How to install policyd

[blueflametuna]

There seem to be some differences in the installation and configuration procedure as described in the Wiki at Improving Anti-spam system - Zimbra :: Wiki, the postfix-policyd wiki, Postfix Policyd - Zimbra :: Wiki, and the INSTALL instructions that came with the policyd v2 tarball.

v2 looks like it is now called "cluebringer" (cbpolicyd).

I just want to be sure that I install the software properly, create the database, and configure it without disrupting the existing Zimbra implementation.

This looks like it might also complicate future upgrades.

Has anyone done this and can assist me?
Thanks!

[blueflametuna]

Please, anybody?

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by blueflametuna

This looks like it might also complicate future upgrades.

You will need to make these modifications after every upgrade.

Have you actually tried an install following the instructions supplied with the package?

[LMStone]

Bill is of course absolutely correct that you will need to redo this after every Zimbra upgrade, but policyd is very widely used and the documentation is very clean.

The policyd docs do presume some familiarity with how Postfix is configured and works, so if you don't have that level of comfort just yet I can certainly understand that implementing policyd would appear more daunting.

Perhaps a good thing to do would be to use VMware Server/Workstation to set up a test plain-Jane OpenSUSE mail server, and then try to add policyd to it?

You can take periodic snapshots in case you bork something along the way.

Then once you have some experience and a successful test deployment (or two!) behind you, you can attack your production Zimbra box.

How does that sound?

Hope that helps,
Mark

[blueflametuna]

My question, to be more specific, is the creation of the mysql policyd database.
In the INSTALL that came with the policyd V2 (cluebringer) tarball, it creates tables for policies, session_tracking, access_control, quotas, amavis_rules, checkhelo, checkspf, and graylisting, etc.

The Zimbra wiki page for installing postfix_policyd is Debian specific, and is different.

I just didn't want to mess with my production Zimbra database without being sure of the procedure.

Has anyone installed V2 policyd with Zimbra that can assist me?

Thanks!

[LMStone]

The only Debian-specific command on the Postfix Policyd - Zimbra :: Wiki page I see is the apt-get command to install the policyd binaries, which you have obtained from a different source.

The wiki mentions it briefly, but your biggest decision here is where to put the policyd database.

We don't use policyd, but I share your concern about hosting the policyd database in Zimbra's MySQL.

If it were me, I'd run a separate instance of the MySQL that comes with your distro to domicile the policyd database. That way, that instance will get patched from your distro's update channel and Zimbra's MySQL instance will remain "pure".

We've set up a number of LAMP servers where the developers need either multiple instances of the same MySQL binaries running on the same box, as well as multiple instances of different versions of MySQL on the same box (useful for testing database migrations to a new MySQL version).

There's documentation on how to do this at the MySQL site: MySQL :: MySQL 5.0 Reference Manual :: 5.6.2 Running Multiple Servers on Unix should get you started for example.

Hope that helps,
Mark

[blueflametuna]

Hi Mark,

Excellent point about running a separate instance.
That will make upgrading Zimbra in the future much less difficult.
I will still need to add the postfix hooks to re-implement policyd,
but I won't have to worry about recreating and reimporting the policyd database.

Once that exercise is done, I might try to figure out how to start the policyd database from zmcontrol. I am not sure what postfix will do if it cannot connect. Perhaps it will just log the error and continue...

Thanks for the great idea, though.

Cheers!