JIMSUN Postfix Contribs [back] [home]

Postfix is a new, highly-efficient and highly-secure Mail Transport Agent written by Wietse Venema. It was previously known as VMailer. Visit the Postfix home page to find out more. Latter development having been supported by IBM, it can also be found at IBM's alphaWorks Secure Mailer page.

This page presents my humble contributions to Postfix.

Warning: download these, don't copy-and-paste! Copy-and-paste can result in lines being unintentionally wrapped and hard-tabs being converted to spaces. Not a Good Thing.

Note to Lynx users: I've received a couple of reports by people downloading pflogsumm with Lynx that the download has long lines wrapped (see "Warning" above.) Naturally, this breaks pflogsumm.

Copyright, License, and Disclaimer

All of the programs, applications, and utilities (hereinafter referred
to as "programs") on this page are Copyright (C) 1998-2004 James S. Seymour.

These programs are free software; you can redistribute them and/or
modify them under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

These programs are distributed in the hope that they will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You may receive a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with these programs; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307,
USA.

An on-line copy of the GNU General Public License can be found
here.

Postfix Log Entry Summarizer

pflogsumm.pl is designed to provide an over-view of postfix activity, with just enough detail to give the administrator a "heads up" for potential trouble spots. The following is an over-view of the reports produced: Pflogsumm.pl was written using Perl 5.004. As of version 19990413-02, pflogsumm worked with Perl 5.003, but future compatibility is not guaranteed.

Pflogsumm.pl requires the Date::Calc module, which can be obtained here.

Production versions have been tested more thoroughly, at more sites. Beta versions are the result of enhancement requests and bug reports. While also believed to produce correct results (maybe even more accurate or better results--depending on the reason for the change), they're labeled beta until I get enough feedback to let me know all's well. (Or I fail to get any negative feed-back in the form of bug-reports.)>

Source & Docs: Production Version

Production versions have been tested more thoroughly, at more sites.

Source & Docs: Beta-Test Version

Beta versions are the result of enhancement requests and bug reports. While also believed to produce correct results (maybe even more accurate or better results--depending on the reason for the change), they're labeled beta until I get enough feedback to let me know all's well. (Or I fail to get any negative feed-back in the form of bug-reports.)

Beta versions are thoroughly regression-tested. Deviations, if any, are noted in the ChangeLog--as are the the reasons for them.

Source for Version 19990121-01

This was the last version of pflogsumm that supported versions of VMailer older than version 19981023. It will be kept permanently available for that reason. This version does not require the Date::Calc module. This version is not compatible with Postfix versions 20021026 or beyond.

Non-English Versions of Pflogsumm

I'm looking into adding internationalization to pflogsumm. In the mean-time, here are pointers to non-English translations done by others (note: these might not necessarily be translations of the "latest & greatest"):
Note to translators: I recommend you contact me before beginning a new translation. It may be that I'm preparing to release a new version of pflogsumm.
Deutsch (German): Pflogsumm - deutsche Version (1.1.0) (web page) - by Patrick Ben Koetter

Русский (Russkij/Russian) onix.opennet.ru/files/ - by Andrew Beshkov

Pflogsumm Through A Browser

Chris Cappuccio has written a CGI script that interfaces to pflogsumm. He described it to the postfix-users mailing list as follows:
I wrote a tiny CGI to make pflogsumm easier to read.. (I like being able to scroll through its output with a mouse..) It makes it real easy.....yea... It is real easy to get running on OpenBSD or Solaris and probably most any system that postfix runs on.. It gives you a nice menu of options to select 'today', 'yesterday', or any of your last four rotations of your maillog..Especially if you use postfix in a commercial environment, other folks who don't normally use your unix machines may still find pflogsumm's output interesting.
You can find Chris' contribution here.

Other Postfix Log Analysis Tools

Craig Sanders has written a set of scripts to generate mailstats style reports and mrtg style graphs. He announced it to the postfix-users mailing list on 15 Oct., 1999, as follows (in part):
I have missed MRTG graphs of my mail since I switched from sendmail to postfix, so I wrote a set of perl scripts which do the job.
These can be found at: http://taz.net.au/postfix/mrtg/

If you know of any others, please let me know and I'll post references to them here.

Postix Anti-UCE Configuration "Cheat Sheet"

I've had a number of folks ask me for help with Postfix anti-UCE configuration, and created a "cheat sheet". Last time the subject came up, I mused that maybe I ought to officially publish the thing. Somebody replied "Yeah. That's a nice cheatsheet." Somebody else said "Thanks Jim. I see some stuff in there I wasn't using." So here it is:
Jim Seymour's suggestions/examples for Postfix anti-UCE configuration

Postix Anti-Virus/-Worm/-Trojan Header & Body Checks

Here are the header and body checks rules I use, both at my home and my work MTAs, to block potentially malicious attachment types. There's also a body check to prevent Pflogsumm's reports from being rejected (Pflogsumm FAQ item #13).
Note that these require "pcre:" map type support. To see if your Postfix installation supports that map type, do "postconf -m" and look for "pcre" in the output.

Jim Seymour's anti-virus/-worm/-trojan header_checks for Postfix
Jim Seymour's anti-virus/-worm/-trojan body_checks for Postfix

Postfix Mail Relay Swapper

chng-mail_relay.sh is used to automatically swap Postfix's default mail relay between pre-determined UUCP and SMTP hosts. Really only useful for those running a workstation at home and who normally send and receive their email via a UUCP feed, but would like to take advantage of "direct, fast delivery" when they have their PPP connection up. Postfix's configuration is so darn simple, it really lends itself well to this kind of thing :-).

Source & Docs

Related Pages at JIMSUN

My Unix Utilities page has some more stuff you might be able to use.


Comments or Questions?
Created: 19 Jan, 1999 / Last updated: 5 Feb, 2012 SpamCon Foundation [100% MS Free Site]