Spamihilator, avast, Pocomail?

[speerga]

This is an embarrassing sort of cry for help!

When we had the old forums, I think I actually posted the solution to this. BUT, time and aging having taken their toll :

I cannot remember how to link together Pocomail, avast anti-virus, and spamihilator anti-spam software. I know I had it working, and I did it without the irritation of editing the avast.ini file.

Eric? Anyone else out there? Do you use this combination or remember how to do it?

I went to the avast support forum and they were no real help. Their solution involves editing the avast.ini file and really doesn't explain how to set it all up on Pocomail. I KNOW I once had it working without that avast.ini change.

I can't find anything on the spamihilator site, either.

Thanks, everyone.

Gary Speer

[Eric]

Hi Gary,

This is an embarrassing sort of cry for help!

No problem.

Eric? Anyone else out there? Do you use this combination or remember how to do it?

I hope I saved these settings correctly, but here they are. You never know when they may come in handy.

Spamihilator-setting:
Server: localhost
Username: your.isp.com&username#localhost

I hope that helps.

Edit: Maybe changing the port of the server. IIRC you can change the ports in Spamihilator.
It's been too long ago since I used that one.

[speerga]

I hope that helps.

Unfortunately, no. I tried that and I got this error message:

Socket Error #10054 Connection reset by peer.

I've tried every combination I can think of, even read a ton of posts on the avast forum, and to no luck.

I KNOW I had it working once probably a year ago, and I did it without editing avast.ini.

*big sigh*

Gary Speer

[Eric]

I've tried every combination I can think of, even read a ton of posts on the avast forum, and to no luck.

I KNOW I had it working once probably a year ago, and I did it without editing avast.ini.

*big sigh*r

:roll: Have you tried this combination?
Username: localhost#your.isp.com&username

Just looking for a solution, because as you know you can really get some headaches configuring Avast with spamfilters.

[Eric]

This is what I found on the Avast forum:

To correct set Spamihilator to be used with avast! scanning the e-mail messages, first you have to solve the socket error when Spamihilator opens, since both programs (Spamihilator and avast!) want to use the POP3 port 110.
Please read the Spamihilator FAQ.
Please make sure that you change your POP3 port both in your e-mail client (for example, in Outlook Express, in each account, see Tools> Accounts > Properties > Advanand) and Spamihilator to 120, for example.

After that you have to change the username in your e-mail-client to something like that:

Incoming mail: localhost
Account name: localhost&yourUsername#yourPOP3Server&110
or
Incoming mail: 127.0.0.1
Account name: 127.0.0.1&yourUsername#yourPOP3Server&110

And you have to change avast4.ini file like the following:

Open the Avast4\Data\Avast4.ini file and go to [Mail scanner] section. If you change any items while the mail scanner is running, the new values will be loaded and used immediately after you save the avast4.ini file.
Mail scanner works as a simple SMTP/POP3/IMAP proxy server. It means that your mail program must be configured so that it sends requests to the Mail scanner, and the Mail scanner forwards them to the appro-priate SMTP (POP3, IMAP) server.

The Mail scanner uses ports 25, 110 and 143 of your computer. If you want to use Spamihilator (which uses these ports as well), it is necessary to properly set the items DefaultSmtpServer, DefaultPopServer and DefaultImapServer. For example, if you want to configure your system so that the Mail scanner "sits be-tween" your mail program and a SMTP/POP3 server running on the same computer, configure items *Listen as above and add:

DefaultSmtpServer=127.0.0.1:25
DefaultPopServer=127.0.0.1:110
SmtpListen=127.0.0.1:25
PopListen=127.0.0.1:110
ImapListen=127.0.0.1:143

If you want the Mail scanner to scan mails for other computers too, it is necessary to allow connection acceptance also from other addresses than local. You achieve this by changing the items *Listen and setting the item Trust.

Example:
192.168.1.10 is the address of one of the network cards on the server through which the computers with addresses 192.168.1.20 and 192.168.1.21 are connected
PopListen=192.168.1.10:111
Trust=192.168.1.20,192.168.1.21

[speerga]

I got it! I had found the avast post you quoted above, Eric, and read through it a couple of times.

But what I wasn't figuring out was: Pocomail allows me to designate the listening port for the pop account and pocomail -- and also set up the listening port for avast without editing the avast file.

Uh. I don't know whether that's really what I meant to say.

Anyway, here's how to get avast+spamihilator+Pocomail to work.

1. Leave the avast settings alone so that it monitors port 110 by default.
2. Change the port in Spamihilator to a different one -- I used 120 as suggested in the Spami instructions/help files.

3. Set up the pocomail account as follows:

server: localhost:120
username: localhost&username#popserver.com&110

That makes it work.

BTW -- I used Spamihilator a long time ago, and the latest version has a Bayesian filter you can train. It takes MUCH less memory to leave it running than K9, as I see it on my machine anyway, so I want to try it a couple of weeks.

Thanks, Eric, for jogging my mind and working through combinations with me to get it working. I'll keep you and all my Pocomail friends here posted on how it works.

Gary Speer

EDITED TO REVISE THIS:

OKKKAAAYYY. Now I feel a bit like I'm in the Twilight Zone.

In the process of configuring the 20-some accounts I check in Pocomail, I left that "&110" off the backend -- and discovered it works fine without it, taking the email through avast AND spamihilator before sending it on to pocomail. So I guess that's not necessary -- though I could've sworn it did earlier.

[Eric]

Thanks, Eric, for jogging my mind and working through combinations with me to get it working. I'll keep you and all my Pocomail friends here posted on how it works.

You're welcome, Gary.
Keep us posted.

EDITED TO REVISE THIS:
OKKKAAAYYY. Now I feel a bit like I'm in the Twilight Zone.
In the process of configuring the 20-some accounts I check in Pocomail, I left that "&110" off the backend -- and discovered it works fine without it, taking the email through avast AND spamihilator before sending it on to pocomail. So I guess that's not necessary -- though I could've sworn it did earlier.

Pocomail listens to port 110 and so does Avast. You said it yourself earlier on.
Adding "&110" or not adding it won't change a thing.
BTW I said 'IIRC you can change the ports in Spamihilator'.

I'd love to see your results compared to K9.

Off to bed now.

[Eric]

Hi Gary,

After you mentionned the new version of Spamihilator I decided to try it out on Barca. Poco uses strict Bayesian.
Here are my results after one "calm" week training Spamihilator.




I still prefer to use my strict Bayesian, because it's all in the same program, but Spamihilator is learning really quick and does a good job.
Of course I've been training Poco since the beta started.

[speerga]

Thanks, Eric.

I abandoned spamihilator for now. I actually tried Pocomail's strict Bayesian, then the Pocomail Bayesian with some custom filters again. I was doing pretty well that way for a day or two.

Then I discovered that the Pocomail Bayesian filter was NOT learning even the simplest "good/bad" training and that most of the filtering being done was with the custom filters I had set up.

I have over 38,000 "bad" and over 36,000 "good" words run through Pocomail's Bayesian filter now and it cannot consistently catch spam with some of the most obvious obscene words and/or online perscriptions in the subject and body.

So I'm back to K9. I really dislike the memory useage K9 gives me. It sits in my system tray minimized and uses about 10K after I've checked email a few times. Which seems to be a lot more than spamihilator -- but then it slows down my email checking much less than spamihilator did.

Ah, well. I'll keep trying. Hopefully upcoming versions of Pocomail will get better on the Bayesian junk mail filtering.

Gary Speer

[Eric]

I abandoned spamihilator for now.

Surprise.

I actually tried Pocomail's strict Bayesian, then the Pocomail Bayesian with some custom filters again. I was doing pretty well that way for a day or two.

Then I discovered that the Pocomail Bayesian filter was NOT learning even the simplest "good/bad" training and that most of the filtering being done was with the custom filters I had set up.

Sorry, it didn't work out for you.

So I'm back to K9. I really dislike the memory useage K9 gives me. It sits in my system tray minimized and uses about 10K after I've checked email a few times. Which seems to be a lot more than spamihilator -- but then it slows down my email checking much less than spamihilator did.

You're right about the slowdown of Spamihilator, but I was just testing it.

Ah, well. I'll keep trying. Hopefully upcoming versions of Pocomail will get better on the Bayesian junk mail filtering.

Hopefully it will.
Have you tried Hogyt's script already?

Best of luck.