty of applicable knowledge here.
>
>Right now, we're using an older Compaq Deskpro P3-600 box as our
incoming
>Linux server. Basically, it connects with the
DSL modem and
contains IP
>masquerading, DNS caching, firewall and
fetchmail/procmail/qmail
tasks
>(SpamAssassin included). It runs 24x7 with no
problem, as it has
for the
last 5 or
6 years. Built like a tank.
Would an offering from one of the various UNIX vendors be a Sun / SGI / HP or something? I'm thinking that
getting away from any
kind of Intel CPU would be a good place to start, plus of course you
don't need any kind of framebuffer then either (unlike a PC) and can
just use a serial console on the (very rare) occassions when you'd
need to be physically at the machine.
Cut memory to bare minimum too as that's probably a major culprit of
current draw.
If the machine's not doing any logging to local disk then you can
eliminate the hard drive too
I disagree with a few points there. Firstly, SpamAssassin is very
resource-hungry. It works best with a fair amount of memory. It also
tends to be very slow - I've seen it take 4-10 seconds *per message* on
a slow machine. That might not matter on a machine handling a very
small amount of
mail, of course.
Of course if a seperate server's on site running as a mail store and
distribution hub then it might make sense to run spamassassin there
rather than on the firewall machine, and keep the firewall as cut to the
bone as possible (this is what I do back home, although my mailserver
box also doubles as my fileserver)
However, many of the Sun/SGI/HP type of machine might
run more quietly
since they don't need big fans for CPU and PSU. They also don't need a
framebuffer as Jules said, *and* no keyboard.
Plus the cases are very small form-factor compared to a typical PC
offering, and you get a NIC built-in (although that's probably true of
all minature PC motherboards these days too)
But they will tend to be
slow, and you'll have fun trying to doing all the IP masquerading
firewally stuff on anything but Linux or BSD, which is going to be more
trouble than it's worth on most of the above.
Yep, I'd definitely stick Linux or BSD on one rather than the 'proper'
OS just for convenience sake.
FWIW, I think Tim's suggestion (mini-ITX) is
amongst the best.
I suppose it depends on how much is available to spend - used Suns and
the like can be had for free, versus a certain amount for a mini-ITX
board (I've not found people throwing out the latter just yet, although
give it a couple of years...)
Mind you, I suppose it's harder to find extra NICs for a
Sun/SGI/whatever versus a PC...
cheers
Jules