Pegasus Mail & Mercury

I think I need some basic help understanding Spamhalter in Pegasus email account vs in Mercury/32. I've use it in my Pegasus account for the past year or more. It's very effective.  I just activated it in Mercury after another user's account was mail bombed by spam. I set up a 'spam' and 'notspam' user account.  I forwarded all messages for a day or two out of my user account 'junk or suspicious' folder to the 'spam' account mailbox.  I forwarded a substantial number of good messages to the 'notspam' user mailbox. And I made my global whitelist available for Mercury/32 to use.   Some basic questions:

1.  When activated in Mercury, does SH check all incoming emails to the server, compared to the user account setting only checking downloaded messages when popped? 

2.  If Mercury SH is checking incoming before they are popped down to the individual user account, what happens to them?  I see settings  in the Mercury  SH  to define tagging, but I don't see any setting that defines where they go after they are processed.  I would prefer a way to review the messages id'd as spam, but don't find them moved into any of the user accounts I've set up.  Also, I see some messages on the server marked "killed by daemon".  Is this from SH action?  

 3.  I'm unsure of the use of the basic 'honeypot' account. Is that different than the 'spam' user account, and how is it used?

 

That's a start. I'm sure I'll have followup questions. BTW, I also installed Graywall yesterday in Mercury, and it's made a massive difference.  Thanks for any help on these questions.
 

1.  When activated in Mercury, does SH check all incoming emails to the server, compared to the user account setting only checking downloaded messages when popped?

Spamhalter adds a header to the message.  You need to use Mercury/32 filters to process the mail based on these headers.   

 2.  If Mercury SH is checking incoming before they are popped down to the individual user account, what happens to them?  I see settings  in the Mercury  SH  to define tagging, but I don't see any setting that defines where they go after they are processed.  I would prefer a way to review the messages id'd as spam, but don't find them moved into any of the user accounts I've set up.  Also, I see some messages on the server marked "killed by daemon".  Is this from SH action? 

What filter's have you setup in Mercury/32 to process the mail marked as spam.

 3.  I'm unsure of the use of the basic 'honeypot' account. Is that different than the 'spam' user account, and how is it used?

Any mail sent to the honeypot address is automatically spam. I don't use this one.

 

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Thomas R. Stephenson
San Jose, California
Member of Pegasus Mail Support Team

>What filter's have you setup in Mercury/32 to process the mail marked as spam. 

I  set up a global rule in Mercury to move any message with "SPAM detected!" in the subject line to a user account 'Charliespam' I created for all spam messages to be sent to, so I could review them. The Spam Tagging Cnfig in Spamhalter on Mercury, inder Message Modification,  is set to add a Subject Prefix of "SPAM detected!".  I left the default Message Header name as "X-SPAMWALL".

 

So far this weekend, I've not seen any message show up in the "Charliespam" account. I have not seen the "SpamdDetected" subject prefix in any message so far that ends up in my user account's junk folder. I have been forwarding all messages that end up in my user account junk folder due to the user account Spam Halter to the Spam user account in Mercury.  I think those are the messages that show up in teh Core Process as "killed by daemon".

 I'll keep watching headers and see what happens.  Perhaps the Graywall has gotten rid of most everything that was otherwise coming through.

I'd welcome any further thoughts about the Spam Halter setup.

  

 

 

Could you post the headers of one of your junk messages?

What Spamhalter headers are in the messages you are receiving?  If they show it spam then the filter is bad.  If they show it's good mail then you probably not yet getting spam.

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Thomas R. Stephenson
San Jose, California
Member of Pegasus Mail Support Team

Thanks for the offer to look at the headers, but I think I got it going today. I tweaked a number of settings in both content control and spamhalter, and downloaded Lukas' word database file and added it to my own. Now I'm getting spam messages marked in the subject line as I set it to do, and it's forwarding them to my spam folder. So I think that parts good. I don't know if I'm getting the learning process to work. When I forward junk emails which have not been marked as spam to my 'spam' user account, the Mercury core process shows "* killed by daemon", and nothing to indicate it's been sent on to the spam user account.  Any thoughts on that?  I'm forwarding the messages through an outside smtp server.  I tried the format of addressing to spam+password, but it is not recognized by Mercury as a legit address.

Charlie G:

When I forward junk emails which have not been marked as spam to my 'spam' user account, the Mercury core process shows "* killed by daemon", and nothing to indicate it's been sent on to the spam user account.  Any thoughts on that?

That is what is supposed to happen. Check your Spamhalter log file, you should see something like

C 20080313 105559.880 MG000076 corrections to NoSPAM
C 20080313 105559.880 MG000076 16F6A2FF.CNM

Note the 'C' for correction.

I'm forwarding the messages through an outside smtp server.  I tried the format of addressing to spam+password, but it is not recognized by Mercury as a legit address.

I've not used that method, maybe someone else can help.

Why not send them direct to Mercury?

I have an IMAP account set up for 'spam' and 'notspam' mailboxes, so I just drag and drop any corrections.

Charlie G:

I tried the format of addressing to spam+password, but it is not recognized by Mercury as a legit address.

To do this you have to set up Mercury to recognise the '+' addressing form:  Configuration/Core/Advanced Allow the use of '+' forms...

Thanks.  I found the configuration for allowing + forms yesterday and it appears to be allowing corrections to spamhalter from the internet.  I also reset to delivering locally for internal mail. The only thing I'm finding now is that I am receiving a few messages being forwarded back to me from senders that show rejected emails due to "too many hops". I am working with local university IT people to try to figure out why that's happening. It started when I activated Graywall.  I've learned a lot of details about Mercury by working with this. Thanks for the support so far!

 

 

Graywall just rejects certain incoming SMTP transactions with a temporary error code, it doesn't send out any messages, so we should probably be looking elsewhere. Do you have any log files with examples of this, or headers from returned emails? Are you using MercuryE or MercuryC for external delivery? Have you double-checked that local domains are correct in Mercury core configuration?

/Rolf