I have no idea for any kind of copyrights, simply use Mailsweeper as it
is or erase it. I've started the development of Mailsweeper just for
fun and for learning
Python.
The publication of this program is mostly on the view to have some
feedback
regarding how to make more efficient the program, rather
than itself
use. My first intention was to mimic the power of Andreas Bauer's
"mailfilter", which may need some extra effort to make it running on a
different platform. Of course, even Mailsweeper will need
Python
interpreter, but on the other hand, Python may become useful for other
several purposes -as per win32 users, for Linux users it's installed, on most of the cases.
NO direct or indirect warranty are given implied, or whatsoever. Mailsweeper
name has been chosen without intention to copy any other program around
the globe (It's a tough issue to find an unique name in the whole
Internet).
Mailsweeper may fail for some unpredictable reason, therefore
use it with care. Caution is suggested to avoid important email loss.
I'm going to pay some efforts to improve the Mailsweeper performances
and catch all possible flaws. Any bug fix or improvement are welcome,
and taken in account. For personal use are
granted for free modifications, redistribution and partial
inclusions into other programs. For commercial use in whole or
partial of this
program it will requires author permission.
First need to set up
the
configuration file (Cfile hereafter). An example is enclosed with
Mailsweeper. The source and Cfile are fairly documented. Cfile follow a
"INI" style, with sections and some
compound to let do a word replacement on the option's value.
Once the Cfile is set, just launch Mailsweeper on the
prompt followed by (optionally) the config file path. If you start the
first time it's compulsory to give the Cfile, since no records
have been saved.
Subsequently, if the Cfile still same, Mailsweeper will load its
own saved records. In order to force loading the configuration one must
provide a Cfile path after the program name.
There are some command line options which can override the Cfile setting. Details are enclosed into the Cfile as
*_HLP option. These descriptions will appear also if you'll type
Mailsweeper -h at the prompt. A good care it's needed to these options, Mailsweeper checks and compute on them.
CFile options ending with _HLP will ease to develop convertion of the help comments into a
different
language. I don't know whether it can take Unicode.
You may have an options variety for a log file, which let
you decide for the log, append to an existing previous file (which may set a quota)
There is option to set a limit size for the log file, 123456 or 123k or 435M
are valid options which give the file size in bytes, Kbytes and Mbytes
respectively.
If there are several servers to process, Mailsweeper can process
all simultaneously, reducing then its connection's idle time. This can be done
by enabling multi thread option by setting either into the Cfile or issuing -m 1 ('yes' or similar boolean value).
Mailsweeper have been tested mainly on Linux platform, I've spent some
time to run test also on Win32 platform and I may say it's similar behavior.
For Win32 I think Mailsweeper may need some little effort to set up the
convenient folder for the program and its files.
Mailsweeper
need cfgparse module to work. Download cfgparse
and put in either the same folder of Mailsweeper or
Python's searching path.
Running Mailsweeper will show some information of the
progress. It's also possible to redirect the entire log on the screen, but
just careful that lines are rather long, that they may impact
visibility.
FILTERING.- This is the core of the email handling. If wrong input may
cause misinterpretation on what you want to remove or to keep. It's advisable to start testing and with "
SETTING FILTER"
set to 'no' or 0 (zero) or similar boolean value, which will simply mark the emails BAD, but
will be no actions on the server(s) and in conjunction with the logging facility to check if result fit the expectations.
The configuration let you define 2 way of filtering. Options names
starting by '
A'
and followed by any character (just for making an unique option name),it
will means "
Allowed". Mailsweeper will keep those emails that matching such criteria. Options
names starting by '
D',
and any characters after, means "
Denied"
and Mailsweeper will mark in the log or immediately remove from the
server. Denial have highest priority on filter rules.
The filter mode is dictated by
"Regular
Expression" and I suggest some reading at it , to whom isn't
familiar on its use.
For anything unclear point, it will be a pleasure of mine to help you for Mailsweeper
best use. Developers may also expose or share some idea.
The project still a long way to go, this isn't the complete Mailsweeper description, therefore better read the
README_NOW.txt
inside the zip file.
The development of Mailsweeper is going at the pace of solely hobby
term, do not expect changes in short periods. I'll may grow some interest as the demand and feedback will increase.
Thanks to all Python developers, they've made such wonderful tool, that gaves me the chance to come up with
Mailsweeper. More thanks to SpamBayes staff and Rui Carmo for some part of their program which have been adapted for my use.
PS. Italian is my own language, any wrong grammar herein is purely
unknown, sorry.