Any1 interessed to help me out with writing a HOW-TO?

[steveb]

Hi all,

english is not my native language and writing a guide or how-to would definatly stress my knowledge of english to a level I can't handle my self.

I would like to start a guide or how-to to incoperate all of the following software:

• PostgreSQL
• Postfix
• Cyrus-IMAPD
• Cyrus-SASL
• PAM-PgSQL
• Amavis-New
• DSPAM
• Pure-FTPD
• Apache2
• phppgadmin
• Horde
• etc

I would like to show how to install that software, include SSL and TLS certificates, authentificate agains PostgreSQL (using a own made PAM_PgSQL ebuild), managing virtual domains for Apache2 and Postfix/Cyrus (using web-cyradm), etc...

I know that there are many guide and how-to's for that kind of setup, but most (if not all) of them use MySQL and since I had many time trouble with MySQL (the DB start's to piss me off! Sorry to name it that way, but it is how I feel about it. I had over 250'000 spam mails tagged in the DSPAM database and MySQL has trouble to manage all that in a acceptable time. PostgreSQL is much more scalable compared to MySQL. Maybe MySQL is faster, but I need a reliable system and not a ultra-fast but unstable system).

Right now, I have all of the above mentioned (and some other stuff more) in a productive environment. I still have as well almost the same setup (have Courier instead of Cyrus) with MySQL and I can tell, that the setup with PostgreSQL is much more reliable. But the setup with PostgreSQL is hell to implement (authentificating against MySQL is way more documented then against PostgreSQL).

If any1 feels like helping me out, then send me a PM. If I have enought "helping hands", then I would like to start writing this guide/how-to.


cheers

SteveB


btw: If you feel that my proposal is a stupid idea, then let me know. I like feedback. No mater what kind of feedback.

[pjp]

steveb: When you get a "document" ready, feel free to post it in Documentation, Tips & Tricks.


Moved from Documentation, Tips & Tricks.

[steveb]

steveb: When you get a "document" ready, feel free to post it in Documentation, Tips & Tricks.

And what about all the writing errors? Technicaly I have no problem writing such a document. But I fear the english grammer and other language problems I may face.

Do you think I should just start and then if we find writing errors, then we fix them as they show up?

If any1 who knows english and german good enought and is willing to help me, I could write the most part in english and if my english language starts to limit me, I could write some small part in german and then someone could help me to translate it into english. Any1 feeling to be the person I talk about? Don't be shy! Help me! We would do a great service for the Gentoo people.


cheers

SteveB

[aridhol]

You could write it anyway and post it. I'm sure ppl will help you update the HOW-TO once it's in the forums. I'd be willing, only I don't know german.

I hope you post it anyway and we can all help out. Go for it.

[John5788]

your english seems good enough to me. write it!

[steveb]

phhuuu... I am slowly preparing the self made scripts or enhancements to be at least available in bugs.gentoo.org.

Currently I have submitted:
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34517
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58768
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58706

I am still working on:
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57838

And I still need help for the stupid ebuild (manual installation works without problem, but ebuild kills me):
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php? ... highlight=


As you see, I am very busy preparing the guide/how-to.

If any1 could help me with the webapp, I would be sooooo happy! I don't know what to do to fix that problem.


cheers

SteveB


btw: I started yestarday to write the guide the horde stuff will be hell to explain. Horde is so big and has manny manny switches and options. Anyway... no pain no gain!

[TheCoop]

im willing to look over it, check for grammar, punctuation etc etc, just click the email link below

[steveb]

Hey! Thanks! You are a dream


cheers

SteveB

[Stormy]

Hi i'm wondering what is the status of this, I am a livid postgres fan and I would love to see postfix + postgres (and all the extras) working with gentoo, just today i got called in for a emergency mail server, and after trying to do the postfix howto i figured I'd try the qmail howto seeings how it relied on vpopmail and the website said it worked fine with postgresql, but in the ebuild there is nothing for pgsql only mysql, is this some kind of consiperacy by the gentoo guys to force us to mysql, or just a lazy blunder by the community?

p.s. please please even if it's a hacked beta copy of the howto could i please get it?

--Stormy

[steveb]

if you realy look into geting the virtual mail hosting with postgresql instead of mysql, then the stuff is not that hard. just follow the normal virtual mail hosting guide and use postgresql instead of mysql for the lookups and use the ebuilds (for sasl authentification against postgresql) i have already posted in this thread.

if you need help, then just let me know. it is not that hard.

cheers

SteveB

[Stormy]

thanks alot man, do you have aim or yahoo or even on irc somewhere, i've got a mail server that needs to be up by tonight (we had the exchange server crash last night and here's my chance), it's a blazing fast box. please let me know

[steveb]

no. don't have im anymore. however... have a look at http://www.web-cyradm.org/docs.html . they have a nice setup and documentation for postfix with cyrus, with diffrend database backends.

cheers

SteveB

[steveb]

postgresql is dam stable!!

Code: Select all

 / # dspam_stats -H globaluser
globaluser:
                TS Total Spam:                  0
                TI Total Innocent:              0
                SM Spam Misclassified:          0
                IM Innocent Misclassified:      0
                SC Spam Corpusfed:         139045
                IC Innocent Corpusfed:      35331
                TL Training Left:               0

and postgresql is still working without any problem mysql on the same hardware had trouble. and this is only the global account
some of the other user accounts have serval 10'000 messages already into their corpus and till now i don't see any problem
i am so happy that i switched to postgresql.

as soon i am finished with the first draft of the guide, i will post more info.


cheers

SteveB

[vosechu]

I would also be more that happy to correct if you send me an email about it when you get a little further down the road. I don't speak German but oh well.

I wonder though, wouldn't it be easier and more useful to write a MySQL to PostgreSQL conversion howto? It sounds like this is a common problem that you could easily fix with your knowledge.

Howto's usually are very specific, howto do one thing and only one thing. This is because the more area you try to cover the more authoritative you have to be about every bit. You will be called on to answer obscure questions and if your howto covers too many things you won't know what to do.

Thesis: keep it simple (chomp, chomp).

[davidblewett]

I know this is resurrecting an old thread, but I'm looking at converting the DSPAM MySQL database to use Postgres instead. Any tips?

[RageX^NZ]

Hi,

I speak good english, and a "tiny" bit of German. I will happily read through your how-to's and fix any spelling or grammar errors.

You can email me andyonfire@gmail.com

As a bonus, I have a lot of experience with linux in ISP's and can test everything in your how-to's to make sure it works.


Regards,



Andrew Thrift

[steveb]

I know this is resurrecting an old thread, but I'm looking at converting the DSPAM MySQL database to use Postgres instead. Any tips?

You could export the MySQL data into normal SQL statements and then import the data into Postgresql.

cheers

SteveB

[steveb]

BTW: MySQL stability has changend over the last months. Now my MySQL 5 setup has no trouble in holding alot of data for DSPAM.

On a test system I have no problem holding millions of DSPAM token data and DSPAM is fast as hell with MySQL. Currently I have the following accurancy:

Code: Select all

                TP True Positives:         120531
                TN True Negatives:         121035
                FP False Positives:           245
                FN False Negatives:           330
                SC Spam Corpusfed:            245
                NC Nonspam Corpusfed:         137
                TL Training Left:               0
                SHR Spam Hit Rate          99.73%
                HSR Ham Strike Rate:        0.20%
                OCA Overall Accuracy:      99.76%

But I am still in training mode. I have a maildir directory with 99 set's. Each of the set's has about 500 spam and 500 nonspam messages. The above data was done with DSPAM 3.6.4 with no corpus data. I only run dspam_train against each set. Currently I am at set 44. I still have alot of training to do.

I do this in order to see what settings in DSPAM bring the best result for me.

After I am finished with the current training set, I will dump the data into a external SQL file and start again with differend settings in DSPAM. Next try will be the Markovian Discrimination algorithm.

cheers

SteveB