[Pkg-dspam-misc] Bug#577661: Status of DSPAM in Debian

[Julien Valroff]

Hi Thomas,

Le dimanche 24 oct. 2010 à 12:58:58 (+0800), Thomas Goirand a écrit :
> Hi,
> 
> I've seen this:
> 
> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=577661
> 
> and I'm very surprised that, after such a discussion in last April,
> there wasn't any new package for DSPAM in Debian.
> 
> Julien, what's the status? After 6 months, you should have been able to
> upload a new package, at least in Experimental, no?

As expressed in the bug report you mention, I would like to wait until 3.9.1
is released, which might never happen given the upstream development is
stalled since Stevan's decision to put his work on DSPAM on hold, at least
temporary.

I am particulary concerned about a bug affecting the hash driver (the
default backend in the Debian package), which is explained at [0].

> As I see that many people seems to be interested in working on a DSPAM
> package, I was wondering if the time to do a collab-maint project has
> come, so that we aren't fixed to a single maintainer/uploader.

There is already a pkg-dspam project on Alioth, most of the members of the
team do not seem to have interest for it though.

I have recently opened an RFH [1] for this package I cannot maintain alone,
which also explains why nothing was uploaded for now.

Thoms Preud'Homme recently joined the team and has already begin his work on
the package. 

> We might use DSPAM in my company (eg: GPLHost), as a replacement for
> Spamassassin that takes too much memory and CPU. If it works out well,
> then I will for sure give a hand for this package.

You are welcome to join the project if you wish so. The package sources are
in git [2]. Bug triaging needs to be done, as well as a general check of the
package, as I have changed so many things since the previous upload… Note
that these packages are already being testing by a bunch of users (including
myself).

> Can anyone tells me
> why DSPAM is better than spamassassin? 

They do work in totally different ways. Check the DSPAM home page as well as
the README file in the tarball for more details.

> Would I still need clamav if I
> run DSPAM (our understanding is that we would)?

DSPAM is an antispam filter, not an antirus thing. However, DSPAM can call
clamav for virus checking.

> How much memory DSPAM
> uses in a normal production server?

It really depends on the way you deploy it, and on the scale of your server…

Just as an example, I wrote a small blog entry when I switched from SA
to DSPAM on my home server (in 2006), and a graphic shows how the memory use is
different [3].

Cheers,
Julien

[0] http://www.mail-archive.com/dspam-devel@lists.sourceforge.net/msg01760.html
[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=599498
[2] http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-dspam/dspam.git;a=summary
[3] http://www.kirya.net/weblog/2006/03/19/dspam-rocks/

-- 
Julien Valroff <julien at kirya.net>
http://www.kirya.net
GPG key: 1024D/9F71D449
17F4 93D8 746F F011 B845  9F91 210B F2AB 9F71 D449
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