After years of procratination I finally got around to whipping my mail system back into shape. Its quite common qmail+vpopmail+courier-imap+courier setup. What I really wanted was spamassassin and some more features in the web based front end (ilohamail).

I've tried to setup spamassassin a couple time already but each time as I started reading howtos all the vigor would dwindle away. The whole qmail configuration and philosophy is great, take all the pieces you need arrange them together (with some help from duct tape and wd-40) -- and voila a full- fledged mail server! Except one day you'll pass a point where you can barely keep track of all the pieces that keep your mail together.

So as I was reading how to get spamassassin integrated into qmail I thought, "Qmail sucks I hate qmail.. its way too complicated." A little later (think HOURS) I had broken the delicate chain of apps and inserted qmail-scanner and spammassassin (spamd and spac) into the mix. Amazing things still worked and now my email had special X-Spam-Status tag (YAY!).

Qmail and me have a true love-hate relationship. When it works and you don't need anything extra from it, then, its great. But as soon as you get this nagging feeling "I wish I had feature X" you start slowly hating qmail -- untill you fix it up and make it all pretty again.

As a sidenote -- pay no attention to the fact that ilohamail 9.X is a beta version. It works great and the new features are way worth the migration from 8.X. Email filters, imap over SSL, gpg, public calendar... the list goes on and on.

So once again -- with the help of bind9 (SPF), spamassasin, qmail scanner, ilohamail 9.X -- my mail system is modern!